Dear Catherine, 

You are a girl. You’re proud of that. You’ve always loved attention, whether your modesty shows or not. You love showing off your talents, presenting yourself well, feeling beautiful, and having friends and family around to support you. As you get older, you will find things start to change.

Girls are not supposed to show too much skin.

Girls are supposed to always look pretty.

Girls are supposed to be thin.

Girls aren’t supposed to be muscular.

You will be confused when you are told to cover up more when you’re just eleven. Attention now comes with a negative connotation. Wearing shorts to school? You’ll be called a slut at just twelve.

As you get older, friends will change. You’ll be called weird for the hobbies you like, the way you dress, and the way you act. This universal desire to fit in will make you want to change every aspect of yourself to be “cool”. You’ll ignore friends. You will dress, eat, speak, walk, present yourself differently. This fear of judgment will push you to become a different person entirely, and you will feel lost.

Being half Latina? That’s weird.

You will push away your own culture in your crusade for acceptance, tirelessly trying to fit yourself into the stereotyped mold of a suburban white girl. Girls aren’t supposed to have hairy arms and legs. You will come to shave your arms and legs every day at just ten years old, you don’t want to be called a monkey.

School will become harder. You will lose friends and stop believing in yourself. You aren’t smart enough. Everyone else is keeping up, why can’t you? Even when you drop down to 90 pounds, you still feel ugly and overweight. You won’t even notice, but your eyes will start to sink into your head, your rib cage exposed.

When you finally are diagnosed with type one diabetes, you will be terrified. Girls are supposed to be perfect. You will lay awake all night in the hospital, stifling your tears from your sleeping parents. With the IV dripping into the tube on your wrist, the new hormones rushing over your weak, overwhelmed body, all you can think is will I die? Will people think I’m weird?

You will return to school three days later. Are people staring? Girls shouldn’t be that skinny. You will be scared when you take out a granola bar in class to eat because you are shaking with hypoglycemia. They don’t know that. They’ll stare anyways. Girls aren’t supposed to eat that much.

Your body will change. You will begin to develop into a woman. You will be mortified to wake up one day and suddenly you have hips and a period. You will be humiliated when you are sitting at your desk, proud of your new outfit, only to find your blue shirt and titanium white shorts are now a completed look with the fresh bloodstain on the back of your shorts. The small pool of blood in your seat will stare at you as if to say, “Girls aren’t gross. Girls are supposed to be prepared.”

You will start to notice boys. You’ll have your first crushes and your first parties. You won’t deserve it when you are grabbed by the wrist, your whimpers and pleas went unheard. You won’t deserve it when you are pushed down and can’t escape. You won’t deserve the names, the labels, or the rumors after it. No girl ever does, but it happens.

These experiences are terrifying and raw with emotion. All of these experiences will affect and change you in ways you never thought possible. There will be times where you feel powerless, unheard, and dismissed. Times where you are humiliated, belittled, and heartbroken.

Despite all of this, you will grow and find your voice. You will regain your confidence and dismiss the negative comments, although it will be hard at times.

You will grow strong and athletic, smashing stereotypes and proving expectations wrong. You will find yourself, embracing and celebrating both your culture and your own spirit.

You are intelligent. People will try to tell you otherwise, but you will come to prove them wrong and soar independently.

Your body is beautiful, and you will conquer your illness through your hard work. You will come to accept your own beautiful body. Through all the periods, changes, and the things that make you human, you will find your voice.

That’s what being a girl really is. Being a girl is roaring. It is finding the courage to tell your stories and roar unapologetically. To roar for the girls without voices, the girls who need help finding theirs, and the girls who roar along with you.

Most importantly, roar for yourself.

Be proud of the journeys you take through life and where it will lead you. Use your experiences to help you grow and blossom despite the darkness.

Girls aren’t perfect. We are messy, raw, honest, unpredictable, independent, talented, intelligent, resilient, capable women. We are not just bodies. Not just perfect objects. We are our own independent people. No matter how much we struggle, we come up on top.

We will not be silent. We will adapt. We will advocate. We will roar.

-Catherine Prado

Catherine Prado is a half Latina fifteen-year-old high school student living with Type-one Diabetes in the D.C. area. She is currently enrolled in her sophomore year of high school, primarily interested in writing, history, and the arts. She plans to attend college in California, studying journalism and political science. She has written many essays and short stories and is beginning submissions for her work. When she isn't studying or participating in extracurriculars, she is hanging out with friends, running, singing, acting, or painting.