Sisterhood

I've never understood the appeal of girl friends. Or well to be more blunt, I'm weary of women. I internalized that message that every woman is someone to compete against because you need to be prettier, sexier, smarter, and better than them if you are to have any value or more specifically, attract a man and my role as a woman is to attract a man and thus beat other women. I know. It's fucked up. It flies in the face of every feminist ideal I believe in. But there it is, even I am not immune to the power of influence.

To this point I have had cracks in my hesitation to trust other women. A few women, always beautiful women, have snuck in behind the armor. I have amazingly beautiful women as friends, much much much prettier than me. More spunky. More intelligent. More lively. The women that I've chosen to call my friends and trust, well they are great women. And in some ways I pale in front of them. Or my internal voice tells me that I pale in front of them. I'm sure I don't. I'm sure each would tell you what they value in me. And I would even go so far as to say that none of them are friends with me because I'm uglier, less spunky, less intelligent, or less lively then them. Fun how that works.

Tonight I found myself in a group of women 20 years older than me and the sisterhood of women hit me ... hard. I saw that women are not my enemy and not my person to compete against. That we are each beautifully flawed in our own way. That we have much to learn from one another. You would think it would be weird sitting in a room with women my mother's age but it wasn't. Perhaps it's all I'm going through right now. Thankfully my circle of friends are married, most with children and though they struggle too, for the most part they are finding their way. To fast forward 20 years you have a group of women who have lost children, lost marriages, lost careers, and lost themselves in a way. It is a gift to be able to sit in front of them and relate.

I found myself sharing that I'd moved out of my home 2 weeks ago. That I'm divorcing my husband. That I've only been a mom for a year and a half. That I relate to the world through the blogs I keep. That I miss my uncle (my de facto father) more now than I think I ever have because even though my mother and grandmother are resilient and supportive, they aren't the man. The shining beacon that comes in and saves you. But maybe that's the point.

Feminism is not about tearing down men. It's about tearing down expectations of men and women. My expectation has always been that a man would save me - my uncle, my boyfriends, my bosses, my husband. But they didn't. And in the background, the whole time was this band of women who watched expectingly, knowing that the men in my life wouldn't be able to save me, knowing that in the end, other women would. I felt that in the room today. I constantly forget that right now is not how it has always been and not how it will always be. This addition of women to the pack remind me further that the path is long and some how you get down it.

The "leader" of the group said today that you need people to remind us that even in the darkness there is light. We are all on a journey to somewhere and we all lose the light every now and then. We need people to show us our gifts, to remind us of who we are when we can't see clearly. I didn't realize how much I longed for the sisterhood more than I did tonight.