On Sisterhood, Friendship Loss, And The Women We Become — Part IV
the ecosystem of sisterhood.
There is an undeniable anointing within the spaces where women gather in bond. A feeling that often defies explanation, but resounds within the deepest parts of us. This is what the experience of sisterhood is to me.
Sisterhood is a well — deep and refreshing and replenishing. It is a sanctuary, a lifeline, a spiritual sustenance. Sisterhood is a chosen covenant to witness, to honor, and to grasp an understanding of love fueled not by condition, but by devotion and a willingness to show up through all of life’s seasons.
As a woman, especially a Black woman, I would not be sustained without it. Through this unfolding journey of my life, certain experiences have fostered my understanding of what it means to have these kind of intimate, platonic relationships in which I am chosen, held, and witnessed — deeply rooted in the existence of another — and in which I have the opportunity to do the same: choose, hold, and witness those who become threaded into my own existence.
The ecosystem of sisterhood is sacred, a driving force in the woman I am today. My girlfriends bring out and nourish certain parts of me that romantic or familial love isn’t able to — which is why I cherish these bonds just as much as I do my marriage or the relationships I have with the family I come from.
You need women who will do life with you. Not because they have to, but because they choose to wade the waters alongside you. You need women who will pull up on you when you call them crying. Who will make you feel as if laughter has no margin and love has no end. You need women who will intercede for you, go knocking on God’s door on your behalf if they have to.
You need women — and after years of closing myself off to the idea of community, I am glad to finally be in a space where I have cultivated and experienced the softness and intensity of genuine sisterhood.
I saw a quote that read: “I am a daughter of women.” There’s something so tender and ancestral and intergenerational about this phrase to me. It carries the sentiment of wisdom woven through generations and passed down. It reminds me of sitting on the kitchen floor between the knees of an auntie as she braided my hair through greased fingers. It speaks of the resilience and sacrifice of a long line of women who flourished through fellowship.
I was reminded of the women who shaped me — not just through blood, but also through spirit. The ones who have nurtured me and held me, knowingly and unknowingly, by the way they showed up and moved ( and continue to) through their lives, their families, their communities, their worlds.
I am a daughter of women. Furious and fierce women. And to take it further, I have also become a keeper of women, cultivating and nurturing spaces for the essence that is us. As Joy Harden Bradford eloquently wrote in Sisterhood Heals: Women give birth to other women. So much of our becoming is tied to our relationships with one another and how we hold our sisters down or not.
The women who raised me are the ones who shaped my understanding of the immense power found in such solidarity among women. I — birthed from them, nurtured by them, held by them — witnessed the act of them giving life to and nurturing and holding each other time and time again. The first example I ever received of the sacredness of communal love was that of my mother, grandmothers, godmothers, mother-figures, aunties, and older sister and cousins. Those grown-folk-business conversations became my holy grail, and I name it a blessing to have been raised surrounded by the magical experience of witnessing all those women gathered in community, sharing love and laughter and sorrow and pain.
I also name it a blessing to have been raised with blood sisters. Inherited sisterhood has instilled so much in me when it comes to navigating chosen sisterhood. We’ve gone through a lot, my birth sisters and I, yet through it all remain each other’s keepers. We’ve waded through times of closeness and periods of distance — but no matter where we find ourselves in life, we are tightly threaded together, unable to ever truly be unraveled from each other’s existences.
As we’ve gotten older, we’ve learned to authentically show up for and respect each other, as well as navigate conflicts with love, attentiveness, and those necessary emotional guardrails.
I asked my sisters what sisterhood means to them, and this is what they shared:
“Sisterhood with you is raw and layered: you make me laugh, cry, and sometimes drive me to frustration, but that’s the beauty of it — it’s real, it’s alive, and it’s transformative.”
Wheeeeew, the tears I cried reading their responses, but it’s a prime example of why sisterhood is so meaningful to me. Why it needs patience and vulnerability and accountability and grace.
Sisterhood is rest and resistance — a refuge where we can unfold into one another, bringing both our light and our shadows. It is a space where we can speak life into and lift each other. It’s our key to staying “soft and connected in our femininity” even as we navigate the challenges faced in a male-dominated world.
Sisterhood is a space where our most authentic selves are nurtured, inspired, affirmed. It is a commitment to growth — not just for oneself, but for the collective ecosystem that is. As Gwendolyn Brooks wrote, we are each other’s harvest; / we are each other’s business; / we are each other’s magnitude and bond.
Reflect with me:
What does the ecosystem of your sisterhood experiences look like? Feel like?
What experiences in your life nurtured your understanding of sisterhood?
What were your inherited sisterhood experiences like? What did they teach you about chosen sisterhood?
As I wrap up this series on Sisterhood, Friendship Loss, And The Women We Become, I want to take a moment to share other pieces that have convicted, reassured, and resonated with me:
—
wrote a beautiful reflection on the fragility of friendships. “The tricky thing is that there is no such a thing as intimacy without fragility and vulnerability and this is what makes friendships messy and beautiful. The idea that people are disposable is perhaps our biggest challenge when it comes to building lasting friendships, because relationships of any kind are a lot of work and we are just not doing the work. I also know that relational stress is one of the worse stresses out there and our inability to handle conflicts and nurture our relationships hinders us from building healthy and resilient friendships. The challenge is we live in a throw-away society and that reflects on how we handle relational conflicts. Having an argument or disagreement shouldn’t mark the end of a friendship, most of the time it’s the other side of that that has the true connectedness and real friendship based on honesty and understanding.”—
prompted a conversation about mean girl energy that really made me reflect on what I was taught about sisterhood and how I was raised on it. I can only thank my mother and the women in my life for the ways they instilled the importance and complexities of sisterhood within me.
— Elaine Welterworth spoke about navigating conflict in friendships on the CultureCon Uncut podcast. “We must welcome the tear and repair. I’m all about the tear, because I want to be about the repair.”
— This quote from Audre Lorde rang loudly in my ear throughout writing this series: We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other, until it becomes a habit, because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other. But we can practice being gentle with ourselves by being gentle with each other. We can practice being gentle with each other by being gentle with that piece of ourselves that is hardest to hold.
More From This Series:
This piece moved with such tenderness—your reflections on sisterhood and loss were raw, yet beautifully grounded in love and gratitude. Thank you for letting us into something so intimate.
I truly enjoyed reading this article. 💕