Recently, I’ve been looking for a definition for the all-encompassing phenomenon that seems to be girlhood — a time where you’re neither a child nor a woman — so I wrote this.

the definition for girlhood lingers just out of my sight, 
sits tauntingly on the tip of my tongue, 
and lets me talk circles around myself trying to explain why it even matters.  

it's easy to say "girlhood is growing up, maturing"
but hard to put into words the collective experience that we all go through,
the experience of hating your body before you can ever truly love it,
of liking someone so much you feel physically ill,
of being asked out by men old enough to be your grandfather,
and of having your heart shattered for the first time. 

it's too easy to sum up girlhood as becoming a woman in a man's world,
because girlhood is more than the suffering and sorrow and betrayal --
girlhood is gossiping and giggling for hours over coffee long gone cold,
girlhood is swinging high enough to touch the sky on kids’ swing sets,
girlhood is lying in the sun at the beach, talking about nothing at all, and 
girlhood is screaming music at the top of your lungs in a car that you’ve named. 

girlhood is the tragedy and triumph of growing old;
girlhood is something that i am running out of time to define
and something that has never felt more necessary to memorialize. 

Process

Seeing all the common experiences shared across social media that girls as a whole seem to resonate with inspired this piece. I wanted to dig a tiny bit deeper into what feelings girlhood conjures up and what experiences would resonate without being too specific.