Saturday, February 6, 2016

ladies


after work, 2014




I am held up by my female friends in little and big ways, but the support is so interwoven into the structure of things that it can easily be taken for granted. Some of the best practical advice I've gotten in my adult life has come from a pool of shared knowledge among women.  There's a real loneliness in needing answers and feeling ashamed of the questions. I feel very lucky, very changed, by having come up through my twenties among women who don't blink an eye.

_____


Today I borrowed a swimsuit from my friend who, in the past, has also lent me a beautiful dress for a wedding, shown me how to cut my own hair, coached me through drinking glasses of baking soda water while I was waitressing with a UTI, talked with me about beautiful and infuriating things at 7:00 am while we set up a cafe.

I received a package from a friend far away containing pajamas I'd lent her, homemade dried Moon Tea (!!!) and a dream pillow filled with herbs.

I walked to Fort Greene with my pal who knows all of my secrets and is still my friend, who sat with me in a cafe that smelled like bacon even though she is a vegetarian, who somehow knows all of my ugliness and my brightness, when I am sludge on the floor and a balloon in the sky, who lends me books and gives immediately applicable advice. I showed her the poison oak on my leg while we were standing on a street corner.

And anyway, that was just today. I know so many women who lead by example, who give the gifts they can give. Plants, time, acceptance. Who write long letters and figure it out and share what they've found. My whole life is filled with the echo of this influence.





Bless you all women, who will talk about hemorrhoids, who will tell you when you have spinach in your teeth, who will help decode the fine print, who will make the space they can make.