20d • Celebrate Our Wins!
Title: I Earned this Fire 🔥 ( for every Woman)
(A Reflection on Hot Flashes, Womanhood, and the Privilege of Becoming)
I was sitting in an office with the air conditioner on.
Fanning myself with a book.
And for a moment...
I almost complained.
Almost.
I remember thinking,
"Really? In an office this cold?"
Then I stopped.
Because suddenly, I realized something astonishing.
"Oh."
This is a hot flash.
And just as quickly, another thought arrived.
I smiled.
Because I realized...
I earned this fire.
No one told me I was supposed to celebrate this part.
They told me to fear it.
To hide it.
To fight it.
To mourn the woman I used to be.
As though aging were a tragedy.
As though changing seasons meant I was disappearing.
As though womanhood came with an expiration date.
But the trees do not apologize when they change.
Neither will I.
I earned this fire.
I earned it through every version of myself I had the courage to become.
The little girl who looked at the world with wonder.
The young woman trying to find her place in it.
The woman who loved.
The woman who lost.
The mother.
The dreamer.
The immigrant.
The woman who carried everyone else's burdens while pretending she was fine.
The woman who made it through the days she never thought she would survive.
The woman who buried parts of herself...
and planted new ones in their place.
I earned this fire.
And then something curious happened.
As soon as I smiled...
I cooled.
Not because the fire wasn't real.
Not because acceptance magically erased discomfort.
But because, for perhaps the first time, I stopped meeting my body's message with resistance.
I didn't make an enemy of it.
I listened.
I recognized it.
I honored it.
And maybe...just maybe...
the body we've spent our lives criticizing has been waiting all along for us to say,
"Thank you."
Thank you for carrying me through every heartbreak.
Thank you for carrying my children.
Thank you for getting me out of bed on the mornings I didn't know how I would keep going.
Thank you for surviving stress I never thought I would survive.
Thank you for healing wounds no one could see.
Thank you for staying with me.
Perhaps healing is not always learning how to silence the body.
Perhaps healing is finally learning how to thank it.
Not every woman gets the privilege of growing older.
Not every woman gets to witness her own becoming.
Some leave before they ever arrive at this season.
But I am here.
Fanning myself under fluorescent office lights.
Laughing at my own internal thermostat.
Alive.
Still learning.
Still changing.
Still becoming.
And perhaps this fire is not punishment.
Perhaps it is proof.
Proof that I have lived.
Proof that this body has carried me through decades of joy and grief, births and goodbyes, reinventions and revelations.
Proof that I am not disappearing.
I am transforming.
Spring taught me how to bloom.
Summer taught me how to give.
And now...
this season is teaching me how to release.
How to soften.
How to tell the truth.
How to stop apologizing for taking up space.
How to become the woman I no longer have to perform to be.
To every woman entering this season...
May you stop mourning what needed to evolve.
May you stop fighting the wisdom your body carries.
May you stop seeing every transition as a funeral.
Some transitions are initiations.
Some fires do not destroy you.
Some fires announce that you have arrived.
So when the heat rises unexpectedly beneath your skin…
when you find yourself fanning your face in an air-conditioned room…
I hope you smile.
I hope you remember.
Place your hand over your heart and whisper to the body that has never stopped carrying you home:
“Thank you.”
“I see you.”
“We made it.”
And finally…
with all the tenderness and reverence a lifetime deserves—
“I earned this fire.”
And what a humbling privilege it is…
to still be here,
to feel its warmth.
To the Reader:
If this season has taught you anything, let it be this: you do not have to mourn the woman you once were. Honor her. Thank her.
You are not fading. You are arriving. Be gentle with the woman you are becoming.
— Nekesha Burrell
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Title: I Earned this Fire 🔥 ( for every Woman)
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