Soul Sister, Soul Sister

The power of women's friendship

Women’s friendships are like a renewable source of power. ~ Jane Fonda

The circle of women around us weaves invisible nets of love that carry us when we’re weak and sing with us when we are strong. ~ Sark

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

I am on day 18 of writing a poem a day for National Poetry Month. It has been a wildly eclectic ride. Yesterday’s prompt asked us to write a poem about friendship, inspired by the friendship of the surrealist painters Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington. I was so inspired by this prompt, and found myself waking up at 4 in the morning to finish my poem.

You in my life means walks in the forest, the ping, ping of texts,

seeing your beautiful face on Zoom, cooking together, dancing,

belly laughing, casting spells, invoking rage, it means astrology,

tarot, dumplings & leaving religion, Art museums/car adventures,

It means a glass of wine, holding your tears, holding your shoulders,

It means hos before bros, beer in loud French bars, greasy bagels,

It means skatting bee de be da bop ooh doo wee sha-bam at the

jazz festival, and whispering under the moon, it means after church,

and 11 am brunch, and 3-layer sandwiches, and drum circles and

hot tea and maple leaves, it means fashion advice and crafting and

year after year after year after year after year after year after year

You in my life means lifting up, always. Never tearing down. It means my heart has a safe place to land after it gets broken, yet again. It means my nervous system can relax, and stop masking. I rest, not react. I am free to be my true self, no strings attached. No show. We stand shoulder to shoulder, we hold each other without fear, we weigh our words in wisdom and spill out our guts in freedom.

We smile, and it means everything good.

It means sisterhood. It means women surviving through the ages, and finding ways to be alive in hostile situations. It means being subversive, having special codes, intuitions, and just knowing. It means holding your shoulders as they shake, and you looking into my eyes. It means praying together on early mornings, while we still believed there was such thing as a god, and shaking the heavens. And now, we shake the heavens with our spells and incantations, and go skinny dipping in cold lakes, and get lost on back roads, talking each other down, and building each other up.

If this reads like a love letter, that’s because it is.

We live in a world that glorifies the single romantic relationship, putting all the pressure on one person to be everything to you (and you to them). But it has always been a network of women who have held me and celebrated me through everything. Not one person, but a community, each playing a role. Some come into my life for a brief period of time, or a certain season. Some have been there for years, some are new, some are from childhood, some are long distance. They are my community of women, and I would be lost without them.