If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?
“A woman’s life is woven from the dreams she laid down for others, and the quiet hopes that refused to leave her heart.”
— Nihshabd🤍✨
If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?
Mine wouldn’t shout.
It wouldn’t chase attention or demand to be remembered.
It would stand quietly
like a woman who has learned patience,
saying just enough for those who are already carrying too much.
Because some journeys are not meant to be rushed.
Some lives are built between pauses, not milestones.
Womanhood is not a straight road.
It is a circle
from giving to becoming,
from holding everyone together
to learning how not to disappear.
Blooming at my own pace is not hesitation.
It is courage.
A woman is never empty-handed.
She carries keys, responsibilities, expectations
and still, somewhere deep inside,
a quiet dream that refuses to die.
She wakes up before her desires do.
She puts the world in order
before touching her own chaos.
And yet, people ask her why she is late.
What they don’t see
are the nights she folded herself into silence.
The mornings she chose duty over desire.
The years she postponed herself
without ever calling it sacrifice.
There is dard (pain) in this becoming.
There is chahat (desire) too.
The hunger to build a manzil (destination)
that carries her own name.
Her ishq is not always with a person.
Sometimes,
it is with a version of herself
she hasn’t met yet.
She learns to hope without witnesses.
She learns to wait without bitterness.
And one day
without announcement
she blooms.
Not for validation.
Not for permission.
But because she survived
long enough to choose herself.
If womanhood were given a freeway billboard,
it wouldn’t explain itself.
It would simply say:
I am built from love I gave away,
from dreams I carried silently,
from strength learned in kitchens
and courage grown in corners.
I move slowly because I carry history.
I bloom late because I bloom whole.
And then it would let the world pass by—
knowing that those who needed to read it,
already would.
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