My “Sister Wives”

The other night I was out to dinner with some local friends, and someone told an amazing story. “My grandmother,” she said, “had this group of women that she had coffee with every day. They used to rotate through each others houses after the kids had gone to school. But they started to notice that one friend of theirs kept coming to the coffee klatch hurt, and they worried about her. Then one day they went to this woman’s house for coffee and she had a black eye and they finally got her to admit that it was her husband that was hitting her.”

“That day, the husband happened to come home while the women were having coffee. These women surrounded him and beat him nearly to death, and then told him that if he ever hit her again they would kill him and no one would ever find the body.”

“He never hit her again.”

That what I call friendship and sisterhood.

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Years ago I heard the amazing Brené Brown speak at a blogging conference, and she talked about how you have some friends that would help you move, but your best friends would help you move a body. This struck a chord with me, because I know that I have had that in my friend Sarah for nearly two decades, even though in recent years our lives have diverged quite a bit and we don’t see each other nearly enough.

Blessedly, in the last couple of years my life has bloomed with more friends into a small group we jokingly call our “sister wives.” Half the group lives locally to me and I’m able to see them in person frequently, while the other half is scattered around the country. Thanks to technology, however, I’m able to see their faces at least twice a week (via the awesome video conferencing system called Google+ Hangouts where you can video chat with up to ten people for free) when we have our own coffee klatch.

We share about all the hard stuff in our lives, as well as the good. We talk about work and professional obligations and aspirations and how we can help each other, and we talk about how to make our marriages and relationships better (although not all of us are married), and we talk about our kids trials and tribulations (even though some of us don’t have kids). Some of these women I’ve known since before the internet, and some I know because of the internet.

These are women that would, without hesitation, help me move a body.

I cannot tell you how much this has improved my life, and how grateful I am every single day for these women.

So, thank you so much, Dresden, Liz, Julia, Lynette, Jo-Ann, Katherine, Lisa, Dawn, Annie, and Robin. My life would suck without you.

What about you? Do you have move-the-body friends?

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If you didn’t get a chance today to catch Brené Brown on Oprah’s “Super Soul Sunday,” I’d highly recommend trying to find a way to watch it, and make sure to catch part two next week (it aired here at 11am on Sunday morning on the OWN network).