What lands here is the refusal to turn truth-telling into a blood sport. Naming misogyny without turning men into cartoon villains or women into saints is harder work, and it shows. The part about transformation being slow, unglamorous, and unfinished feels especially honest. Also yes to the erasure of older women. Patriarchy loves a woman right up until she stops being useful to it. The Queen era you name feels like the plot twist history never planned for and desperately needs. This is the kind of conversation that actually changes rooms, not just minds.
What this post awakened within me is the sense that the feminine carries an extraordinary capacity for self-renewal (a magical capacity to give birth to herself over and over and over again). There is a willingness AND DESIRE to enter cycles that require descent, to move downward into uncertainty, grief, or unknowing; trusting that something essential is forming there. The momentum of going down is that we (all of us) reach a higher point as we spiral upwards again. This rhythm of eternally dissolving and re-emerging feels ancestral, cellular, and deeply intelligent. Each return carries more depth, more clarity, more authority earned through experience rather than assertion. Because the feminine is generous, this gets infused into the world.
There is something profoundly powerful about honoring this cycle as a strength rather than a liability. The repeated movement through darkness and emergence is how wisdom becomes embodied, how insight gains weight and resonance. When this capacity is respected and protected, it changes how we understand leadership, creativity, and spiritual maturity. It feels like a superpower that deserves reverence, space, and cultural recognition, especially in a world that rushes toward permanence, emotional enslavement and certainty rather than transformation.
"If we're serious about pursuing Jesus—or whatever faith it is that one is after—there is a transformation that it asks of us." This is on the money. As a girl who grew up in the church, I saw clearly the hypocrisies that propped it up. Misogyny, patriarchy, homophobia, justified anger and pettiness, and general self-abandonment preached in the name of God. When I left as an adult, it was because I found leadership void of self-awareness, accountability, kindness, introspection, and compassion. God was to be used as a projection of internal unprocessed pain. That's what I was taught to believe even though no preacher ever said that. The opposite actually.
The thread in the back of my mind that I always carried was: How can you follow the greatest commandment "with all your mind" if you are not using all of it but think you are? How can you love your neighbor as yourself if you don't have the homeostasis, emotional regulation, and self-awareness to then build towards compassion, vulnerability and genuine curiosity of self? And how can you see me as a Black woman if you're not practicing any of this?
"What art will the Queens make? What stories will they tell?" Gosh I love this question. And the answer is in the now. We are making art now. This essay, your conversation, the responses here, the book, the questioning itself. This whole generation of women is finally arriving there. We are here.
We just have to know it and surrender to that inner knowing and awareness. I'm very invested in the study and art of platonic love. Or more specifically, what it means to truly see and love another woman and how our yearning for visibility points to the deepest work of becoming—not just who we are to ourselves, but who we are to each other. It's then that we are able to fully see and experience ourselves and other women throughout every stage of life.
Yearning reveals us. It is a compass. And I think Jesus lived that truth. He teaches it without ever naming it, if we’re willing to slow down and really receive how he moved through the world.
"Transformation is slow." Yes. And it requires accountability. Not just saying "I'm growing" but actually doing the work in real time, out loud and not just to virtue signal. The butterfly doesn't choose to melt. It has to. Coming out the other side isn't a performance, it's earned through surrender and faith. As you said, "It's cultural and spiritual." May we all know as women that we are doing it now and may we have the courage to continue it.
Beautiful! A podcast I enjoy is Wiser Than Me, which is exclusively interviews with older women so that their stories and wisdom can be shared with the world.
Thank you Tia! For this conversation, for your work, and for helping me to get For the Love of Women into the hands of more readers. Can't wait for the next opportunity to talk with you.
What lands here is the refusal to turn truth-telling into a blood sport. Naming misogyny without turning men into cartoon villains or women into saints is harder work, and it shows. The part about transformation being slow, unglamorous, and unfinished feels especially honest. Also yes to the erasure of older women. Patriarchy loves a woman right up until she stops being useful to it. The Queen era you name feels like the plot twist history never planned for and desperately needs. This is the kind of conversation that actually changes rooms, not just minds.
Thanks so much for reading and for this thoughtful response. I do hope you get a chance to read For the Love of Women.
What this post awakened within me is the sense that the feminine carries an extraordinary capacity for self-renewal (a magical capacity to give birth to herself over and over and over again). There is a willingness AND DESIRE to enter cycles that require descent, to move downward into uncertainty, grief, or unknowing; trusting that something essential is forming there. The momentum of going down is that we (all of us) reach a higher point as we spiral upwards again. This rhythm of eternally dissolving and re-emerging feels ancestral, cellular, and deeply intelligent. Each return carries more depth, more clarity, more authority earned through experience rather than assertion. Because the feminine is generous, this gets infused into the world.
There is something profoundly powerful about honoring this cycle as a strength rather than a liability. The repeated movement through darkness and emergence is how wisdom becomes embodied, how insight gains weight and resonance. When this capacity is respected and protected, it changes how we understand leadership, creativity, and spiritual maturity. It feels like a superpower that deserves reverence, space, and cultural recognition, especially in a world that rushes toward permanence, emotional enslavement and certainty rather than transformation.
That's really beautiful. Have you written more on this? If so, please pass along a link!
I'm so happy this supported you!
You might find some overlap here: https://ericanoelle.substack.com/p/feminine-magic-is-hiding-in-plain-947
Thanks Noelle. I'll aim to read this tomorrow. Just quitting for today.
"If we're serious about pursuing Jesus—or whatever faith it is that one is after—there is a transformation that it asks of us." This is on the money. As a girl who grew up in the church, I saw clearly the hypocrisies that propped it up. Misogyny, patriarchy, homophobia, justified anger and pettiness, and general self-abandonment preached in the name of God. When I left as an adult, it was because I found leadership void of self-awareness, accountability, kindness, introspection, and compassion. God was to be used as a projection of internal unprocessed pain. That's what I was taught to believe even though no preacher ever said that. The opposite actually.
The thread in the back of my mind that I always carried was: How can you follow the greatest commandment "with all your mind" if you are not using all of it but think you are? How can you love your neighbor as yourself if you don't have the homeostasis, emotional regulation, and self-awareness to then build towards compassion, vulnerability and genuine curiosity of self? And how can you see me as a Black woman if you're not practicing any of this?
"What art will the Queens make? What stories will they tell?" Gosh I love this question. And the answer is in the now. We are making art now. This essay, your conversation, the responses here, the book, the questioning itself. This whole generation of women is finally arriving there. We are here.
We just have to know it and surrender to that inner knowing and awareness. I'm very invested in the study and art of platonic love. Or more specifically, what it means to truly see and love another woman and how our yearning for visibility points to the deepest work of becoming—not just who we are to ourselves, but who we are to each other. It's then that we are able to fully see and experience ourselves and other women throughout every stage of life.
Yearning reveals us. It is a compass. And I think Jesus lived that truth. He teaches it without ever naming it, if we’re willing to slow down and really receive how he moved through the world.
"Transformation is slow." Yes. And it requires accountability. Not just saying "I'm growing" but actually doing the work in real time, out loud and not just to virtue signal. The butterfly doesn't choose to melt. It has to. Coming out the other side isn't a performance, it's earned through surrender and faith. As you said, "It's cultural and spiritual." May we all know as women that we are doing it now and may we have the courage to continue it.
So much insight and wisdom here, esp. in that last paragraph. Thank you for taking the time to write all that.
Beautiful! A podcast I enjoy is Wiser Than Me, which is exclusively interviews with older women so that their stories and wisdom can be shared with the world.
I'm not familiar with this so Ill check it out. Thank you.
Thank you Tia! For this conversation, for your work, and for helping me to get For the Love of Women into the hands of more readers. Can't wait for the next opportunity to talk with you.