Overview:
A deeply personal poem about a daughter’s relationship with her mother has taken Palauan poet Stephanie Pettit from private reflection to regional recognition after she won UN Women’s Say It Loud poetry contest.
By Elilai Rengiil
KOROR, Palau (Sept. 3, 2026) “The more I wrote, the deeper I went into those feelings.”
For Palauan poet Stephanie Pettit, those feelings were rooted in her relationship with her mother — a relationship shaped by cultural expectations, love, conflict, growing up and, ultimately, a deeper understanding of motherhood.
What began as a deeply personal attempt to make sense of those experiences has now become a regional award-winning poem that is prompting conversations among women, mothers and young writers in Palau and beyond.
Pettit won UN Women’s regional Say It Loud poetry contest with her poem, “Kolt.” She performed the poem publicly for the first time at a UN-hosted side event alongside the 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting on Sept. 1, where the performance drew an emotional response from the audience, with some attendees moved to tears.
Kolt
I am my mother’s oldest child.
Her only daughter.
Those words used to sit heavy on my shoulders like wet laundry that never dried.
Oldest.
Only.
Daughter.
I grew up asking why the rules could bend for my brothers but stiffened for me.
Different curfews.
Different expectations.
Different weights.
They were allowed to be boys while I was already being trained to be a woman.
They were left to rest.
While I was told to help.
I learned the weight of carrying a home before I learned the weight of my own name.
And I folded myself into “good.”
Polite, Responsible, Helpful, Quiet.
But still trust always felt conditional.
Like my womanhood itself
was something dangerous
unless supervised.
I remember thinking:
Why is it never enough?
Why must I bargain for leeway just because I am female?
Later, I learned about our culture.
How colonization wrapped shame around our bodies and called it protection.
Maybe that’s why my parents viewed my freedom as dangerous. Mekull.
I learned that Palauan men
once risked their lives at war and at sea.
So their women strived to soften life for them as much as they could.
And somewhere along the line,
that softness became expectation.
In my late teens
I mistook rebellion for oxygen.
I tried to build safety somewhere else.
I felt surrounded by people who were against me. Or at the very least, did not understand me.
And out of all of them, I resented my mother the most.
I put oceans between us, thinking distance would save me.
I rebuilt myself, Reinvented my values,and found God again.
Then, I had my first child.
A daughter.
And suddenly
the mirror shifted.
I felt myself needing my mother again and I yearned to return home.
So I did.
Time had softened some wounds.
The suffocation had eased.
And the anger thinned.
But that old whisper still visits sometimes:
“You are not worthy
unless you are useful.”
I feel guilty resting when there were dishes in the sink.
Guilty when I don’t rush home to cook.
Guilty when the house is messy and I let it stay that way.
Even though I know I have always been helpful, it feels like I am still auditioning for approval. Most of all, hers.
I am caught between the kind of mother I am and the kind of mother she was.
Sometimes I feel like her daughter.
Other times,
not her child at all,
but her sister. Another woman holding up the same roof.
Recently, at an omengat, they told me how important it was that I make it in this life
Because it’s just me.
No sons.
Only a daughter.
Only brothers.
Traditionally, when it comes to my brothers and the ceremonies of their future wives, the oldest sister must always give the most money.
that’s how it is here
Men are expected to give labor.
Women: provision.
We raise our sons like kings
and our daughters like insurance.
Otherwise why do we carry traditions
built for wars and rough waters that no longer define us?
I asked why culture had not evolved with the times and how we had allowed it to remain stagnant
My mother said:
“Ng di uaisei e rungalek.”
That’s just the way it is.
And for the first time,
I didn’t just hear tradition.
I heard exhaustion.
Now when I look at my mother, I weep.
Because I see her.
Not just as Mom.
Not as rule-maker.
Not as enforcer.
But as a woman.
The oldest girl.
The reliable one.
The active one in all our siukang.
The one who made our house a home.
Cooked morning and night.
Raised the children.
Sacrificed all hobbies.
Swallowed her dreams.
Does she even remember
who she wanted to be
before we made her Mom?
She carried impossible standards too.
She survived the same unfairness.
She raised me the only way she knew how: with armor.
She gave me every tool that helped her brave this world.
And I hated her for it.
I am angry at the version of me who didn’t understand.
But that girl was young.
She felt alone in her own house.
And she did the best she could with what she knew.
Now, I raise my daughter
half with the heart my mother built in me: strong, disciplined, resilient.
And half with the heart I built myself:
soft. curious. questioning.
I pray she carries my mother’s strength, intelligence, and tenacity.
But also my empathy. My tenderness.
And my hunger for change.
I am my mother’s first child.
Her only daughter.
What once felt like a burden pressing into my spine now feels like inheritance.
Legacy.
Honor.
And I carry it, not as weight,
but as gold.
_____
By: Say It Loud winner — Kolt by Maungil Palau
Pettit said she initially wrote the poem to put into words experiences she and her mother shared while she was growing up. But as she went deeper into those memories and emotions, writing became difficult.
“The more I wrote, the deeper I went into those feelings,” Pettit said.
She eventually stopped writing for a time, worried that her mother might interpret the poem as a criticism of her parenting or believe Pettit felt she had failed as a mother.
When UN Women announced the Say It Loud contest, Pettit realized its theme aligned with the poem she had already begun. She returned to the piece, this time with a different perspective — one shaped by becoming a mother herself.
“I thought about how it was to grow up with my mom and then have my own daughter,” she said. “I was more empathetic to her.”
Pettit said she never expected the poem to reach a broad audience. Even after being selected as a finalist, she did not think she would win.
When UN Women announced her as the regional winner, she described the moment as “very surreal.”
The poem later was shared on UN Women’s Facebook page, exposing Pettit’s deeply personal work to an audience far beyond the contest judges. Comments and messages began coming in, a response she said initially overwhelmed her.
One message, however, stayed with her.
A friend had sent the poem to her own mother, who responded that the feelings described in it were familiar.
For Pettit, that response demonstrated that Kolt was reaching across generations and cultures — not only women her own age, but mothers, aunties and readers outside Palau as well.
At its heart, the poem examines the different expectations placed on women. Pettit said it reflects pressures many young women experience to be more careful, sheltered and responsible for supporting or maintaining their homes.
But she stressed that the poem is not intended to blame men or mothers.
“Everybody is affected, even the men, by this system,” she said. “It’s not really anybody’s fault. And it’s important that now that we’re talking about it, we can slowly, without hating each other, tweak it so we can now change it.”
Pettit said she has been encouraged by the growing willingness of women in Palau to discuss subjects that were once kept private.
She noted that people have openly shared their reactions to the poem online, using their real names to say they recognized the experiences described in her work.
For Pettit, becoming a mother also changed the way she viewed her own mother.
She began to see her not simply as “Mom,” but as a person with her own experiences, imperfections and identity.
“My mom is a person,” Pettit said. “She was a person before she became my mom, and now I’m just reducing her to this one role and expecting her to be perfect when she’s just a person like me.”
She hopes the poem can help young people reach that understanding without having to become parents themselves.
The poem, she said, is ultimately about recognizing that close family relationships can contain love, conflict and healing at the same time.
“All of the best parts, or the most important parts of a relationship, are done in recovery,” Pettit said. “You don’t have to be perfect. We weren’t perfect. But as long as you have it in your mind, like, ‘We’re going to repair this,’ or, ‘What can I do to fix this?’ and then actually put in the work, then it can work out.”
The response to Kolt has reinforced that message for Pettit.
Older readers have told her that more young people need to have the opportunity to explain what they feel and what kind of support they need. Young writers, meanwhile, have reached out to tell her the poem encouraged them to publish their own work.
For Pettit, that may be one of the most meaningful outcomes of winning the contest.
She said she hopes writers who are afraid to share personal work will take the risk of putting their words into the world.
“Those who do not connect with it may soon forget it, but it will remain with the people who need to read it,” she said.
“As long as it exists outside of your mind in the world, it will find the people that need it.”
Pettit plans to continue writing, with more pieces planned for the DAVE Art Show in October, where she also hopes to meet other writers.
What started as a poem she once feared was too personal to share has become a source of connection — giving voice to difficult emotions, opening conversations about women and family, and encouraging others to tell their own stories.