A tribute to friendships around the world.
This is a long, drawn-out, thank-you letter. It is a letter to every woman who has seen in me a vibrant soul worth love and sunshine and care, especially when I didn’t think myself worthy of any such kindness.
It is amazing how women today are pitted against each other. We are pitted against each other for the token spot in the board room, the last spot left in the residency, the unique position left for us by the recently retired woman from a men’s majority council. I see the fight we are left to drag out. It is an arena of singleness and we are left to fight for the last spot among the row of men instead of asking why there is only one spot open for a woman. This is a trend that has been on my heart for the last few days. It is a trend that spans millennial.
Instead of asking why great kings of the past allowed only their wives to voice their thoughts, we bicker over why one woman was greater than another. Why is one woman only greater than another, rather than great on her own two feet? She is not a cripple and yet history would have us believe that crutches are the only way women stand without the shoulders of the dominant. Why is it that Empress Theodora is only recognized because she was smart enough to wed an emperor? Why is it that Catherine de Medici is depicted as homely and conniving and untrustworthy when her character as a man would have been lauded as gentlemanly and strategic and tactful? These characteristics are easily turned around depending on the external reproductive system left by chance on our bodies.
The reason this is at the forefront of my mind is because, for the past year, my closest girlfriends have been talking to me about “Girl’s Trip,” the movie with Regina Hall, Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah and Tiffany Haddish. It is a movie about a group of women from college who go on an adventure in New Orleans and find themselves finally honest with each other about their faults, their triumphs, their joys and their fears. I literally cried at the end of this move. Tears y’all! Not because the ending of the movie was sad. It wasn’t in the slightest, but it was because I was again reminded of the novelty of my girlfriends, my soulmates who I was lucky enough to meet before I was 18 years old.
My soul’s missing pieces were placed into my life before I even knew what it meant to have a part of your soul missing. These are incredibly strong women who have so freely given of themselves. My soul is no longer my own. It belongs in part to the souls shared by the ones who forged it into being, the women who have seen me at my weakest and continue to love me. There is something powerful in the vulnerability broken open at the bottom of the gorge that is still pieced back together by love and patience. My rocks cradled my weakness and forged it into strength. My fabric is stitched together by the threads my sisters gave to me of their own volition, no matter the personal cost.
We are human. As such, we are social creatures. We crave contact. We yearn to be known by another. This is why we pair up. Not only to ensure the survival of our species, but because it is too hard to navigate our thoughts in the ether alone.
So, I ask you, have you told the springs that feed your soul that you love them? Have you whispered to them the gratitude in your heart? Have you shouted from the moon that the stars are lucky to witness their names fall from your lips because to hear those syllables is true peace? Take a moment to think of the ropes that bring the boat closer to shore. My shore would be a far distant memory if not for my anchors who continue to ground me in a truth I still do not accept, a truth that says I am loved and cherished and treasured and valued.
All I ask is that you think of the people who have shaped your life as I think of mine. My diamonds are tall, robust and proud peaks of gemstone that have been forged by life and yet still weather the storm. They are flowers who refuse to die even when winter beckons. They are pieces of my soul that will forever remain branded on my heart. And I pray they are scars that never heal.