Welcome to My Wonderland: A Journey Through Defiance and Discovery

They say the patriarchy’s worst enemies are little girls, old women, and sex workers. If that’s true, then I must be Wonderland’s Maddest Hatter. Ready for a trip down the rabbit hole? I’ve worn each of these roles unapologetically, and, as you’ll see, I’ve always had a knack for rewriting the script they tried to hand me.

The Sweet, Soft-Spoken Girl

Once upon a time, there was a soft-spoken, neurodivergent girl raised by a hippy father and a free-spirited mother, M in her own Wonderland. In those early years, life didn’t demand loudness or defiance. I had a gentle world where rank and hierarchy were as fictional as fairies and no one questioned my sweetness. If the patriarchy wanted me to shrink, I didn’t know it (and neither did my parents.)

And for a while, it was wonderful. I was praised for being kind, soft, and accommodating. But as I grew, the world around me started to change. Life’s edges grew sharper. To survive my teenage years, I had to shed my softness and take on a harder edge. What once felt like a gift, my kindness, my gentleness, was buried under a shell of survival. I became a living trauma response, adapting and reshaping myself just to navigate the world’s madness. That sweet little girl had wandered far from her Wonderland.

The Woman Who Owned the Stage

Fast-forward a few years, and that once-quiet girl had learned a thing or two about taking up space. I became an exotic dancer, a role the world saw as tragic, but I saw as nothing short of revolutionary. In this twisted Wonderland, I was taking “objectification” and flipping it on its head. There, under the lights, I set the rules, I called the shots.

Men thought a stack of cash meant they could skip the line into my life. I laughed, threw them a look, and sent them away. On that stage, I didn’t just dance; I controlled every gaze, every glance, every interaction. They built the cage, but I held the key, and I was more than willing to keep it locked. I learned that “being watched” didn’t have to mean being powerless. It was a world designed to make women feel small, but there I was, more untouchable than ever.

The Silenced Wife and Stepmom

When the time came to hang up my shoes, I stepped into the role of wife, stepmom, and later mother, determined to be the “good” woman they wanted: soft again, accommodating again, but on someone else’s terms. My Wonderland closed in, turning into a polished cage. I was silent, subdued, kept. I did what was expected, pouring myself into family life like tea into a bottomless cup, never quite enough, never filling.

In this phase, my softness was used against me. The sweetness that had once been praised became an expectation to fit into everyone else’s story, to become an ornamental wallflower while my own roots withered. And the patriarchal script? It wanted me broken, broke, and utterly dependent. But deep down, the girl who climbed trees and the woman who owned the stage knew that this wasn’t her story. Somewhere in that cage, I started scribbling out a new plot.

The Wise Woman in the In-Between

Now, I stand somewhere between mother and crone, with a soul that’s been around the garden path a few too many times. I am no longer the soft-spoken girl who thought she could only survive by shrinking, nor am I the stage queen who needed to prove her power. I’m something in between, carrying wisdom from each of those roles and resilience that grows wilder with each chapter.

This phase is all about challenging everything I was told, every accusation that women must be “good,” must be quiet, must be small. I’m here for the women who, like me, bought into the lie that our worth was tied to our silence and our sacrifice. 

Every woman who believed in the ornamental wallflower deserves to become the wildflower, free to grow, to spread, and to turn every rule on its head. The world deserves to see us in full colour: unbreakable, untamed, and unapologetically alive and living out loud.

The Dandelion Tribe

And so, here we are, in a Wonderland that’s both familiar and foreign to society’s tidy little expectations. I’m here for those of you who feel like you were handed the wrong script (or no script at all.) For the dandelions who bloom wherever they’re planted, wild and unbreakable. For every woman who’s ever felt she was too much or not enough, we’re rewriting the book.

So here’s to us, the fearless girls, the stage queens, the not-yet-crones, and every rebel rewriting the story they were handed. Welcome to Wonderland, where we’re not just creating our own endings, we’re savouring every delicious twist along the way.