esse quam videri

On my back, hidden from my own eyes, are the words esse quam videri.

To be, rather than to seem.

I first learned the phrase not in a philosophy text or a Latin primer, but on a highway sign after I moved to North Carolina. It is the state motto, set down centuries ago by men who likely imagined honor and virtue when they chose it, something civic and declarative, a quality they wanted to name for the place.

I carry it differently. At that time in my life those words weren't a declaration but rather a prayer, a plea that I might one day be allowed to live as myself—not as a role performed for the comfort of others, not as the shape someone else had decided I should fill.

It took years before I had it tattooed on my back, and by then the prayer had become a promise I was making to myself, quietly, without witnesses.

The words aren't visible to me in the ordinary run of things, and I have to turn toward a mirror to find them. I've always liked that about where they sit, because they weren't put there for anyone else to read.

For so long, I was surrounded by people who lived in appearances. To seem happy, to seem faithful, to seem put-together. A whole world of people, but especially women, bending themselves into shapes that would fit, polishing the surface while hiding their brokenness. I learned that hiding was the way to be accepted, that shrinking was the price of belonging.

But I do not want my daughters, or anyone’s daughter, to inherit that bargain. I do not want them to learn to shine for the show while dimming themselves in secret.

Our daughters deserve better. I do not want them to seem. I want them to be.

And perhaps this is the true inheritance of the words on my back: a quiet rebellion, carried in ink, against a world that has asked women for centuries to pretend. A reminder that the gift I owe myself, and the gift I long to pass on to my daughter, is freedom from the exhausting theater of appearances.

To be, rather than to seem.

That is the vow I carry. That is the desire I carry for every mother, for every daughter.