I am always overwhelmingly proud to be the mother of three daughters. I say it like a Jane Austen novel, I call them “my little women,” I only refer to them as “the girls.” Growing up in the era of The Spice Girls and Winona Ryder’s Jo March has given me quite the affinity for Girl Power, and it’s something I hold incredibly dear. The day we found out our third baby was a girl, my husband beamed. “It’s so special,” he said. “I don’t know many people with three girls.”I felt like I had a magic power. How could I harness all this gorgeous energy?

Having three daughters always feel special, but there’s something about this time of year, especially during an election season, where it also feels powerful. Forceful. Delightfully threatening. The world loves to tease women for loving their pumpkin spice, their decorative gourds, and their giant skeletons on the front lawn. We’re called basic for watching Hocus Pocus or lusting after the Practical Magic house or dressing as Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas. And yet all that faux annoyed energy is nothing compared to the burning rage of women raising daughters in this country. Of having to advocate for ourselves and our girls over and over again, of being denied life-saving procedures, of what we can and can’t do with our bodies being a matter of public debate.

Our love for all things dark and spooky, for haunted houses and magic and spirits walking among us, is nothing compared to the real monsters we battle day in and day out. Of course women thrive in a season of potions and spells and covens and revenge?

Whether it’s the Scarlet Witch from comic books or the three witches from Macbeth, it’s clear the world is scared of magical women. Frightened by our secrets and our desires and our strength. And knowing that they are scared, that they burned women just like me and my girls because of that fear, feels extra poignant during an election year. They want us feeling powerless and scared because they are afraid of what we might be capable of together.

I look at my three girls and I imagine all the power they contain individually, but together, too. We walk down our dark street in October, leaves crunching under us. My oldest has grand plans for her future and as she recites them, I can see her two little sisters listening, taking it all in. I watch her words leave her mouth, a cloud of hope and perseverance and that pure joy reserved for your very first dreams. Like a bubbling cauldron, she is full of magic and she knows it, and I dread the day someone tries to wrench it away from her. So in a season of spookiness, in a world of witches doing whatever they want — even the Sanderson sisters were able to leave a way to come back to their plans when they were hanged — I want her to feel that energy.

Maybe it’s the power of three. Three incantations, three spells, three glimmering stars — the number three is deeply magical and has held power in European folklore as far back as the 16th century. I feel great pride when I say I have three daughters, and this season gives me power, too. Three girls full of vigor and life and courage. Three girls who can stand with each other and in front of each other, counter curses to each other’s woes. Their love is binding, and I see them gain more and more strength from each other every day — like a spell only they can see.

Samantha Darby is a Senior Lifestyle Editor at Romper and Scary Mommy and a PTA soccer mom raising three little women in the suburbs of Georgia with her husband. Her minivan is always trashed.