The women who know they aren’t sluts because they enjoy sex, but human beings with a healthy sexual appetite.

The women who will ask you for what they need in bed.

This is for the women who seek relentless joy; the ones who know how to laugh with their whole souls.

The women who speak to strangers because they have no fear in their hearts.

The ones who wear “night make up” in the morning or don’t own mascara.

The women who know their worth, who plant their feet and roar in their brilliance.

The women who aren’t afraid to tell a man to get the fuck out of her heart if he doesn’t honor her heart.

This is for the women who rock combat boots with frilly skirts.

The women who swear like truck drivers.

The women who hold the people who harass or wrong them with fierce accountability.

The women who flip gender norms and false limitations the bird and live to run successful companies giving “the man” a run for his name.

The ones who don’t find their success a compliment just because they have a vagina.

Women like Gloria Steinem who, when she was told, “We want a writer, not a woman. Go home,” kept writing anyway.

This is for the women who drink coffee at midnight and wine in the morning, and dare you to question it.

For the women who open doors for men and are confident enough to have doors opened for them.

Who use “no” to be in service for themselves.

Who don’t give a damn about pleasing the world, and do sweetly as they wish.

For the superheroes—the single moms who work three jobs to make it. I salute your resilient, cape-flapping, ambitious selves.

This is for the women who throw down what they love, and don’t waste time following society’s pressures to exist behind a white picket fence.

The women who create wildly, unbalanced, ferociously and in a blur at times.

The women who know how to be busy and know how to plant their feet in the earth and get grounded.

These are the women I want around me.

Poem by Janne Robinson