to grow gills and fly

women: the original shapeshifters

Jun 05, 2025

hole center of twirl water — Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Today I am writing from a balcony overlooking the Atlantic ocean. At eye level several yards away, a black-masked gull is riding the Western wind. The wind has blown all day, cooling the air and pounding the surf against the beach. Earlier, my niece and I played in that surf. Kneeling in the wet sand, our legs splayed to anchor us in the constant push-pull of the tide, we yelled “trust fall!” and dropped back into the larger incoming waves. The water churned around us, carrying sand into inconvenient places and stinging our eyes with the briny spray, but it caught us every time. Tomorrow’s predicted storm could be felt already in the drive and suck of the rising tide. Like a crab I dug my hands deep into the sand to hold me in place, reveling in the scrape of the sand and the tang of the water. To be human in the sea is a constant fight—to breathe, to maintain footing or not be swept under; it’s a tenuous balance between striving against the sea’s omnipotence and recognizing that we are powerless. It felt like home.

I can imagine the sea as my true birth mother, like I washed ashore with the tide one day, a changeling thrust into a body that had forgotten how to swim. I’ve never been good in the water. My limbs feel clumsy and uncoordinated, I have a horror of holding my breath and an irrational fear of Things With Teeth In Deep Water, and chronic ear drainage issues prevent me from diving. But I love the beach. I love the unyielding force of the waves, the way they form and break and form again. I love how BIG the ocean is, stretching out and out and down, down, down, it’s depths still unknown and uncharted. I don’t feel small at the seashore the way I do in a forest, I feel immense. I feel as vast and powerful as the wind and the water, as enduring as the sand that was once rock. I feel as though I could shapeshift at any moment into a seagull or an orca, like some mythical water spirit, as though remaining a human woman is a choice I have consciously made for reasons of my own. I wonder, sometimes, what those reasons could possibly be.

This morning I walked the beach with my best friend, releasing a tide of female rage into the cleansing salty breeze. I think there’s a reason that shapeshifters portrayed in stories are most often women: for us, shapeshifting is a matter of survival. We are required to seamlessly shift from Boss Bitch to Mother to Sex Cat—and everything in between—sometimes from one moment to the next and without being allowed the expectation that we need a reset, ever. It’s exhausting, and untenable in the long term, and the price of engaging with other humans in our collective culture. Not only are we required to shapeshift to fulfill the demands society places on us, but we have to fight to maintain a presence in society at all because male domination has taught people to mistrust shapeshifters. And by “in society” I mean not just our workplaces and volunteer groups and religious institutions, but within our own homes and families as well. The constant need to fight is exhausting, frustrating, discouraging. I’m tired and I’m angry. And I know that I’m not alone.

Here, cocooned in the throbbing surf, I remember a letter read by Minnie Driver from the Ask Polly advice column. I found the video again on tiktok and listened to it over and over again while copying it down. The unflappable tone of her voice set to the rumble and crash of the sea was steadying. I know, it said, I feel it, too.

Here’s the thing: being nice is worthless if you’re just going to feel resentful about it in the end. You might as well be outspoken and state your needs from the outset. Because as much as people resent assertive women, they resent disingenuous, overly friendly, secretly furious women even more.
Maybe you need to ask yourself: how secretly furious am I?
I can certainly understand why you would feel so angry. By simply showing up and being a woman you are asked to satisfy an incredibly tangled and contradictory set of demands. You are supposed to be assertive, but not too assertive. You are supposed to speak your mind, but only on subjects about which everyone already agrees. You’re supposed to toe the party line while pretending that it is your personal choice.
Trust me, I’ve been there.
So this is what I want you to accept. First and foremost, you are a nice person. And you are also full of anger. You’re a walking tangle of contradictions, and that’s OK. Most of us are like that, women most of all.
How could we not be? People want us to be sexy warriors that roll over and play dead on command. They want us to be flirty burlesque dancers in burkas. Aggressive conquistadors with cookies in the oven… 1

The number of roles I’ve had to juggle this spring is ridiculous. I’ve been the supportive older sister for two weddings, managing everyone’s emotions while doing what needs doing and working my creative, crafty magic. I’ve had to navigate increasingly treacherous terrain at co-op while our group is in flux, people leaving and new people coming on, including an almost entirely new Board, which means acting as some combination of pilot, air marshal, and flight attendant. I’ve supported my husband while he was working three jobs and changing careers. All while continuing in my everyday roles as primary teacher, caretaker, therapist, and conflict manager for two growing girls; housekeeper; cook; romantic and life partner; co-parent; struggling writer; as well as keeping up with the inner work that keeps me functioning as a healing adult with a shitload of trauma and self-sabotaging habits and tendencies. Not to mention trying to redefine my role within two separate and constantly evolving family groups. I would say it’s a lot, except that I can’t complain because this is considered normal. I have it easier than so many women. I should be grateful, really.

“It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.
You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining. You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood. But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful. You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.
I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.”
- America Ferrera, Barbie

Sometimes, when I stare out to sea, I want to walk out into it and just…keep going, on and down and away, somehow sure that I would sprout gills instead of drowning and grow sleek and sinuous and strong. Not a death wish but a desire to transform, to become something unaffected by the rigged system of life. I walk and I walk, the sand soft and firm beneath my feet, the waves teasing, pulling me in and pushing me out again, and I feel an answering tide rising within me. I want to be more, to do more, but I’m already never enough. How am I supposed to be OK with knowing that the battle I fight every day is one I can never win? That my daughters, and maybe their potential daughters, will never win? I might as well expect to become a mer-person just by walking into the sea as expect that I will be treated as an equal by men just because I think I should be, or even demand that they do so. It’s not going to get easier. It’s not going to stop being exhausting. It feels futile, but the only alternative is to go back to pretending that the small space allotted to me is all I ever really wanted anyway, and that is not a choice I will make.

The tide is rising all across the country, across our world. We are not a handful of voices, we are billions, and more every day: rising and cresting and crashing on. We have decided that five- or six thousand years of oppression is really enough, and it’s time we file the patriarchy under Bad Ideas and move on. This won’t happen in my lifetime or even my daughters’ lifetimes—such cultural shifts happen at a glacial pace—but it is coming, sure as the tide.

The sea swells and rolls and recedes, tireless and ever-changing. Its water calls to the water in my body, drawing up an ancient and potent magic. There are more powerful forces in this world than the men who think they rule it all. There are things that never have been, never will be, tamed.

Love.

Friendship.

Connection.

The will to be free.

And the sea.

Share CrossWitch