Girlhood

During it, we learn to adopt a story about ourselves—what our value is, what beauty is, what is harmful and what is normal—and to privilege the feelings, comfort, perceptions, and power of others over our own.

We are all unreliable narrators of our own motives. And feeling something neither proves nor disproves its existence.

The same way that I have taught my mind and my body to collaborate in a habitual set of practices that eventually coalesce into a skill that can be strengthened, such as throwing a softball, singing, jogging long distances, or writing—so I have found it possible to train my mind to act in accordance with my beliefs (and sometimes to discover what t

The instinct in me to hide it was so strong that I lied in my diary. I wanted no record of that wreck.