To The Ladies
Today is the birthday of a very dear friend of mine, someone who I haven’t actually seen in right around a year. (Really?! How?!) And it got me to thinking how very dear many of my girlfriends are to me.
Carrie is someone I met during a very chance meeting at Crossroads Writers Conference. I went very last-minute because I could not afford a pass for the whole weekend, in fact I came close to bouncing the last-minute check I wrote for even just that afternoon pass.
But I went and there she was, the only lit agent in the group, and someone who I could tell was just a cool chick.
After their panel, with people crowding around her, I noticed she was wearing one of my favorites: Louboutins. I don’t remember what I said but she recently reminded me that I complimented them, saying most people here likely didn’t know what they were. (Haha whoops.) And we would still chat over Twitter. She had offered for me to stay with her if I ever came to NYC and I thought she was just being polite, but when she was booked to come again the following year to Crossroads I instantly offered to help drive her around. This was when a friendship was solidly formed, as we would hang out, dodge people who became a little too chatty, and help out our new friend Kevin escape a room of groupies.
Carrie has been my dear friend ever since, and I am grateful to have her in my life. We have weathered career ups and downs, the many men who trip easily in and out of our lives. And it made me realize, I’m so very grateful for the ladies in my life.
I say often that I have more friends that are men than women, but the ladies who are here- they are like precious gems. I cannot express adequately enough how important they are to me. They understand my heart breaks in ways that no one else can, and the triumphs in a way that only a woman can get.
Another friend I just stumbled across one day is the lovely Jen. I was writing for the Little Rock-based publication Bourbon & Boots, and wrote about eating one’s way through Athens.
In between restaurant stops I stumbled into Flirt boutique, got to talking to this person at the register, told her about my website and that was it. Instantaneous friends! She’s been there for me as I celebrated triumphs as well as cried over heart breaks. It was Jen who came with me on a spur of the moment trip to Wildwood Festival almost a year ago when the boy who told me he loved me decided he loved someone else and would not be going to the festival with me. And let me tell y’all, I would not have had nearly as much fun without Jen and her Athens crew.
(While she may not be IN this photo, she is responsible for it…..)
It’s while writing this that I realized I have even more ladies in my life who are precious and dear to me- Mariana, who has become a sister to me; Saralyn, someone who I have always looked up to as a fierce businesswoman and as a mother because her daughter Dylan is such a rock star….
My own mother, because having me as a daughter isn’t easy. My grandmothers, who fought for their rights in their own ways. My aunts, my cousins.
Most importantly my own daughter. A little girl who has more spark and fire than I did at her age, but also has the biggest heart and loves even more fiercely than I do. I’m terrified for that big heart, because I know how much mine breaks, but I’m excited as well- because she will love in the biggest ways possible… but also pick herself up each time she falls. And likely bring anyone else down with her that she deems necessary.
A friend recently asked a group of us to write advice to her 21-year-old daughter as a birthday present. My advice would be to treasure the ladies in your life. If you ever have a daughter, as I do, you’ll realize your role as her protector as well as the one person who can really show her the way- that being a woman these days really is like being a steel magnolia. You must at once be a delicate flower for some, but have an inner grace and strength. I wish it wasn’t like that, maybe someday things will change. I am at once fighting the status quo but also living and flowing within it.
But it will always be the women who will be there for you, you just have to find the really special ones.
