Wapsi Square

Wendi

A Wapsi girl is a strong and versatile woman; one who is faced with innumerable challenges and even when she falls, picks herself back up again and asks “Is that all you’ve got?”

Admittedly, sometimes it takes a bit longer to get back up than others. Though it’s hard, there are times when she needs to suck up her pride and ask for help. Because though she’s strong enough to make it on her own, she has amazing people around her who care about her and want to help. The girls in the comic are all very different, but these traits are common to all of them. We’ve all had incredible challenges, and each experience shaped us, making us stronger and more capable for the next one.

Like the girls themselves, their hardships are different. Personally, I feel like I’m a combination of Monica’s *ahem* assets, Kathrine’s shyness (and “weird”ness!), and most assuredly, Lakshimi’s size. Aside from the obvious aspects of physicality (Being a 6’2” busty woman isn’t as easy in this society as you might think. No, really.), I’ve stumbled, I’ve made choices that didn’t turn out as I had planned. My demons fight each other as surely as Monica’s do; my pride, my wanderlust, my passion and my temper push me and striking a balance between these strong urges can be damn hard. There are risks that I’ve taken that seem insane to those around me, but I don’t regret the past, no matter how things may have ended up. Without those steps, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Some risks are small; to convince myself to take a bellydance class at 28, when I’d been told as a young girl that I moved like a robot and should never, ever dance. It helped to have an amazing friend by my side to go through it all with me. To walk into a yoga studio when I’d never taken an exercise class outside of school. To find out that hey, playing with weights is really rather fun, even though I’d been intimidated by “gym people” for my entire life. Some risks are scarier, and my inner demons pushed me into them, when logic seemed to dictate that I should stay constant and unchanging. My wanderlust inspired me to drop out of college at 18 to move from North Dakota to Scotland just so I could feel that I was really experiencing life, and not hiding away from it in comfortable situations. I married at 20 to a man who did his best to destroy my psyche, but my pride has enabled me to recover my self-worth. My temper, my rage, forced me to leave the situation of my bad marriage, no matter how worthless I felt, or how lost I feared I was. My passion has enabled me to surround myself with amazing people; to take the risk of leaving the established for the unknown, enabling me to find the love of my life. Never discount your inner demons; they are there for a reason.

It’s how they act and react to their individual situations that make the girls in the comic incredible, just as each of the women who have participated in the Wapsi Girl Project have shown amazing character, resilience and beauty. I feel privileged to be included in their ranks.

Website: http://braveharlot.multiply.com/