The fierce joy of being a girl

Being born a girl has always felt like being handed a double-edged sword. On the one side, the warnings: be careful, be quiet, be small, don't laugh too loudly, don't sit that way, don't dream too big.

The world, it seemed, wanted me folded into a neat little box. To it, my girlhood is something to apologise for; something to keep under control.

But the other edge gleams with something wilder: the pride, the possibility, the sheer power of girlhood. The same childhood that taught me to be cautious also taught me to be clever. The same world that tried to shrink me also shaped my defiance. If one edge of the sword drew blood, the other carved out my courage.

I have found that girlhood, real girlhood, is impossible to contain. It leaks out of every rule we are given. It refuses to stay quiet. There is something defiant and electric about growing up a girl -- something that teaches you resilience so early that it becomes second nature.

I think of my own girlhood as a string of rebellions, small and large. I think of the scraped knees I refused to cry about, the arguments I refused to back down from, the books I smuggled under my pillow because I wasn't supposed to stay up late reading. Girlhood was loud, chaotic, full of bruises and dreams. And that's why I loved it -- because despite every "no", I still became myself.

There is a particular pride that comes with being a girl child, because girlhood demands that you grow sharp. You learn to read the room before you can read a book. You learn to dodge dangers no one should ever have to think about at that age. It should not be that way for any child, but it is. And yet, you learn to keep laughing, keep learning, keep wanting more, even when the world tells you to shrink yourself. That act, that stubborn insistence on being more, not less, is a quiet but powerful revolution.

I have seen this pride in other girls too. The schoolgirl who shares her tiffin with the classmate who forgot hers. The one who stands up to a teacher's unfairness. The girls who look out for one another when walking home from school, who share secrets under their breath and giggle even when they're not supposed to.

This sisterhood, formed by invisible threads between us, are part of the joy of girlhood.

We often talk about the challenges of being born a girl, and there are many -- violence, discrimination, the suffocating weight of expectations.

But we don't talk enough about the pride -- the pride in being part of a lineage of women who kept going, of inheriting both their survival skills and their stubborn hope. The pride in knowing that every step we take forward is one more step towards a freer world for the girls who will come after us.

Being a girl is not something to grow out of; it is something to grow into and our girlhood is our training ground. It teaches us how to fight, how to love fiercely, how to hold ourselves together when everything feels like it's falling apart. It is the beginning of a lifelong relationship with our own strengths.

So, here's to the girl child -- to her grit, her laughter, her impossible-to-bottle-up spirit. Here's to every girl who has been told to sit down and instead stood taller. Here's to every girl who carries her girlhood like a medal, not a warning.

Be loud. Be messy. Be too much. Your existence is not an apology -- it is an announcement. And what a glorious, unstoppable announcement it is.