I often say that the greatest gift my parents ever gave me was they never told me I couldn’t do something because I was female. I grew up in a neighborhood full of boys and learned to climb a tree and hang in there with the best of them.

And now that I’m older, it never occurs to me that I can’t do things. I just do those things – maybe with some sort of blind stupidity re: how the world works – and go on with it.

I never realized the gift I’d been given until college, when so many females my age limited themselves in their abilities or actions because they were told “you can’t”

Now that my friends are having children, to the ones that have girls, I pass on the words of wisdom, to pass on the great gift I was given… to never limit their dreams.

I’m gonna send that photo to my cousin, who’s tracking back and forth between Baghdad and Kurachi (actual city names redacted) with the soon-to-be-renamed Happy Cow Brigade.

I had a similar conversation with my mother the other day after she started to tell Baby Fishmouth that “girls can’t … [insert something like climb trees, play drums, etc.]” If ANYBODY should know girls can do whatever they damn well please, it’s my mom. But that dang ’50s Southern upbringing that grabs her ’round the throat sometimes, I guess.

Yes we can. All of us. Boys and girls together. Baby Fishmouth and her best friend Frasier and your nieces and the Obama girls and all the kids can do anything, as long as we give them the freedom and the power to believe they can.

And as for you, “that newspaper lady” (probably said in the same hushed tone as “that crazy cat lady,” wasn’t it), rock on wit yo bad self. And feel better.