AUTHOR’S NOTE

I often tell people who don’t know me very well that I am made of questions, and of coffee.

I drink so much coffee that my heart rate – when I’m sitting down – is probably the same as your heart rate when you’re winning a 100-metre race.

If you do know me well, though, you’ll know that one of my favourite things is to ask, But why?

I question everything I come into contact with. Ideas, systems, stories, people.

It was the way I tackled things that didn’t make sense to me when I was a little girl, and it’s the way I still approach things today: Why is something ‘true’? Is it really ‘true’ or have we just accepted the ‘truth’ of it because that’s just how people have always done it? If it’s not ‘true’ and it’s unfair, or even wrong, why can’t we change it? Why can’t we do something else? Why can’t we do something better?

If you recognise yourself in Wen at all, if you understand that the whole of Tiger Daughter is really one big but why? question – that it’s me thinking out loud and advocating to keep what’s good, what’s benevolent, but to discard ideas and systems and behaviours that hold us back – I’m telling you that I see you.

You are not alone. Things will change. Things will not always seem so narrow and impossible and immutable.

One day you will be free – but it will be up to you to push back, to step outside the boundaries that other people have drawn out for you, to see over the edges of the box, to think for yourself. No one can do that for you, but you.

Accept no limitations.