No one ever told me about sex, no one talked to me about healthy relationships, no one told me that hitting wasn’t the only way to abuse someone. I spent my childhood picking out everything I hated about myself, and hating other girls for having those things. I went through a series of bad relationships believing I was expected to submit to my boyfriend’s will. I believed I was a failure, no one could love me, and I deserved every tear I cried because that was the price I paid for not being a perfect, submissive, feminine woman. But I am gorgeous, I am defiant, I am sexual, and I am a mother. I will not sit back and watch my daughter grow up in a world that judges her by her pants’ size, the clothes she wears, the number of partners she has had, or the amount of money she makes. She will not grow up living in fear, she will not hate herself, she will dance just for her.
