sisters together forever
Happy International Women’s day.
“Sisters together forever” is an on-going series of paintings for women friends and family who have been part of my life in one way or another for a long time and / or through significant periods in my life.
we are relationships
Despite coming from a large family, I felt quite lonely growing up and til today, this sometimes can extend into groups and life generally. I am, however, enormously grateful for a few significant relationships that sustained me when I was younger and continue to be there with me in different ways now, like doing this inner work of greater personal integration.
Looking back, I can see those relationships were / are vital life lines of unconditional love, support, genuine interest and care. Without them I would have been more lost and despairing. Enormous gratitude and much love to those women. Thank you.
chosen family
Gratitude and love as well for the dear women friends, my chosen sisters, who have helped me over the years to work through and understand these family issues and / or so much more.
We are friends in the traditional sense of comfy together, hang out, share interests and hobbies but there is also depth, trust and commitment to each other beyond the usual notion of friendship. The way I have experienced it, these friendships draw us out of negative into more positive and powerful relationships with others and to ourselves.
Through these friendships I have been supported to look at the toxicity in my life and in myself and find ways to move beyond it or transform it.
With these “sisters” I have learned that everything is alive and interconnected — mind, body and emotions, human and not human, pleasant and unpleasant. We need all of it and we need to be able to relay on each other, while also leaving space for having differences and working them out. It’s the sort of relationship that together we are greater, stronger, more creative, more capable than alone.
They are the people that life serendipitously brings front and center for intense weeks of something together, or for delightful and tearful years of life’s usual ups and downs. Then because of the way my life (or theirs) has drifted on, we part and move on. The end (or at least a big change) to mutually supportive, loving friendships that were a springboard for so many daring things. Adventure or challenge is always easier when shared.
They are women who I love, admire and respect. The paths they cut for themselves is an inspiration and a point of reference for my own life.
I carry these women in my heart, think of them frequently and draw strength from them every day.
Today is international women’s day, let’s celebrate and honor women’s contributions, but not just today, every day. Sisters together forever.
Watch this post: I will continue to add drawings to this gallery.
symbols
Do you believe in angels?
I do. I believe that we are all angels for each other and part of life’s delight is learning to recognize that in each other.
I also draw on a Western cultural notion that babies are found in cabbage patches, fields of cabbage.
And remember, tarde o temprano todos nos convertimos en flores, sooner or later we all become flowers.
“Friendship will be the soil from which a new politics will emerge.”
Want to know more?
Friendship is a root of freedom — an article about the power of kinship and friendship when these relationships are able to cross beyond usual patterns of interacting, shallowness, and banality.
