My Sisterhood

We all have a sisterhood.

Sometimes it was developed when we were children and it's the girls we grew up with in our neighborhood or at our beach/mountain/lake house or at camp. Sometimes it was developed in middle or high school as we worked our way through adolescence and the initial development of our belief system in life, love, morality, and personality. Many times it was cemeted in college/university or early 20s as we began to forge our way into the beginning of the life we would continually look on with wonder and awe.

For some of us it was a pick up of many of these people throughout and keeping them to help us through the good and the bad, the happy and joyous, and the difficult and ugly.

So I thought I would take the time to introduce you to my sisterhood. They know some of the more important things about me such as my love of the color orange, my ability to fall flat on my face for no apparent reason with nothing in the way of my feet, my complete addiction/obsession with food that is healthy and at the same time my utter love of ice cream and moon pies as well as my crazy tendency toward going "silent" when I have something I really want/love/desire/ in the works. Each in their own unique way has allowed me to be me, evolve, and has given me a piece of life and perspective on life that I wouldn't necessarily have found otherwise.

This is not in order of how we met or of importance rather it's in order of how the photos uploaded! I may have the ability to upload and blog but not necessarily the technological savvy to organize it.
GWEN:

Gwen and I on St. Simon's Island

We've been pen pals since 2006 and met in person in 2009. I was introduced by Holly by way of Wyatt.
Our lives have been lived in parallel. We both grew up in Northern Virginia. We both summered in Delaware picking aluminium cans out of the trash for recyling money. We both lived in the Huntington area of Alexandria when first married. Our sons are 6 months apart and have the same first and last initials.

Gwen was cloth diapering her daughter and had more open ideas about birth and raising of children. She was willing to be a sounding board for me through email initially and then we just naturally started writing letters via snail mail. What started through a question about children has grown into a relationship about two women. We discuss everything and anything--marriages, lifestyle, food, vegetarianism, raising a son, spirited and smart children, moving, mental health, physical health, economics, books, parents, siblings, the environment, and just about everything else. 

Gwen gives me a sense of peace and understanding in the midst of a hectic and crazy life. I look forward to her letters in the mail. Sometimes they are just a few lines on a beautiful card and sometimes they are four to five pages scrawled in her print on notebook paper written during a free coffee run that she had while her children were in school.
Ultimately without knowing it Gwen has given me courage to expect more from myself and from the world around me.

KATE:

 The Original Estrogen Soup!

Imogen, Jennifer, Carmen, Colleen,

Katie, Jen, Kate, Me

Kate and I met through a random connection but our connections to other people in our lives is a crazy story of 6 degrees of separation. She is another one of my sisterhood that I believe strongly was meant to be in my life and came at just the right time. She challenges me on a regular basis and makes me laugh in ways no one else can. She can also listen to me cry when I don't allow the rest of the world to even know I am in pain.
Before I go further I must explain the 6 degrees at the time I met Kate in 1996:
I had met Katie Kutra Mahoney's brother in high school through a friend who introduced me to my prom date who introduced me to a guy named Hutch. Hutch and Tim were working at a local cable access station with another guy named Eric who was dating Colleen (who's sisters all went to grade school and high school with me) who went to high school with Kate. Hutch had people over, Kate had just graduated from Boston University and I had just moved back to DC. Oddly I met a guy E.W. who was was a fraternity brother of Eric who ultimately dated Jen and then introduced me to Wyatt (another fraternity brother).

Back to Kate: Kate and I have done many things in our years together. We've gone to graduate school, we've bought cars, we've moved, we've loved, we've hated each other, we've taken HUGE personal and professional risks, we fell in and out of love, we got married, we had children, and we both grew up.
I know if I ask Kate she'll give me the answer I need. Not necessarily the one I want but the one I need. She'll show up with her husband to help me move for the gazillionth time.
She'll show up on a rainy Saturday the day before Christmas to stand next to me and be Wylie's godmother. She will wear a bright orange dress to be my bridesmaid because even if it's something she thinks no one else in the world should wear she will happily wear it, smile and laugh and then tell me my garter for my stockings are showing through my dress and wouldn't it be better if I just slipped them off all together!
She knows just what to say in one word to make me snort the proverbial milk out my nose. NO ONE ELSE CAN DO THAT.
Her hugs make it seem better.
Kate has this way of being brilliant and youthful and wise and vulnerable and caring and truthful and everything that you want in a best friend and a sister. I have tried to walk away but somehow I can't. If I can't admit it to myself I know I will admit it to her.

STEPHANIE:

Stephanie at Disneyland

Celebrating Emma and Wylie's birthdays

If she reads this she will be wondering but it's true! She is a part of my sisterhood. She made a point of finding a few hours to visit with Wylie and I here in VA while on vacation. So that everyone could visit and it was a tough visit. Wylie was off, Emma was tired, and well Wylie and Emma both decided the cool toys in her cousins basement were better than the water park. But in the end they were happy.
We met because her daughter Emma (yes, Wylie's dear and precious Emma) means the world to my son and by their friendship I met an amazing woman.  We spent 2.5 years passing in the morning and evening at USC child care. We finally spent a day at the zoo after several attempts and I am so glad I persisted.
Stephanie is real. We both have husbands who prefer their quiet and personal lives (with very few words) to the busy life. She is into movies and books and chocolate about as much as I am which I love AND she is into letting Emma explore the world around her. In doing so she is exploring which I enjoy.
Life can be a total pain but for some reason Stephanie always has a smile. Always. She was telling me about work issues and she smiled. She was telling me a personal issue and had a smile. There was always the honest pain but the joy of life behind it too. Or maybe it's just that she sees the importance of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the right amount of chocolate. Maybe it's both.
Stephanie has definitely taught me in a short amount of time that it's about being comfortable with who you are and accepting of what you are. Perfection doesn't come all the time and most of the time it won't but when you least expect it...You go to the Oscars!

MELISSA

Melissa and Brian

Virginia Beach, VA

July 2011

Melissa and I met at a working moms breastfeeding support group in January 2007. We were both working insane hours, had our first born children and were trying to figure out parenting and breastfeeding and life and all sorts of other things. This was a group that ended up being more about surviving the first year than about just breastfeeding. I learned much from Melissa about juggling life, work, family, pets, and being healthy. We started our non-child based friendship with a child based playdate with two other brilliant and neat women--Irene and Nadya.

Something about Melissa being an animal lover and her lack of a sense of direction and the fact that she was a vegan meant we were to be friends. I have a soft spot for all animals but can only have one and to know someone who will help me find a way to be kinder to animals, respect them more and learn to love all through them. I think Melissa's lack of a sense of direction not only made me laugh at times but it also made me really learn how to get around without my GPS. I don't like not knowing how to get where I am going. I like maps. In a weird way, Melissa helped me find a sense of direction. Finally, someone knew I was going to need Melissa and Brian's vegan lifestyle and cooking knowledge when I met her. Melissa was a fantastic source of information and recipes and ways to swap out milk and eggs when we found out Wylie was allergic. She also helped me balance protein and vegetables and fruit with Wylie when I found out that Wylie really didn't like protein that wasn't in the form of tofu or cheese. He did like yogurt plain so we were good there.

Melissa also stepped in and listened-really listened when she didn't have to-giving advice and trying to help me find legal solutions to my house/neighbor situation and then when she told me she was leaving the area to move to Virginia she gave me the strength to make the changes I needed for my family. Her ability to acknowledge the difficulty of her move, the MASSIVE personal and professional change she was making in her life and in general the fact that while pregnant she drove up to DC from VA Beach just to spend the day with Wylie and I was eye opening to me. She again gave me strength without knowing it.
In the past two years Chase and Wylie keep picking up where they left off at their last meeting being silly and fantastic boys together. Melissa and I just manage to keep the conversation going with thoughts, ideas, craziness and in general life.

JESSICA

Olivia, Evan, and Jessica

Playa Vista

First things first--Are those smiles just amazing or what?  I poached this photo off Jessica's site but that smile is one of the two main reasons I knew within minutes of just saying hello to her that I WANTED to be friends with her. I mean someone with a smile that radiates and generates warmth like that can only be a good and amazing soul. Not to mention that her daughter Oliva has the same smile and an amazing flair for the dramatic that Wylie really loves so Jessica and I had many chances to hang out and talk and learn and live together while our children used their imaginations in ways I can't begin to describe.

Jessica introduced me to the idea of the afterschool/dinner playdate. This freed my evenings for time spent with a grownup and with Wylie. We spoke of job woes and life woes, we spoke of families and trying to be the best mom possible without throwing our funky prejudices into the mix. I learned what it was like for Jessica to be straddling a mixed race world with a child that was also mixed religion and heritage.

Jessica is my find peace person. She doesn't promote finding it, she doesn't preach it, she just somehow manages to demonstrate ways to find it and when it doesn't happen and it is explosion time she shows that side too. Which to me is the proof that peace is in there because she is willing to show her emotions and be honest. Peaceful people are willing to do that and accept change. My favorite thing is that on a very very very rainy morning in the spring we spent a very long time blowing up balloons and laughing when we could have just said no let's not do this.


KAREN:

Karen in Australia in her typical pose!

I have known Karen since I was born. She is two years older than me but we have spent the majority of our life in tandem. Making choices and doing things at similar times with me being the younger and following the trends.  I lucked out because I was the country mouse to her city mouse life. Our mothers were roomates in nursing school and through life. Karen and I along with our siblings were raised as cousins.

Karen and I wrote very adolescent poetry and prose together, wrote letters back and forth from grade school through highschool. In college we kept up but slowly went our ways still touching base as we could even though separated by miles and miles--Okay Karen moved to Germany and I was living the life in NYC. But we still caught up with each other when we could.

Karen and I both had the mea culpa in 2001 when we decided to go to graduate school and were deciding where to go and what to go into. We announced at the same time. When I announced my engagement and subsequent desire for her to be in my wedding I realized she was going through emigration process to Australia which meant writing a letter explaining I couldn't get married without her there. Which is true!

Karen has influenced my music, clothing, art, design, and everything else in between throughout my life. I have learned from her about being open and honest and also learned from her about how being apart isn't necesarily the end of the world. She made a point of trying to catch up with me and the boys when she was flying through Los Angeles which in turn taught me to make a point of trying to catch up with people I wouldn't normally think I had time to do so.

Karen is all about making connections and celebrating the opportunity to explore when you have even a short amount of time. She is also all about taking photos of the little things that make up memories! :)

My sisterhood.

There you have it. I have more in my life than these women but these are the ones really affecting me right now and have in the past few years. I do have the women from RMWC who will always have an affect on me and my decisions. Those women are from all walks of life, are all ages and backgrounds and industries but they are there when I need them.

So tell me, who is your sisterhood?