A Year Outside of the Classroom: Chapter 16- Woman and Mentor

Here we are in another month.

Another month into my gap year. 

I have started this new month with a new hunger for poetry, a new fire inside of me to tell stories and more stories. 

I began each response to the question "why medicine?" with "Because I am a storyteller." Not the expected response. But my passion to tell people's stories, share them where they need to be heard, can be done by being their care provider first, being one of their closest friends and mentors. 

Sometimes people a mentor for youth in my community reminds me of how exciting-and scary- it will be to be someone's mentor. I sit with girls who I believe are growing into outstanding women. And I am reminded of how hard it is to grow into a woman. When do we become aware of our womanhood? When do we start being expected to act like a woman? 

I don't know when exactly I began to think of myself as a "woman" and not a "girl," but I remember feeling less small, feeling like I had relevance and a bigger voice. I remember feeling like when I stood in a crowd, my head was raised on its own and I didn't have to stand taller to feel bigger. 

I don't know when I turned into a woman. But I know it is hard to acknowledge our womanhood. And as I see these girls, these women, these future overachievers, goal-crushers, ceiling-breakers, I hope they feel their womanhood, their success, earlier than later. I hope they believe in their power and capabilities and recognize their accomplishments sooner. I hope they look in the mirror and are proud of what they see.

I don't know how to make them see themselves as women, but I hope I can set some what of an example, even if imperfect, but just enough to make this mentor-thing become easier when the time comes, even it ever becomes easier.

Today's poetry for you:

"You wrote a poem

painting the picture of your smallness

and someone said,

     'I can see you coming out of your shell, but you sound nervous.'

Small. 

You      

       quiet-toned

       quick-paced

       dreaming girl

have been carving your fears on the walls in every room,

so people read who you are.

You can break the shell they saw you coming out of,

glue its pieces together,

and make a mosaic of your face:

The face of a woman."