The Women Who Anoint Themselves

Photography by  Ricardo E. Díaz Vega

There is a particular grief reserved for women who become their own medicine.

Women who learn the sacred geometry of reaching every corner of their own back, who memorize the weight of their own hands, who whisper blessings over bruises no one else remembers are there.

Tonight, I anointed myself.

Not with holy oil, but with survival.

Slow circles pressed into tired skin, palms moving with the devotion of a priestess tending an ancient altar.

And somewhere between collarbone and rib, between ache and ritual, I felt the truth rise from my body like smoke from a candle:

There is no one coming.

No hand at the small of my back. No voice in the doorway. No witness to the silent labor of carrying a life alone.

Only me.

Me and the sacred exhaustion of women who have become entire villages inside a single body.

Women who fetch their own water. Women who bury their own dead. Women who hold themselves through the night while the moon watches from a distance, helpless as a mother separated from her child.

The world praises women like us.

Calls us resilient.

Calls us powerful.

Calls us chosen.

But no one speaks of the cost.

No one speaks of the quiet terror of realizing that strength has become a prison.

That everyone admires the altar, yet no one asks who tends the fire.

Everyone loves the woman who can survive.

Few ask if she is tired.

Fewer ask if she is lonely.

I have carried entire seasons on my back.

I have swallowed hurricanes whole.

I have stitched myself together with thread pulled from my own spirit.

And still, there are nights when I sit in the kingdom I built and hear the echo.

The chair across from me remains untouched.

The second cup gathers dust.

The prayer returns unanswered.

Not because I am unloved.

Not because I am forgotten.

But because some women become so skilled at saving themselves that the world mistakes them for someone who no longer needs saving.

Yet beneath the bones of every healer, every witch, every alchemist, every woman who turns suffering into gold,

there lives a quiet wish:

That just once, someone would notice the trembling beneath the magic.

That just once, someone would say,

Lay down your armor.

I will keep watch tonight.

Until then, I remain here.

Anointing myself.

Blessing my own wounds.

Building warmth from my own hands.

A holy woman at a table meant for two, learning that solitude and abandonment are not the same thing.

Learning that even the strongest spell cannot replace companionship.

Learning that survival, for all its beauty,

is not the same thing as being held.