It wasn’t true. Not for me. Not literally. But it was true enough to sting, true enough to belong to the stories I had grown up hearing, whispered between women when they thought no one was listening. In societies like ours, you do not always need a grave to be buried. Sometimes, you are buried in silence. In shame. In being made to feel that your existence was something the world had to tolerate before it could love.

From the moment a daughter takes her first breath, the air around her carries both love and apology. A boy is born, and the room fills with laughter, sweets, congratulations. A girl arrives, and someone sighs. Her name is chosen softly, as if even joy must be careful around her.

There are still stories, too many, of newborn girls left in fields, of infants found in the trash, of mothers who never got to hold their daughters. They call it poverty, ignorance, tradition, desperation. But beneath every excuse is the same belief, passed down so quietly it begins to sound like truth. That a daughter is a burden before she is a child. An expense before she is a person. A sorrow waiting to happen.

Her existence is counted before it is celebrated. Her education. Her safety. Her marriage. Her freedom. Everything about her is measured in cost, as if she has arrived already owing the world something. And yet, we are the ones who carry life. We are the ones who raise sons. Still, we are the ones made to feel we should be grateful for having been allowed to exist at all.