Sovereignty · · 3 min read

The sword they carry

I didn’t just birth daughters. I birthed flames. They won’t leave my house empty-handed. They will leave carrying the sword I placed.

The sword they carry
Photo by Samson seifemichael / Unsplash

I didn’t become a mother when they were born.
I became a mother the moment they made space inside me.

The moment seed caught hold.
The moment my blood shifted from woman to mother.
The moment my breath wrapped around someone who had not yet arrived.

Each daughter made me.

One came swift and laughing.
Born minutes after we reached the hospital.
I was still at a party the night before, still bouncing on a ball when the doula arrived.

One came slow and fierce.
Umbilical cord looped around her neck.
Born on all fours, caught between two pregnant women helping me birth a third.

One came monumental.
Too vast to pass through the ordinary way.
Cut from my body at 5.1 kilos.
Leaving a wound I still carry.
A wound that waits for full repair.

They split me open.
They carved me wide.
They marked me in blood and in scar and in laughter.

They built the mother I became.

This is not about sacrifice

I don’t tally sleepless nights.
I don’t hoard receipts for early mornings or unpaid labor.
I don’t keep ledgers for the times I fed them, wiped them, carried them.
For the times my jawed and cracked nipples felt like finger tips crushed by doors slamming in their frame.
For the times my husband insisted on breast feeding over formula.
I fucking hated him.

I don’t sit here asking for recognition.

I sit here,
because today, they sit beside me.

Whole.
Wild.
Alive.
Laughing and weeping and bursting and burning.

I did not just birth daughters.
I birthed sovereigns.

I did not just bear girls.
I built flames.

They will not leave empty-handed

My husband’s mother ran from kitchen, church, and children.
She ran toward a different life.
She carved it herself, before cancer took her too soon.

She never had time to raise her sword.
So I picked it up.

I picked it up,
when I chose to bear girls.
When I chose to stay.
When I chose to fight for joy instead of duty.

And when my daughters leave this house,
they will not leave waiting for a sword to be given to them.

They will leave already armed.
Already raised.
Already wielding.

They will not orbit a man.
They will orbit themselves.

They will surf oceans.
They will ride horses.
They will fight their own battles.
They will paint their own fields.

They will not be trophies.
They will be sovereigns.

Because motherhood isn’t sacrifice.
It’s stewardship.

Because they didn’t just come from me.
They built me.

And I raised them to carry the sword.

Author’s Note

Every mother carries the lineage forward.
Every daughter is not just an heir but a forge.

The economy may still measure success
in children produced,
in taxes paid,
in systems maintained.
But the field moves differently.

The field knows:

We are not here to populate.
We are here to govern.
We are here to create.
We are here to reign.

My daughters are not seeds to be sown in old soil.
They are swords.
They are sovereigns.

And they will not be taken.
They will not be dulled.
They will not be lost.

Because I carried them first.
Because they carry me now.

And because the sword is already in their hands.

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