I was talking with my friend and mentor a week or so and she said to me, “well, you’re a priestess and a woman.” Her point had to do with having more than one response to a situation and was helpful. But one thing that really struck me, later, was how long it had been since I heard anyone refer to my gender as a part of who and what I am. How, in the well intentioned wording of equality, I became a person but lost being a woman.

Gender is complicated – personal and political. It brings up strong feelings for people in every direction. I am going to side step that at the minute – not to minimize it, but to remind us of something more. There is power in everything that we are. Wherever we fall on the spectrum of gender, there is power in reclaiming that particular expression of gender. Gender can be what someone else defines it to be. Or, in the name of political correctness, it can vanish into personhood. I offer us a third choice – reclaim gender. Not as it is defined by someone else, but as it is meaningful to you. Your gender is part of you. If the definitions you were given for your gender are definitions of powerlessness and pain, or of oppression and anger, let them go and write new definitions.

Gender isn’t binary, and it isn’t destiny, and it isn’t caught in a concrete definition. Gender is ours. It is powerful. It is part of who we are and how we express ourselves in the world. Its definition can be as fluid as we are. Reclaim gender and let it be another expression of beauty in the ways we are the same and in the infinite variety of humanity. Reclaim gender and own its gifts. We don’t need to throw away gender just because it has been misused. We can transform it with love and in return, be made stronger and more compassionate.