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"Brown Girl's Guide to Manifest Destiny" by Suma Jayachandar



Are you going to ignore my advice?


Then, do so at your peril. As a matron, I will dispense some anyway.


You might have already known the disappointment of your parents at your birth. You saw it sneaking out and pouncing on you in their unguarded moments. Or you might have been openly told how unwanted you were. Either way, you floated in that amniotic fluid of rejection for some time. If you let it seep into your heart, it will tear you apart. So, swim out of it as soon as you can.  


You will get some education. Either at school or home or wherever you set your foot in; constantly overseen by someone, likely capable of pulling, deflecting, and nullifying the molecules around you. While you receive education under such able custodians, the tales of others who are not so lucky shall be made known to you--just in case you are planning to rebel. Don’t believe every such tale, though some of them might be true. More importantly, don’t let that template take root in your mind. Instead, trust your senses. Train them to grab the truth before the molecules are made chaotic. 


As your hips start widening and you start receiving admiring gazes, you might want to discard your mind. After all, it was never deemed to be of much value, anyway. It’s okay to enjoy the attention, dear. But don’t hurry posthaste to live. The sweetness that you feel is great, but you recognise it for what it is; it is a flower that needs to be nurtured and not a tool to be wielded for the business of living. Those tools: you need to develop with the education you got or didn’t. That life: you need to work with those tools to build it.


You work with all your tools, your mind, your heart. And fail. Then you hear the thunderous reverberations of all those tales crashing around you; reiterating all the things you shouldn’t, couldn’t, and wouldn’t be able to do because of your chromosome condition. As I said before, some of them are true. But most of them are not. The tale that tells you get only one chance to fail at doing things you love but are not yet good enough at, is not. Another tale that makes you believe it's unfeminine to keep sharpening your tools and keep working to manifest your destiny, most certainly not.


If you make it up to this point in your journey, I have good reason to hope you ferried a few fellow travellers along with you. In doing so, you have made this guide a little less relevant to many who will come after you. 


What more can I ask for?




Suma Jayachandar: Wanderer. Seeker. Teacher. Writer

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