Velveteen Us

So. This is where we are now. Some of of us are depressed and all of us are anxious. Some of us are divorced or wish we were. Some have lost parents, while others have lost children. We all agree that marriage and parenting are nearly impossible. Sometimes we are too much. And sometimes, we are not nearly enough. We want to learn how to hold both.

Friends. Confidants. A soft place to land. Fellow warriors. Shoulders to cry on. And boy do we cry. A lot. We aren't the professional stuffers we were in our youth. We refuse to hold it all in and pretend we've got it all together. We've come to believe that feelings matter and strive to hold space for them. We laugh, too. In that loud, can’t-catch-our-breath kind of way that women aren't supposed to.

Over coffee in the garden, these women remind me that I’m worth holding and fighting for. They stay with me when I can’t stand to be with myself. They carry hope for me when mine is spent. They challenge me. They inspire me. They encourage me. They help me without fixing me. They offer me the grace that I so often deny myself.

We don’t always agree. True friendship doesn't have to. We are not clones of one another. We all bring something different to the table.

We journey together; helping to work out the puzzle pieces of our separate, yet connected lives. We remind each other that our voices matter, even when those voices are little more than a whisper. That even when we feel lonely, we are not alone. We help each other remember that we are all part of something so much larger. Our stories are all different and yet the same. We travel alone but somehow together.

We walk this bumpy road of becoming more real. Returning to ourselves; the selves we used to be before the world told us to be somebody else. We are softer now, and more grey. We are more settled into our own skin. Skin that sags and droops, growing more lined by the day.

Life etches itself into each and every wrinkle.

As though we are unfinished.  

Like the Artist is still working.

Like the Velveteen Rabbit, we are becoming worn and nubby and real. All because we love and are loved. We raise a glass in honor of friendship, and we have never been more beautiful.

“If you feel lost, disappointed, hesitant, or weak, return to yourself, to who you are, here and now and when you get there, you will discover yourself, like a lotus flower in full bloom, even in a muddy pond, beautiful and strong.” 
― Masaru Emoto, Secret Life of Water