Chelsea,

You’re a real one.

The realest of our kind.

I just want you to know that I appreciate your bluntness and your ability to not give a shit.

I admire the fact that you can stand in the midst of inequality, unkindness and the whirlwind that the abominable Donald Trump has brought this world into, and speak your mind.

I am envious of a woman who doesn’t feel any less of a woman for being crass and honest.

It makes you stand out as a fighter.

It shows that you have grit.

Your actions speak to me as a young woman growing up in a world where I still am expected to fit into a very cookie-cutter role, shaped by generations of meek women who have influenced this world in the most negative way there is.

You have shown me that if I choose not to, I do not have to have children.

And even though I want to have a mutual loving relationship someday, I do not need to get married, even though everyone around me seems to be chiming those wedding bells.

Seriously ladies, chill out.

I appreciate that you try new things and that you are not afraid of falling on your ass.

Sure, half the time you are making yourself vulnerable to the possibility of making a complete fool of yourself, but you are living in the process.

You are experiencing new things.

You get to meet people and learn about the world through their perspective, and then get to realize you were right the whole fucking time and that they have got it all wrong.

Idiots.

And in all of this, you are learning who you are.

At 40 years old, you get to have the time of your life and make it your own.

That is something that fascinates me and drives me to making my own life my own.

I have taken on your mantra of though people may knock me down, they will not knock me over.

I can be a pillar of strength, in all of my feminine women-ness, and stand tall beside my beliefs and values.

Because more often than not, there will be people who tell you not to believe such things.

They will tell you that the way you voice your opinion is much too strong and that the times at which you speak up, or even speak at all, is inappropriate, unbecoming and out-of-line.

I am so tired of having to be a young woman in a world where there is still certain standards of how a young woman should be.

I cannot allow myself to be boxed in.

I cannot allow any part of my mind or body to be contained by the criteria society measures me by.

And I just know that without your bad-ass tendencies and the kindness of your heart that is sometimes shielded by the bluntness of your words, I would not be able to push forward through it all.

You have managed to take the things society has all but forbidden you to do and to be, and have completely turned it into your strengths that make you into one of the most influential women today.

You have made your life your own.

Every unconventional part of it.

And for that, I thank you.

Thank you for showing not only myself, but countless other young women that it is okay to push the expectations that society puts upon us, and completely throw them out.

Thank you for giving us the choice of throwing out the guidelines, and making our own- with our own set of values, goals, boundaries and rules.

I see you as an inspiration and for that I will always be grateful.

Just to be clear, I do not wish to be like you.

But because of you and your fight for all Womankind,

there is absolutely no one I would rather be… than me.

Love,

Your feminist nugget