By Tabitha Bozeman
This past week it felt like fall finally arrived. I have enjoyed looking at the turning leaves, and watching the wind blow them around like autumnal confetti. (Cue Melissa McCarthy lip syncing “The Colors of the Wind” on The Tonight Show.)
Every year, the falling leaves remind me that it is ok to let go of the things we no longer need, have outgrown or no longer serve us. I practiced that last weekend, going through my closet and pulling out clothes and other items I no longer need and passing them on. Some things serve their purpose until we no longer need them.
We shift and change, our needs and lives shift and change, and that is ok. Just like the trees each fall, we have to release what we no longer benefit from whether they are clothes, situations or relationships. Sometimes that is a challenge because these things bear witness to the person we have been, and the person we are becoming.
Like the trees, shedding what no longer serves us, though, makes room for new growth. As my oldest daughter turns 17 this coming week, I’ve thought a lot about her future and the seasons she has ahead of her. I will love her fiercely through every version of herself, and I hope she has the same joys of friendship through each season the way I have. As Kate Hudson puts it, romance comes and goes, but “it’s the girl that’s sitting next to you, that’s going to get you through everything.”
Things like old clothes or knick knacks might remind us of who we have been and help us imagine who we are becoming, but friends are a more reliable and meaningful way to celebrate all the versions of ourselves we have been, as well as the new versions we are continuously creating.
This past week, my best friend of over 30 years celebrated a birthday. We have seen one another as teens, young adults, new mothers and professionals. We have celebrated, grieved and planned together. She has known each previous version of me, and kept space for future versions of me. Together, we have listened, laughed, cried and crafted our way through the unknown.
“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light,” Hellen Keller mused, and Jenn and I have done just that — sometimes from literal miles away, often with months between visits, but always together. Our friendship has been a constant throughout the many seasons we have weathered.
First, we hunkered down together through adolescence.
From becoming more than just big sisters and babysitters, to hiding in bathrooms to escape boys, to beach trip photo shoots to document our dresses flowing through the wind and surf, we survived the teen years with tears and laughter, melodrama and mixed emotions.
Then, we made it through our college years in close proximity, parallel-play adulting through hard lessons and bittersweet moments. Marriage, motherhood and careers came next, full of celebration, disappointment and perseverance. Now, we are toeing the threshold of another life phase: still mothers and caregivers, balancing career and daily family life, watching the ones we love grow up, age and experience new seasons of their own.
In this season, though, we are also rediscovering what brings us joy, what can be stripped away and how we find and build and craft a fulfilling second half of our lives. I am glad we will do this together.
Through it all, we will laugh and cry and support one another because that’s what women do, and we are blessed to be part of a larger tribe of soul sisters who have helped us power through and relish all our seasons. As Jane Fonda described it, “Women’s friendships are like a renewable source of power” — and she is absolutely right. One coffee date, one group chat at a time, we renew and encourage, laugh and listen, each of us navigating our own challenges alone but together. Happy birthday to this friend of my heart — may she always know how much joy and strength she brings to the world just by being in it.
This is what I know my daughter, my sweet Adeline, is building at this stage of life, even without really knowing it. The friendships she has now, the friendships yet to come, the friendships rediscovered years from now — the women in her life who are girls, young women with her now, but who will become the ones to rely on, to laugh and cry with, to remind her who she is and who she wants to be through every life season — she is building her tribe. Happy 17th birthday to this firecracker, this determined, beautiful, crazy-smart daughter of mine.
