*In the midst of Sisterhoods, let's not forget our Friends*

 

El Faro, Southern Spain, May 2016

I had a friend once. We shared deeply and passionately. Then we became ‘sisters’. 

I don‘t know what happened exactly. Well, now I’m lying. I know exactly what happened. But the story weaves itself wide and deep, between countries, continents, and lifetimes, involving many, and involving none. Therefore multi-layered and laden with human life lessons, soul stirrings, and healings. 

The essence of my words is that in this life we used to be dear friends, but now we are distant ‘sisters’. We don’t speak to each other anymore, and the last few times we did exchange words, it was online, and words like ‘dear sister’, ‘dear soul sister’ were used. 

One might think using ‘sister’ would be a sure sign of deep amicability and harmony between two women friends, but what I’ve learned is that when two female friends start to use ‘sister’ years into their friendship, it is a tell-tale sign that a rift or a divide has started to form between them. 

On the other hand when two or more women are only starting to get to know each other, and perhaps sense a friendship forming, then going from acquaintances to ‘sisters’, is a warm and positive sign. Using sisters among them expresses a beautiful recognition of each other, as they see and sense each other as kindred spirits, Earth sisters. Like they’ve decided to drop the superfluous social veil, the formalities, so they can get straight to the juicy talk about life’s grit and grace. But here’s the thing, they can start sharing about this deeper stuff in life, on or offline, WITHOUT the commitment that follows friendship. 

Being ‘sisters’ is not as gravitational in a person’s life as friendship is. You can have tens of thousands of ‘sisters’, well, you actually do have about 3.5 billion ‘sisters’, but you can only truly nurture very few friendships.

So when my old friend started calling me ‘sister’ I knew something was amiss. It was as if she wanted to put ‘the-million-women-veil’ between us. I was heartbroken as I had been very open and vulnerable in our communication, giving her the friendship key to my innermost spaces. As the friendship faded into sisterhood, and the sisterhood into two unattached women merely doing their own separate things in different parts of the world, I felt like I wanted nothing more than to ask for my key back! Because you see, with regards to your heart, it's a master vessel. You can’t just change your own lock. You have given someone the masterkey. So you better be careful who you give a copy to. 

Or simply discard the notion of keys and locks altogether! And be free! 

But, well.. This human thing, growing, evolving, deconditioning, it for sure is a journey, and most of us are still en route.    

This writing may sound like I’m very sad about the whole thing, and of course, it did make me very sad at the time. It was very dramatic how things ended between us. But it has all served the infinite unfolding. That I know to be true. 

What is interesting is that my experience with ‘sisters’ and ‘sisterhoods’ hasn’t exactly been a path of rose petals. In fact, it has actually been a very difficult journey. I’m quite scarred, bruised, and disappointed. Sad. Victimized. That is, my ego feels that way, and admits to it, though reluctantly. 

Fortunately, I’ve remembered profound and beautiful truths through all these experiences, for which I am grateful. It has taken a lot of painful self-exploration, and unveiling of truths about myself, and how I communicate, and how I work with energy. It hasn’t been easy, and the journey continues. Today, I’m witnessing how the bruised and scarred me is gradually disappearing, as my true self is gradually appearing. It’s almost like playing with two-layered photos in an image editor. The more transparent I make the scarred photo, the better I can see the truer version of me.

I was lying in the bathtub earlier when these haunting words wouldn’t leave me alone, ‘In the midst of sisterhoods, let’s not forget our friends’. For a few moments, I felt handicapped lying in the bathtub like that, not being able to write. In my mind’s eye, I saw a scene from the movie Trumbo, about the blacklisted Oscar-winning screenwriter who often wrote in his bathtub. Gosh, how I longed for a typewriter and a bath tray like he had used! But as I didn’t have such miraculous things, I saw myself go and fetch my notebook and my pen so I could start writing my heart out from the coziness and the warmth of the bathtub. But that idea turned swiftly from great to bad when my imagination showed me a soaking wet page and the ink from my magenta pen coloring my bathwater with pink spiraling roses.

But the sentence wouldn’t leave me alone, and then the next one followed ‘I used to have a friend, but now she’s my sister’. 

I rose up, half-dried myself, and charged for the living room and my computer, in my curvy Eve’s clothes. Then I realized I wasn’t in the wild Spanish hills any longer where I could walk around naked in my apartment. In the hills, the windows faced human free slopes and the mesmerizing horizon. Only the birds, and my partner, could see my curves up there. Here, by the sea, I have neighbors, and they are close. They are especially close to my kitchen window which I happened to be passing by with my desirous fingertips. So I returned to the bedroom and threw on a loose-fitted dress which felt really nice and airy after the warm bath. Then I glided into the living room again.

Well, it has been really good to write all this down - contemplate those haunting words: ‘In the midst of sisterhoods, let’s not forget our friends’. I’ve done my best to put words on what my soul was trying to express in the bathtub. 

So to pull it all together. Round it all up. 

I feel like I’ve been writing about the importance of simply being mindful of our friends and friendships during this upsurge of sisterhoods being formed around the world. It’s such a great thing, that so many of us, all amazing women, are coming together, forming strong bonds built on a united vision of a more beautiful thriving world! It’s cause for much celebration and in my heart, I pray it will sustain and support our younger sisters.

The notion of us women on earth being sisters is beautiful. Profoundly so. And that we’re gathering in sisterhood circles again, all around the globe. Like we used to do.

In the now, we women are becoming freer and freer day by day. We are freeing ourselves from the patriarchy that has held us paralyzed for millennia. Through sisterhood circles, some of us are finding our freedom through embracing our wild sides. Our primordial sides. Others through connecting with our milder sides, our compassionate softness. Others by stepping out in all our glory as the sensuous women we truly are. Then there are many of us who are finding our freedom by retreating into darkness, going into silence, into the void, with the hum of the foremothers guiding the way. We are as colorful and different as we are many. All this is so beautiful.

So what I’m kindly shedding a light on here, and encouraging, is, that as we wild sisters cheer each other on, support each other to take flight and expand our wings and vision far and wide, that in all that uproar and excitement, to just be mindful of our closest ~ to not lose sight of those who are nearer to us, who are dearest to our hearts ♡