forgotten selves.

I basically wanted to please everyone.

That was my motto from a very early age.

I’m a good girl.

I’m a very good girl.

I was born “Asya”.

In Russian it sounds a little more like “Ash-a”.

I was pretty much the model Soviet child — well behaved,

polite, kind, obedient, check, check, check.

In Riga, children were taught to be part of a group.

In America, I felt very much alone, different

and not accepted.

I picked up the language very quickly.

I picked up the culture very quickly,

and I just really wanted to be a regular, American girl.

They knew about blow jobs.

They knew about dark lip liner and giant hoops.

And I was like this little immigrant girl

who hadn’t started shaving her legs yet.

I was not allowed to wear makeup, but I, at some point,

had stolen my mom’s, like, little tiny chunk of a lip liner

that she had lying around at the bottom of a bag.

We had a pretty early bedtime, but I would sneak my Walkman

and I would listen to Z-100’s “Love Phones.”

I was learning about a world that was larger than my own,

and I kind of grasped what I had

to do to fit in, to be cool.

I told my parents, I’m changing my name.

I’m not going to be Asya anymore.

I shaved my legs.

I wanted to be noticed and I wanted to be pretty.

I just wanted to be wanted.

In high school, I was known as the new, exotic girl.

And I kept thinking to myself, if they only knew.

When male attention first came my way, I ate it up

and I also defined myself by it.

I still didn’t know how to displease.

I really didn’t know how to say no, definitely not

with any kind of strength.

I took these flowers, these dumb, blue flowers as I went

up to his very dingy room.

All I remember is crying, having my clothes taken off,

and then him asking me if I wanted

to order Chinese food in bed.

I cried.

I said, “God, that was dumb of me and so slutty.

This is so embarrassing.”

And then I put it away for over a decade.

Eventually I stopped being a rag doll.

Of course, then I gave birth to one daughter followed

by a second daughter.

I realized that in order to raise strong women,

I had to become a strong woman myself.

I need to make sure that they have a better sense of self

than I had.

I didn’t have friends in this country.

I felt very much rejected.

So one of the constant conversations

we’re having is about inclusivity.

How can we be kind to the people that need it the most?

I think of myself as a defender of my daughters’

little spirits.

And I know that even though our world is changing,

it is going to chip away at this inner strength that

already exists.

So my job is to help preserve that strength

and teach them to have faith in it.

These little freedoms throughout their childhood

are going to teach them to listen

to their own inner voice, and they

will know that they are as worthy as anyone

else of making their own decisions.

And if they’re not the most polite girls on the block,

I don’t give a [expletive].