Friends
Let me tell you about my best friends.
Since COVID, I’ve thought a lot about the ways we can connect. For the first time, we can connect with anyone in the world, even overcoming language barriers. As a professional communicator and someone who traffics in words, I feel privileged to be living in such a moment.
Yet it doesn’t take the place of human connection, of looking someone in the eye, of sitting next to them. Of simply clicking with them. In this, I find myself reflecting on my four best friends from childhood.
We came together as middle school kids over Madonna and parachute pants and forced Sunday mass and Duran Duran. Nearly 30 years ago. Today, we are still those kids. Inside, I feel 12. Never mind that I’m not. We keep drifting back to each other.
As teenagers, we just stuck together. Sometimes, we were virtually inseparable in the small Pennsylvania town where we grew up. One usually was with the other or in some combination. It wasn’t uncommon for a couple of us to show up someplace dressed the same, even as adults.
In the summer, some of us walked three miles one way to see each other if we didn’t have a ride. When we graduated, we went our separate ways but we weren’t really…separate.
Through deaths, moves, job changes, heartbreaks, and joys of love, we were always in touch. When my brother was killed in a car accident, one came to see me and stayed with me even though I could barely talk, let alone stand. When another struggled through a bad breakup, I showed up and helped her lug all her things (“too much stuff,” I told her) out, in a rush.
They were my peer role models and we embraced the idea we could do anything if only we worked for it. There were no other options, were there? When one fell off this wagon, someone would remind her of that.
We eschewed “limits.”
They — we — were driven to simply be who we wanted to be.
It’s a deceptively difficult thing to do — to be independent and to be yourself.
It’s also hard to know sometimes which to be: Beautiful or intellectual? Do we have to pick one? Can you lead with both?
I didn’t have the words for it at the time but I felt even though my family told me otherwise that society sometimes boxed women into a lane: Are you a mother? Are you what you choose to work as? Can you wear the dress and not that navy man-suit all the time, in the workplace when you kinda stick out? Can you lead with looks and your brains? Do you have to pick one? Does being independent mean you also are not vulnerable? Can you be all these things?
The answer is yes, you can be all these things and more. I can look at my friends, and say yes, here it is! We are business owners, an attorney, a nurse, and an executive. We are parents and partners. They are all of that, but they are first, authentically themselves. And that is what is most important.
You are beautiful and you should own that. And you are smart and yes lead with your intellect too, rooted in the most honest expression of self not with what you want to do but what you’ve done. Lead with that too. But be humble and work hard but keep the ego in check because no one is entitled to anything.
No job is beneath you. We all celebrated when we could (were forced by our parents) to get jobs as soon as we turned the legal age. Some of us scrubbed toilets and waitressed at a restaurant. One sliced cold cuts at a sandwich shop. Another lifeguarded. Yet our makeup was always on point….because why not?
When the first in our group saved her money and bought a car for $600 — a blue and rust monster — we thought it was beautiful and we all piled in. We helped pay for (or completely funded) our higher education costs working through school, sometimes two jobs at a time.
Today, I think we are largely girls turned women.
And even when you don't ask for an opinion, opinions are issued.
Today, we see each other sometimes during holidays. We usually get together once a year. We laugh-scream. And we have a messenger group where we catch up, and sometimes tell the other what to do.
These are women who could nurse you back to health with the most lovingly prepared meal seasoned with herbs she grew, thoughtfully plated, and in the next second knock the wind out of you with verbal razors, if they were wronged. Or maybe even if they weren’t.
And these are also things I learned by knowing them, some of which take courage and vulnerability to live by:
Uncontrollable laughter can make your stomach hurt
You determine your worth, not others
Lead with your inner and outer beauty that is the truest expression of who you are. You don’t have to pick one over the other
Don’t lower your standards
Love is beautiful, but sometimes you love things and people that aren’t. Get rid of them.
Don’t use your looks to do what hard work and skill should get you
The right thing to do is the right thing to do
Italian purses are the best
Respect for yourself includes setting boundaries
Be with people who make you feel good, with no agenda
Cooking together and for others is one of life’s great pleasures. Cook for those you love like it may be your last meal.
If you want something, go get it, quick. No one owes you anything.
These are my best friends. I haven’t always been great about keeping in touch, sometimes terrible in fact, but no matter how much time passes we still seem to be those kids. And for that I am grateful.
