If you bottled warm sand, the plushness of clouds, and eating cookies under a quilted blanket in the fall, you’d have encapsulated the essence of the women in my life.
To be a woman
The phenomenon of “not being like other girls” is pushed, not to encourage women to be multifaceted, but rather, to force women into being “extraordinary” and “groundbreaking,” for the purpose of entertaining men, at the demise of other women. This results in us all being a different flavour of the “manic pixie dream girl,” as we are turned into keychains for their aesthetic opposed to being valued for that individuality that we were just told they crave. For survival, we often oblige. I thought this over during the last time I visited a museum and saw what would have been on the dressing table of a woman, around the same age as me, in ancient Egypt. Notonly is this concept objectifying but isolating as well. Why would I not want to be like these other women? Why would I not want to partake in the same rituals or bond over the same interests? My friends and I still discuss who is Meg, Joe, Beth, and Amy the same way I am sure teen girls did in 1868, and I too adorn my dressing table with animal-shaped trinket dishes that hold hair pins and jewels. I rouge my cheeks and lips before going out, I read under trees in the summer afternoon, and I would walk bare foot about my garden; the grass beaded in morning dew, as I caught up with the butterflies, who exchange kisses on my cheek.
I am both just like, and here because of the women that have come before me, and I remain, because of the women here with me now.
I am often plagued by grief; most times anticipatory, most recently retrospectively. This recent grief surrounds the idea of never again being able to take part in a certain ritual; an annual outing, a visit to “our spot,” a moment longer on the couch in their basement. This symbolism that I find within everything that often makes life precious is now beginning to eat me alive. But I look back to many of these memories, and as I parry nostalgias fencing thrust, I am privileged to see the women surrounding me in them. My first friends, my family, my only friend, my classmates, my best friends, my new friends; women are the through line of my entire life, and I think of them and feel so fulfilled. How lucky am I to waste the limited time of the most beautiful people in the world? How grateful am I to get a laugh out of them? How special is it to grow alongside them?
An ode to my girls
As far back as I can remember, I have curated mood-boards in my mind for the people I know, perhaps because I perceive so deeply, such that even if you haven’t told me a thing about yourself, I’ll find things to remember you in.
The colour yellow, the stars, the sun, a peony, Friday night rain in the city.
Colourful knit socks, Stevie Nicks, April, May, organic architecture, a black cat.
How themselves they all are, how special that is, and how lucky I am for each part of me to be fed by them. Each is a colour of the stained-glass mosaic of my soul—each an answered prayer from my youth.
Some scientists, some psychologists, some teachers, some businesswomen, some engineers, and some doctors. Jacks of all trades, masters of many. The creatives, and artists, and writers, and musicians. The athletes, the chefs, and the rays of sun that dance across your face when you fall asleep in the summer afternoon. The strongest arms you have ever felt, and the most precious gems you have ever seen. Whispers, giggles, knowing looks across the room, jinxing, and syncing. Singing, dancing, flailing, falling. Belly laughs that come from the deepest pits of you and cries that come from the same place. The same pair of eyes staring back regardless, both times watery, neither time wavering.
It is my female friends who have helped me get to such a stage of growth and healing. Who have held me as I sobbed, who have held me as I cheered, who help me string together my thoughts. It is from the care that the women in my life have shown me, that I do not question my ability to be loved, for I call and they answer, and they breathe and I love them.
To the women in my life, no matter how close, may I find you again in different bodies, or as stars, or as grains of sand in the sea. May we gather as trees or laugh together as morning doves. May I find you in the rays of sunlight that dance across my face, for the rest of my life.
Thoughts from my desk chair
In my time of reflection, I cannot help but think about the women around the world who I do not know but still hold so much care for.
Girlhood does not end with my friends.
It is the arm that reaches out to stabilize the drunk girl I do not know at a party and keeping an eye on her for the rest of the evening. It is using my voice to speak up for my marginalized sisters. It is studying when I would rather be doing anything else, because there is a girl out there who is far more intelligent and far more ambitious than I am, who does not get to study, she will not go to medical school, and she will not become a scientist. The only difference between her and I, is where we just so happen to have been born.
Everything I do and I am is for every woman, wherever they may be.