I am woman.. hear me roar...

Last night on the way home I was thinking about the word woman. Its funny how probably up until recently it always felt like a far off destination. It seems like some one very old, and, well, womanly. Girl. Miss. Lady. They're all so much less threatening than the word woman. The word woman holds such a tangle of pleasure, power, tenderness, and opression.
So as my inward dialogue continued, I wondered, was it the day I got my period for the first time when I was 12? Certainly cultures for centuries have regarded that as the key entry into womanhood. A 12 year old has as little idea about what a woman is, or what that entails as a man does. No, I have concluded that the hormonal changes of puberty do not equal womanhood. Maybe it was when I first had sex, or when I got married. In the same regard I would look at my husband at that juncture in our lives, and think, was he a man? Biological yes, of course. But would I have sought out my plight in life, as a woman, with him as my man... probably not. Now that I see how he supports my family, and supports me, and is strong, and loving, and kind, and wise (yes I could go on and on), now I think of him as my man.  If you would've asked me then, when we were married,  I probably would have said I was a woman. But I did not feel like a woman. Woman were older, and more mature, and wise, and well, womanly. I remember a friend of mine in junior high telling me that her mom said that you are not a woman until you have children. And I think that brought me a step closer. Having sex, carrying a child, giving birth to a child certainly gave me the rites to womanhood. However, there are many, many women who do not have children and are still women that roar as powerfully and/or tenderly as the rest of us child baring women. So. Where on earth does that leave me...
All I know is that now, I now feel distinctly womanly. I am a woman, do not violate me as a woman, do not talk down to me as a woman, I feel much love and awe and admiration for womankind. Its seems that all the sudden I realized that I am not a girl, I am not a lady, I'm not even just female. I am a woman.
If I were to venture a guess at how this new image came to be, I would probably tell you I came because I know struggle. For the first time, I feel caught up in the struggles that women have faced for... ever.. the damn double-bind and what not. And I think somewhere, somehow unbeknownst to me I overlapped this far of place that was womanhood, with this place that is me.