Phenomenal Woman: Maya Angelou's Influence on Women around the World

Dr. Maya Angelou. No words could possibly fully describe her influence on the lives of so many young girls and women around the world. But what made Dr. Angelou so influential? Her strength, determination, and motivation to rise through adversity became the foundational inspiration for many young women of color. She was pure and honest with her poems. She was able to relate with so many women with stories of molestation, finding self confidence, self encouragement, and empowerment. I have to say, one of my favorite poems that I would recite as an eleven year old (and to this day) was Phenomenal Woman. I am sure that so many young girls and women worldwide find this poem as a statement of, "Yes! I AM a woman and I AM beautiful" and for African American woman "Yes! I AM Black, I AM a woman, and I AM beautiful". Her messages spoke to us. They told us that we were someone and encouraged us to aspire to achieve anything we set our minds to. Dr. Angelou was quite the woman, quite the Phenomenal Woman, at that. She was a leader, a motherly figure, and the light at the end of the tunnel, showing women who we could be and where we could go. And at that, I say, "Thank you, Dr. Maya Angelou, for your encouragement, your influence, and for encouraging me- a young, Black, female teen- that I AM beautiful and greatly crafted by God. Thank you for teaching women around the world that we can still rise through adversity to do great things".

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise. 

- Maya Angelou