I used to be a Tumblr girlie. Back in 2014, I’d be up until 2AM chatting with cool Australian girls I’d never met, re-blogging aesthetic photosets of sunsets, skateboards, and galaxy tights, and sharing basically nothing personal. It was a good place to hide in plain sight — curated, anonymous, low-stakes. I loved it. It’s been more than a decade since then. Tumblr is mostly gone, or at least the version I knew is — these days it’s less “cool girls at 2AM” and more pornographic ad, so I figured it was time to trade it in for something a little more… adult. Not adult like that. Adult like: a woman who’s done enough living now to have something to actually say, instead of just something to repost.
So here’s what this is. Women With Swords comes from an old trope — the woman standing alone with a sword, unafraid, answering to no one. Joan of Arc hearing voices no one else could and riding into battle on the strength of them. The witch in the woods, working with power that was never really lost, just buried. The woman on horseback, sword raised, that I now have permanently on my skin. I also now permanently carry a switchblade, inked on the inside of my wrist. Neither of those things are decorative. They’re both reminders — of what it means to protect yourself, and of what it costs when, for a long time, you didn’t know how.
This project is about something simple: the power of sorority, the power of leaving a coercive relationship, and the power of independence. I’ve been in therapy since I was six years old. I am, by most measures, seemingly well-practiced at processing things — and I’m still learning what it means to trust my own voice instead of someone else’s version of it. Leaving a relationship that quietly convinced me I couldn’t was its own kind of battle, and I’m not fully out the other side of it yet. That’s part of why I’m writing this at all.
I need a space to talk, and to share stories (mine, yours, and ours) so we can hone our combat skills together. Not the literal kind. The kind that lets you recognize a coercive dynamic before it takes a decade to name it. The kind that lets you make the hard call to leave — a relationship, a job, a version of yourself that stopped serving you. The kind that lets you sit alone at night, sword metaphorically or literally in hand, and feel like that’s enough. The kind that makes you fight for what you want, cut what you dislike, and protect yourself from the people out there trying to take things from you — your time, your voice, your freedom, your peace.
This isn’t just about one relationship, or one kind of survival. It’s about every quiet moment a woman has had to choose herself — over guilt, over other people’s comfort, over the easier road. It’s about the fights that don’t look like fights: the boundary you finally set, the apology you stopped giving, the room you walked out of. Different battles, same blade. I hope that by sharing pieces of this — either yours or mine — we find, and keep finding, our collective strength to make any decision in front of us.
Cast the Spell. Use the Sword. Walk Away. Let’s begin.
Women With Swords 