There is a silent code of beauty that comes along with being a woman. One that insists we must bring beauty into the room. We must also, assuredly, make the room beautiful. But then—after doing so—we are expected to leave it.

Make the beauty and step aside, says the code.

This story is modern.
This story is archetypal.
You can find it woven throughout history and stitched into our daily lives.

Hold everyone’s emotions, but don’t burden others with your own.
Make the baby, then step out of the frame.
Create the home, but stay the quiet worker within it.
Make the art, but don’t celebrate yourself for it.

It’s the mystic whose gifts were used but never protected.
The muse who inspired works of art but died unnamed.
The women who tended the hearth but were not invited to the table.
The hands that sewed the queen’s lace, gone unrecognized.

Make the beauty and step aside.

So why is this?

Perhaps it’s inconvenient to acknowledge the maker.
Perhaps it takes the light off the person who wants to shine—or who the maker believes needs to shine.

But the deeper reason?

It’s because most women—most makers of beauty—have never had a model for claiming space in the rooms they create.
They’ve never been taught to see or hold their own beauty.
To understand that it’s not only the creation that holds beauty,
but their presence and essence within it.

So how do we begin the long, eons-old process of not only claiming space in the rooms we create,
but more importantly—seeing ourselves?
Finding ourselves inextricably linked to our creations in ways that aliven us,
encourage us,
make space for us,
and set the stage for the next generation of women and beauty-makers to come to this
not as a transformation—
but as an inherent knowing.

A new unspoken code of glamour.

One that says:

Make the beauty. Stay in the room.

This is a question I leave with you—and your soul—to contemplate.

As for me, it’s one step at a time.
One moment.
One claim.

To stop second-guessing the beauty I create.
To sit in the best chair in the house—without apology—when the world expects me to do the work, stay silent, and step aside.

It’s not only claiming the beauty we want to create in the world—
but claiming how we create it.
When we create it.
And when we’re done—
not stepping aside,
but stepping into the spotlight.

Playing our music loudly.
Dancing as we go.
Letting the world see not just what we’ve made—
but who made it.

Every time you do this,
you are the answer to a woman’s unanswered prayer from long ago:
"Let one of us stay.
Let one of us finally claim what she’s made."

Stay.
Claim.

And know that every time you do,
you rewrite the code
not only for yourself—
but for those who will come after you.