INSPIRATIONS: SUPERWOMAN
Everywhere I'm turning
Nothing seems complete
I stand up and I'm searching
For the better part of me
I hang my head from sorrow
State of humanity
I wear it on my shoulders
Gotta find the strength in me
Cause I am a Superwoman
Yes I am
Yes she is
Even when I'm a mess
I still put on a vest
With an S on my chest
Oh yes
I'm a Superwoman
For all the mothers fighting
For better days to come
And all my women, all my women sitting here trying
To come home before the sun
And all my sisters
Coming together
Say yes I will
Yes I can
'Cause I am a Superwoman
Yes I am
Yes she is
Even when I'm a mess
I still put on a vest
With an S on my chest
Oh yes
I'm a Superwoman
When I'm breaking down
And I can't be found
And I start to get weak
Cause no one knows
Me underneath these clothes
But I can fly
We can fly, Oooohh
'Cause I am a Superwoman
Yes I am
Yes she is
Even when I'm a mess
I still put on a vest
With an S on my chest
Oh yes
I'm a Superwoman
Oh, let me tell you I am a Superwoman,
Yes I am
Yes she is
Even when I'm a mess
I still put on a vest
With an S on my chest
Oh yes
I'm a Superwoman
I'm a Superwoman
Yes I am
Yes we are
Yes I am
Yes you are
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Linda Perry / Alicia Augello -cook / S Moysten
Superwoman lyrics © Sony/atv Harmony, Warner-tamerlane Publishing Corp., Emi April Music Inc., Universal Music Corp., Stuck In The Throat Music, Lellow Productions, Nanas Hands, Ozmod Music, Boobie And Dj Songs, Inc., Lellow Prod. Inc., Hipgnosis Songs Fund Limited
When I read these lyrics, I feel the familiar choreography of my life. Standing up, searching, adjusting the weight on my shoulders before anyone notices how heavy it is. “Nothing seems complete.” That line lands like a quiet diagnosis. I recognize the posture of a woman scanning herself for missing parts while still showing up for the world intact. The better part of me has always felt just out of reach, like a reflection moving a half second slower than my own body.
I have spent years wearing sorrow as an accessory. Not because I wanted to, but because grief learns how to live in muscle. Humanity’s state presses into my collarbones. Motherhood, marriage, survival, recovery, art, advocacy. All of it stacks. When the song says, “I wear it on my shoulders,” I feel the literal ache of responsibility. I know what it is to lift a life every morning before I lift myself. Strength, for me, has never been loud. It is the quiet choice to stand again inside a day that already feels unfinished.
Calling myself Superwoman has always felt complicated. I was raised to be capable, productive, resilient, pleasing. To perform wholeness even while leaking. The vest with the S is familiar. I have worn it in hospitals, in studios, in kitchens at dawn, in meetings where my voice shook only on the inside. Even when I was a mess, I learned how to package the mess into usefulness. That is a skill and a cost. The song honors the courage of it, but I hear the loneliness too. No one knows me underneath these clothes. That is the line that opens the rib cage.
There were long years when breaking down had to be done in private. Bathrooms, cars, late nights when the house finally exhaled. I could not afford disappearance. Children still needed breakfast. Art still needed honesty. My own mind still needed tending. So I learned how to fly low. Not soaring, but hovering just enough to keep everything from collapsing. The lyric says, “But I can fly,” and I hear survival reframed as motion. Flight does not always look like freedom. Sometimes it looks like endurance with grace stitched into it.
What moves me most is how the song widens from “I” into “we.” Mothers fighting for better days. Women trying to get home before the sun. Sisters coming together. My life has been shaped by that collective gravity. I did not survive alone. I survived inside rooms where other women handed me language when mine fell apart. Inside projects where pain was allowed to become light. Inside friendships where showing up messy was still showing up sacred.
Superwoman, for me, is no longer the fantasy of invincibility. It is the permission to be porous and still present. To carry sorrow and still create. To tremble and still speak. To love my children, my work, my own becoming without pretending I am unbreakable. I am powerful because I am human enough to fracture and conscious enough to keep moving.
When the song ends with “Yes I am. Yes we are. Yes you are,” it feels like a quiet blessing passed hand to hand. Not a cape, not armor, but recognition. I am not strong because I never fall. I am strong because I keep standing back inside myself. I keep putting breath where fear once lived. I keep flying in the way women fly. Low, luminous, and determined to remain in the sky.
