The Women I Write Are Not Empowerment Proxies
I write about strong, flawed women. Not every woman survives in ways called strength. Some disappear when they should speak. One or two stop trying to be understood, and don’t miss it.
Author’s Note: This essay is the second in a short pre-release series written ahead of my serialized novel. These pieces don’t explain the story. They establish the conditions under which it exists: what kinds of women I write, what kinds of choices they make, and why I refuse to flatten their survival into something empowering.
Most people accept cultural definitions of strength without examining them.
Strength, in my stories, does not mean survival staged to inspire. Women who can leave the bad man. Somehow manage to rescue the child. And, of course, (cue eye roll) save themselves with just enough mess to prove they earned it. Characters that always win when it counts.
That version of strength doesn’t interest me.
The women I write about choose silence, have bad timing, or just do what they need to do to get by. Their survival doesn’t look like clarity. Sometimes it barely looks like survival at all.
Heroine, Badass, Warrior.
A certain kind of feminist story still clings to the idea of transformation. Pain becomes her training ground. Trauma is just her backstory. She levels up not because the story earns it, but because readers expect it.
Outside the page, the arc isn’t that clean. Women struggle. Some regress. Others withdraw. Many collapse or compromise. They all live for another day. But it costs them. Survival doesn’t always create growth.
But it does create space.
These women hold on. Barely. They stay in it. Waiting for the moment they’ve been denied. Sometimes making it themselves when it doesn’t come.
Lucia’s silence signals intention.
When Lucia leaves the house with a welt across her cheek, she doesn’t call it bravery. She knows she can stop or keep moving forward. So she moves.
This is not a character waiting to be found. Her silence is already doing the work. She’s not withholding her voice. She’s managing its cost.
Her world isn’t shaped by defiance or rebellion. It’s shaped by time. Options don’t show up all at once. She has to find them. Then be strong enough to make a decision. And live with what comes next. There’s no shortcut to peace. Especially not when you’re still in the middle of it.
There is no redemption arc for these women.
Sometimes mistakes can’t be undone. Betrayals break something that can’t be healed. They reach for safety, not healing. Sometimes they reach for nothing at all.
These characters learn things too late. They break old patterns. Then fall into new ones.
Lucia keeps her head down and gets accused of being a fool. The truth is, she bends so she won’t break.
No hero arrives to fix them.
There’s no teacher to show her the path. No lover to save her. No parent who regrets everything and makes amends.
The women in these lives are flawed, limited, or just tired. They do what they can. Most of the time, it isn’t enough. Or it’s the wrong thing.
When a connection appears, it doesn’t save anyone. It just gives her a moment to stop holding everything up. Sometimes that’s enough. Other times, it isn’t.
The story doesn’t reward the women’s survival with clarity.
A woman who adapts instead of transforms doesn’t look like progress. The narrative tension stays flat because it isn’t designed to please. She makes a calculation and carries it out. The result is another version of her life, one she can live inside without explanation.
These are stories of internal management. Not revelation.
These women play along until they don’t.
A waitress doesn’t need a manifesto to know what men look at first. A student doesn’t need to read theory to know what happens when she fights back. A girl doesn’t need permission to choose quiet over confrontation.
They stay in the role long enough to be overlooked.
Then they slip out of it.
And sometimes, that is victory enough.
Finally, one day, she breaks free. That should be the beginning of her “happily ever after, but no one cheers. Instead, she is met with distance, or worse, resentment, and it hurts.
Thank you for reading Beneath the Weight of Water. Paid subscriptions are optional support for future chapters, illustrations, and the long work of keeping the story alive.
What kind of strength do you think stories too often fail to recognize?
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Healing Arcs Don’t Feel Honest to Me
Author’s Note: This essay is part of a five-essay series on writing decisions and narrative constraint. Each piece explores the choices behind my novel without explaining the story, but to frame what it refuses to resolve.
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