I see you. I see you when you’re scrappin’ and going wild against your family and calling for better boundaries.

You can’t yell up a generation. You are the future. And because of that, I have faith.

I witness you speaking truth to power and patriarchy.

You might call yourself an anarchist. Running from the Santa Fe art scene and your restaurant dream, determined to lose yourself in the City of Brotherly Love.

I pray you find yourself, your center, your internal, sacred, divine, feminine fire.

Because girl, you’re the next generation. You’re the result of and the reaction to patriarchy overplaying its hand.

You, my dear, are your father’s daughter. You’re your mother’s daughter, too. And, of course, your brother’s sister.

You will shape the future. Don’t let it destroy you. Keep shedding the bullsh*t and breathe deep into your heart, your pure essence.

Don’t let your masculine mind direct you through the toxic masculinity.

This shift is the feminine rising.

Young people like you flex your feminine intuition and ways of knowing.

Please, let the hardness, the stress, and the old systems crash. Let the misogynistic, power-hungry, greed mongers fall to the bottom of the pile.

Find new heroes. Find her in the mirror. I see her in your curly, dark hair, even when you straighten it. I know her in your obsidian-black eyes when you let them go wise and remember all that you know.

I see you reaching, extending, but not pretending you believe in perfection. You know better by virtue of being alive at this time in history.

You feel the shift because it’s happening inside your body. Young woman, you feel everything, but have been taught to resist, repress, and deny. Ugh! Patriarchy!

One day, in the world I imagine, born of women like you, feelings will be appreciated, experienced, and utilized like traffic signals for navigating the world.

When I was your age, my feelings raged like wild horses. When feelings can run free without being stifled, we can learn to saddle and ride them.

I see you, wild horse, bucking, young woman. It makes me proud and proves you’re not broken; you haven’t shut down or given up.

Although you wanted to and you probably will again on some bleak day. If, “F*ck you, life! I want to die!” is your go-to, it’s your kryptonite. At least, it was mine.

On that, I say: stay. Stay to experience the next chapter of your life. New characters. New adventures. New city. New you.

Enter the Philadelphia scene like the woman you intend to be. Leave your baggage in New Mexico.

Travel light. Be young and wild and free. Fall in love. With yourself, your work, and at least one hot-ass lover who touches your soul.

Have fun! Laugh! Play! Enjoy hanging with your friend.

Be in your full, divine-feminine essence. Stay present. Dance.

Be you. Embody yourself, young lady. Learn quicker than my generation or my mother’s.

Know: you are the answer. You’ve got this.