They had believed, right up to the end, that taking away my phone and my passport would erase my power, that a woman’s strength lived in her documents and her devices and could be stolen from a hotel safe at half past four in the morning.

They had learned, the hard way, and at the cost of everything they had, that they were wrong.

A woman’s strength does not live inside a piece of paper, or a digital device, or a marriage, or anyone’s permission.

It lives inside her resolve, and her resolve cannot be stolen from a safe.

I set my coffee down, and walked out onto the green grass, and scooped my daughter up into my arms, and she wrapped her small arms around my neck and rested her head against my shoulder with an absolute, complete, unshakable trust.

And I took a deep breath of the fresh, sweet air, and I kissed the top of her head, and I walked forward, with her, into the bright, unwritten future the two of us had claimed for ourselves.