National Women’s Friendship Month

A sorta PSA during this NATIONAL WOMEN’S FRIENDSHIP MONTH… IT IS NEVER TOO LATE
TO FIND (or FOUND) YOUR TRIBE

It’s a well-documented fact that Waxing Poetic loves/celebrates/wouldn’t exist without women: sisters (by blood, by blended family, by choice, by serendipity, by way of the Greek System, by divine providence) best friends, cousins (all sorts), mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces, grandmothers great and immediate, colleagues, co-conspirators, creative allies, mentors and mavens and…we could go on forever (and probably will in some form or another), and all manner of their friendships in between.

To that end, Women’s Friendship Day seems a particularly excellent  ‘invented holiday’ to celebrate (honestly, it’s kind of a perpetual holiday around here) – but this is a post suggesting that beyond celebrating the friendships we already all have, we celebrate our capacity to keep growing more.

This doesn’t necessarily mean more new friends (though it can), but it does mean more incarnations of friendship: we propose celebrating our capacity as women to make, nurture, evolve, and grow our friendships writ large. It is paramount to remember that we are never alone, that we can always find our people, that our tribe is never too tiny or too scattered, and that we are only a slight risk (in terms of outreach) away from connecting with kindred spirits.

Some of us are very fortunate to have a longstanding, core group of female friends nearby (or very receptive to calls/letters/texts/girls trips) – those of us with sisters and close cousins even more so – but sometimes life intervenes and we find ourselves in new territories (literal or figurative) – and finding your tribe in a new place (like…we move across the country or the globe, we face unexpected health challenges and need a particular brand of supportive co-combatant, we go back to school or change careers and feel the odd one out) can feel daunting. WE NEED TO REMEMBER, ALL OF US, THAT WE ARE NOT ALONE IN THIS (whatever this is – whenever ‘this’ is happening), that nothing – not even fear -- is not going to stop you from finding your ladies or us from finding you. We need to remember this, because it is sometimes easy to forget as we grow up, leave school and scatter – and sometimes find ourselves feeling strangely lost and alone. This is a fiction!

Wherever we are in our lives, in our geography, in our journeys – our roles and selves are always evolving, and sometimes this involves unexpected changes and challenges.  As women, we are simultaneously awesome at taking care of other people and supporting one another and tending to our families and growing our businesses and expanding our networks and sometimes in all of that admittedly awesome stuff, we forget to make room to grow our friendships. Let’s all stop doing that.

Now: everybody hug. <3