I call them my Life Council but that makes it sound like I hand picked them for my team when really they were the ones picking me.
I had no say in the matter, other than to say yes to them, these fierce wonders who appeared in my life right when I needed them.
It's as if we were invited to the dinner party and most of us knew the hostess and some of us knew each other or knew friends of friends. Alchemy occurred once we sat at the same table. We thought we were there for dinner but it was the start of something so much bigger.
We were wide-eyed at one another as the bond formed and the roots grew deep below the surface. How did we get so lucky? We'd never experienced anything like it, a collective sisterhood appearing from the mists and saving our respective lives.
Though, to be clear, this group has never replaced the relationships in our lives. If anything, it's enhanced our day-to-day community. I still turn to my best friends, to my inner circle. My Life Council is in the same orbit. It's both/and.
We have a million names for ourselves and a million more inside jokes. We are the safe place and we are ever present. There are few topics we haven't covered and then turned around to cover again.
Day by day, we choose each other.
It sound idyllic. It rings true of blessing and honor and good old-fashioned luck. It is all these things.
And yet I never knew when I first said yes to the invitation, I would have to keep saying yes to these remarkable women.
There are times I've wanted to hide and times I actually have stepped back because I worried I was too much or not enough. Times when I was overwhelmed by my own ugly envy, an emotion I've never wanted to wield against my dearest friends.
We have taken turns dancing around each other, bowing out while on vacation or when life became too compacted with busy or too laden with emotion. But we always circle back around. We always return to one other.
We have showed up. We have said yes. We have marched.
We have risked vulnerability over and over again: would we hold one another? Would we still be there if even this was uttered?
We dispense wit and wisdom. We deliver a swift kick in the arse, as needed. We challenge. We speak truth in love. We have laughed loud in to the night and wept alongside one another.
We have summoned all of our courage to say the things we've told very few or perhaps no one at all and received the echo of "me, too" "me, too" "me, too."
We keep showing up in the ways we know best how and receive the gift of this mirror: "we see you, we hear you, we love you."
We see the best in one another and believe in each person's potential, even when they struggle to see it themselves.
We are there for one another, even when divided by state lines. We hold one another's secrets and celebrate each other's success.
I am a better person for having them in my life. They have taught me how to be a better friend, hostess, and all around kickass woman.
Sometimes I am tempted to wonder what I add to the mix. When I am stressed, I want to follow my gloomier inclinations to believe I wouldn't be missed but I have learned to flit those fears away.
These women have carried me during some of my darkest hours. They have believed in and for me when I forgot how. They have championed my cause and painted a vision for a wondrous future. We have talked endlessly over coffee and tea and glasses of wine. They have put me up in their guest rooms and poured cocktails and baked cakes. Their children and husbands are more than faces seen on a Christmas card.
How many more ways can a person choose another?
We are who we are to each other precisely because of who we each are.
We are the echo. We are the mirror. We are the gift.
