The Beautiful Curse

Friendships. Specifically friendships with women. That's what's on my mind today. It's what is on my heart. And my heart is a little heavy.

I've moved around a lot in my life and this has made me a little guarded. But, I've always found at least one close friendship in each state....one that is like no other. One woman that I can open up to, allow my truest self be exposed with. I can list the women from each city. I can hear their voices, see their smiles, hear their laughter and remember the love and wisdom we shared with one another.

In each of these relationships there was very little jealousy or drama. They were supportive until they weren't.....typically they changed when I moved away. Which is understandable and normal. Some have stood the test of time and distance....others have faded but still they are a part of me, who I am, who I was and who I am becoming. I carry these women with me whether it's been 38 years or 3 since I've seen them.

But, I'm in a different space now and I wanted more connection. More women. I wanted a tribe. I sent out a plea to local women and, by miracle, women answered. We started meeting 7 months ago and we gather each month. The gatherings are beautiful and intimate and exactly what I desired. Naturally friendships have formed within the group but each month we all come back together to offer support, love and understanding.

These women are all highly intuitive, magical, mystical, intelligent and wise beyond years, in tune with themselves and the world around them. I think this makes the friendships that have evolved different from the other's I've had in other phases of my life.

There are more intimate conversations in which we become highly vulnerable. The walls are let down and there's nowhere to hide in these relationships. We get called out, called in and it's hard. It's hard to stay this open and vulnerable all the time. There's pain, jealousy and a whole lot of fear. Never before have I been so aware of the deep divide, a push/pull in relationships, a history of pain and betrayal and the intrinsic wound that lives within women. And when women become aware of it (which this tribe is), study it, face it....we mirror it it in order to work through it. But, it's painful.

That intrinsic wound that we, the feminine, carry stems back to the Witch Trials. Where women who were once the healers of their communities, the leaders of their families, the link to nature and Spirit, were deemed evil, scary, consorts of the devil and were murdered for simply being women. Hunted. Put on trial. Drowned. Burned. From the 1400's to the 1700's tens of thousands of women were forced to turn their backs on apothecary, medicine, nature, Spirit, themselves and their tribe of sisters. They had to had to hide who they were, who they were created to be and they had to hide their divination. They had to forsake all that came naturally to them in order to save themselves and their families.

Given the history, it's understandable why women today struggle to be authentic, to stand in their strength, to trust other women and be truly vulnerable. And even if we understand the WHY it doesn't change that this is a part of our history, our DNA and that our wombs carry this memory. It's reasonable to expect a sisterhood in today's society to want that connection, that divine support of the feminine, but still hold back because it's what we have been taught to do. To not trust. To carry a niggle of fear and protection against the inevitable betrayal we've been told is our destiny.

But is it destined to always happen? Does the cycle have to repeat itself? I don't want to believe that. I envision a world in which women can come together and support one another without judgement, gossip, expectations and with pure love of the soul that sits in front of us. I desire to embody that purity of love each day. It's not easy. I fail almost every day. But I wake up determined to change, to heal the wound that we all carry and to simply be love for my sisters, and myself, regardless of the pain I may feel due to another's actions or the pain I may have caused.

We will all fail at being perfect. The perfect woman. The perfect friend. The perfect sister.

I know that my expectations of others are, simply, my expectations....and I am setting my sisters up for failure. My expectations are truly limitations I'm putting on myself and them. This is my struggle today. To just allow my sisters to be my sisters. To let my friends just be my friends. To allow them to fail. To allow them to succeed. And to separate my ego from their actions. To not allow sadness or pain be a reflection of them but rather a reflection of what is left to heal within my own womb.

I still have work to do. I still have walls to knock down. I still have vulnerabilities to show and not be afraid of. But I also have faith. Faith in the strength of sisterhood. Faith in forgiveness. Faith that we women are powerful healers and that together we are capable of fierce love and acceptance of one another. And that as long as one woman steps up to lead the way when others fall backwards into the wound that we will heal. Together.

That's what true sisterhood is about. Being there when the others can't. Sometimes having the strength to hold us all in your hand and say "I've got you. I've got us. I'll hold us until you can rise again." And to not give up. On ourselves. On each other. On we....Our Sisterhood.