The Woman Who Refused to Shrink

I was told once—in the careful voice people use when they’re wrapping criticism in silk—that it might serve me better to be “a little smaller.”

Not physically, though the glance up and down my frame suggested even that wasn’t off the table. Smaller in presence. Smaller in voice. Smaller in the certainty with which I speak. In the way I stand in a room without folding myself in apology.

“It’ll make you more liked,” they said. “You don’t want to come on too strong.”

I’ve thought about that moment often—not because I question my choice, but because I wonder how many women have heard those same words and decided to obey. How many of us have been taught to pull our shoulders inward, to lace our sentences with hesitation, to sand down the sharp edges of our truth until it’s smooth enough to swallow. How many have been convinced that shrinking is a form of survival.

That day, I decided I would not be one of them.

The world has always been more comfortable with women who take up less—less space, less oxygen, less time, less ambition. Women who package their brilliance in humility so fragile it breaks before it ever challenges anyone.

But I am not made of glass.

I am made of bone and fire and history. I am stitched together by the resilience of women who crossed oceans, buried dreams, and built new ones in their place. My voice carries their echoes. My presence carries their prayers.

I will not shrink so someone else can feel taller.
I will not dim so someone else’s light can seem brighter.

I will be big.

I will take up space. I will speak loudly when truth demands volume. I will stand still when silence is strength. I will walk into every room as though I have the right to be there—because I do.

I know now that refusing to shrink is not arrogance—it is alignment. It is living in the full width of the life I have fought for, the life my ancestors dreamed into possibility. It is honoring every version of myself that once believed she had to ask permission to exist.

And yes, there are people who will call it “too much.” People who will say, “Who does she think she is?” People who will mistake certainty for aggression, confidence for threat.

Let them.

Because every time a woman stands in her fullness, she holds the door open for another woman to do the same. Every time we refuse to fold ourselves into smaller, more palatable shapes, we make space for someone else to breathe a little deeper, to stand a little taller, to speak a little louder.

So no—I will not be smaller.

I will be exactly as I am. Unapologetic. Unfolded. And unafraid to take up my space in the world.

If that is too much, then I am simply not for you.