Maya Angelou's Letter to Me

Today I sat down and read Maya Angelou's Letter to My Daughter.

She wrote it to me. And you.
Here are the pieces I know she wrote for me:

I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish-speaking, Native American and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you. 

We must call the ravening act of rape, the bloody, heart-stopping, breath-snatching, bone-crushing act of violence, which it is.

Each time my search for true love

leads me to the gates of hell

where Satan waits with open arms

I imagine...

I am a builder

Sometimes I have built well, but often

I have built without researching the ground

upon which I put my building

I raised a beautiful house

and I lived in it for a year

Then it slowly drifted away with the tides

for I had laid the foundation

upon shifting sand

Another time I erected a

mansion, the windows shining

like mirrors

and the walls were hung

with rich tapestry, but the earth shook with a

slight tremor, and the walls gave way, the floors opened

and my castle fell into pieces around my feet...

I have found that the platonic affection

in friendships and the familial

love for children can be relied upon

with certainty to lift the bruised soul

and repair the wounded spirit

and I am finished with

erotic romance.

Until...