The Woman Before You Was Braver Than You Think

The woman before you

swallowed her voice

so you could clear your throat.

She folded her dreams

into kitchen drawers, 

into laundry baskets,

into prayers whispered over sleeping children.

She knew what it meant

to endure.

To love loudly

but live quietly.

To be the backbone

and never the headline.

And you …

you carry her in your bones.

In the way you hesitate before speaking

in the way you feel guilty for wanting more

in the way your strength sometimes feels like a burden.

But listen carefully 

Her silence was not submission

it was a strategy.

Her invisibility was not absence

it was protection.

She survived systems

that were never built for her blooming.

And now you stand here

with a voice she never got to use.

So when you speak

you are not being dramatic

you are being generational

When you shine

you are not being selfish 

you are being continuation.

You are the proof 

that her endurance 

turned into expansion.

And the bravest thing you can do 

is be visible 

where she had to disappear.