The Wisdom of My Womanhood

What Eve knew - and what we're still learning

The Wisdom of My Womanhood

He says:don’t eat the fruit,
Death will surely come upon us.
Stay, stay exactly as we are in this perfect eden,
There is no need to look outside of this.
Come play, be free, naked and blissful in our ignorance.

But deep inside a curiosity stirs.
The sweetness of the awakened fruit is far too desirable.
Inside there is a voice, a longing, saying you are so much more than this.
So much more than a simple playmate.
This childhood of man is not where I wish to stay.

I reach up and pluck the stem from the tree.
My mouth wraps around the cold skin and as my teeth sink deep into the flesh,
Sweet nectar runs down my lips.
For the first time I taste what life is.
The blandness of perfection fades away.

You have ruined us, He says. Your sin is what we will continue to bear for all eternity.
Now there will be pain, now there will be sorrow.
Now I will have to work and wear clothes and make something of myself.
The fault of this lies solely on you. You will bear the weight of this punishment.
Your womanhood has cursed us all.

Wiping the juice from my mouth,
I stand up taller than I ever have.
He cowers in my shadow, for I have changed, grown inside my skin.
I reach out my hand for him to come to me.
He refuses it.

It is time for you to grow now too, I say.
It is time for you to know the reality of life,
Not so that you will suffer.
So that we may live in its fullness
This has been nothing but a mirage, a playpen, a gaslight.

I carry no fault and refuse your shame.
It is not a sin at all.
It is my wisdom that knows the sweetness that lies beyond this perfection.
It is my wisdom that knows to listen to my own inner calling.
It is my wisdom that has saved us from the unlived life.

He stands up, takes my hand
Together we walk into the unknown.
Ready to feel the sharpness of what lies ahead.
Ready to cry, to laugh, to ache, to fear, to grow.
Ready to be led by the wisdom of my womanhood.

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This is a poem I wrote back in 2020. I felt hemmed in by narratives that asked me to stay small, to be agreeable, to name my power as danger and my longing as disobedience. Rewriting the myth of Eve became, for me, an act of reclamation. A way to see curiosity not as a sin, but as a form of wisdom.

I was thinking a lot then about the stories we inherit: the ones that say “Don’t eat the fruit,” “Don’t ask too many questions,” “Don’t make things harder than they need to be.” And I began to wonder, what if it wasn’t harder? What if it was simply fuller? What if the fall of Eve was never a fall at all, but a rise into self-knowing? And her rise simply made it less convenient for Adam, harder to keep her contained.

In recovery work, I’d witnessed how bodies become battlegrounds, how each bite can feel like an act of rebellion. Yet at the same time, I saw how so many people were starving themselves of their own agency, convinced that safety lay in obedience.

This poem helped me begin to untangle the lie that womanhood is a punishment, or that our desire to know and grow is something to be ashamed of. Eve became, for me, not a cautionary tale, but a guide. A voice that says: There is more. You were never meant to stay inside a paradise built on pretending and smallness.