A device for teenage girls with wild ambitions and trembling hearts. When Anne Frank was 13 years old, she disappeared behind a bookcase with her family and everything hunted, writing an ocean into a diary when they found her. She was treated as nothing more than spark of a burning bush. Despite this, she still said, “I really believe people are good at heart.”
When Joan of Arc was 14, she heard a voice calling her to greatness. When the doubters called her crazy, she did not listen, grabbed her sword, grabbed her shield and her two good hands. She was the maid of untamed patriotism born to reunite a country like a broken heart.
Malala was 15 when a man climbed under her school bus and insisted her sisters name her enemy. When she did not hide, she was shot three times in the temple. Three years later, an ocean of survival and no apology, she stood before the United Nations and told them how her country was burning.
When Mary Shelly was 16, she invented science fiction, the story of a man named Frankenstein and his creator. She soon learned little girls with big ideas are much scarier than monsters. It’s okay. She was remembered long after they put down their torches.
Jackie Mitchell was 17 when she struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, one right after the other. Grown men were so afraid of the lightning in her fingertips, two days later all women were fired from the major leagues because girls are too delicate to play baseball.
Sacajawea was 18 with a baby on her back leading Lewis and Clark across North America. Cleopatra, 18 when she became queen of the Nile. Nellie Bly, 18, bringing justice to journalism, and you are now eighteen, standing on the precipice trembling before your own greatness. This, this is your call to leap.
There will always be those who say you’re too young or too delicate to make anything happen for yourself, but they don’t see the part of you that smolders. Don’t let their doubting drown out the sound of your own heartbeat. You’re the first drop of rain in a hurricane. Your bravery builds beyond you. You’re needed. We have a little girl still living in secret writing oceans of monsters and throwing like lightning.
You don’t need to grow up to find greatness. You’re so much stronger than the world has ever even told you could be. The world is waiting for you to set it on fire. Trust in yourself and burn.
