Last night, I sat in the living room of a stranger. Surrounded by eleven other strangers. All women. None the same.
Awkward at first? Perhaps. Awkward much? No. Awkward long? Absolutely not. We are women, after all….you can just refer to the drunk girls in the bathroom scenario, lest you need a reminder of how we operate. This particular group is filled with writer women. (C)reator women. Broken women and healing women alike. Imperfect. Scarred, bruised, covered-in-road-rash women. Road rash worn proudly, like the beauty queens wear their fancy sashes. Our sashes, like most, stitched together from the fabric of loss and laughter, wild nights, lonely mornings, crushing heartache, young love and old love and truck loads of mistakes. All those glorious mistakes - they make the loveliest road rash sash. And every single one of these women wore their sash. Even the most goddamned delightful baby among us - she wore her sash too.
We wrote. We read. Some caught up, others got filled in. We laughed, some cried. We all communed - this wacky, hodge-podge, scraped up and scraped together coven - in our real-life sashes. Our sashes, diverse. Different. And yet, the same. The same because they are ours. The same because we each and all wore and displayed our road rash sash.
There were moments of sash straightening. There were also moments of just gentle and quiet acknowledgement that one’s sash is, indeed, slightly rumpled right now. We see your rumpled sash, yet do not possess the type of iron capable of smoothing it in this very moment. But we see it. And we have also worn our own wrinkly sash, with the impossibility of a quick fix. The seeing is everything though.
This lovely little coven of quirky, wise, worn, loved and loving Mother group of women, gathered in a holy circle, seeing and straightening our road rash sashes, offering up our very own sacred selves and sampling the other selves like a first taste of a good Cab, felt like the kind of home that cannot quite be named. Because it isn’t a place. The home that houses the out-of-the-closet road rash sashes lives not at an address. Rather, it runs through us and by us and with us. It is delightfully unquantifiable, but you’ll know that home as soon as you walk through its door. And you can sit in it, but-ass naked, wrapped only in your sash. And you’ll be safe.
The next time you need a lifeboat, grab a woman instead of an oar. It feels like a miracle.
This is a true story. Not a full story, but a true one. Born of a two-day writing session with a group of women, who were, until that first night, strangers to me. We had twelve minutes to write on the prompt “It felt like a miracle”. Those few paragraphs above were my offering. And it did, in fact, feel like a miracle. It felt like a real, true miracle. Twelve women, amongst them a baker, a booking agent, a professor, a gardener, and even a sorority girl - all writers, all (C)reators, in some fashion or another. Each and every one of them wore their acceptance on their sleeve. They left their judgement at home. Maybe they don’t even own any judgement, this group of wacky Mother women. Perhaps they just threw the judgement out with the skinny jeans some time ago. More than likely, they just realized, that like the skinny jeans, the judgement is tight and uncomfortable. Getting it right and fucking it up enough will do that to a woman, I think. It’s actually the most redeeming factor of middle age, I think. It may even be the miracle I wrote about - this acceptance thing. There is remarkable power in the sharing of the road-rash sash.
The sash is the keeper of the magic. It is the mother and the daughter, the fat and the skinny, the thriving and the destitute. The sash is a patchwork of every victory and every shortcoming, every bad decision and every saving grace. It greets you wherever you stand and warmly announces “Come as you are”. And it never loses interest. Wearing and sharing the sash is honest to God mother business. You are safe here. With your past and your regrets, your uninvited shame and guilt. You are beautiful here. With your chipped tooth, your mismatched socks, your disheveled hair. Come as you are. Crooked, wobbly, faulty-to-the-stars child, just come as you are. Real mother shit. Make no mistake, being enveloped in the right circle of women is akin to the same lusciousness as crawling up into your Grandmama’s lap.
I know this to be true because I have always found them. There is some innate radar inside me, some instinctual sensory for humans that encourage me to come as I am. If I am the moth, they are the lampshade. I am happy to just buzz around inside this guarded, people structure - practically drunken in the wholeness that acceptance invites. The need inspires the outcome, even if it’s not deliberate. We somehow always find that which we seek. And I find the mamas. Even if they’re not mine, even if they don’t have their own children, even if they are male - I have always, miraculously found the ones who mother and guide. The ones who warmly announce “Come as you are. In your road-rash sash”.
My little moth wings, built strong and resilient, from these mother covens through all my years - they’ve held me up pretty well, I’d say. And they still carry me straight to the light of quirky, loving and authentic mother-women. And I gladly hop right on their unholy bandwagon. It’s safe there - spacious and airy, free and snug, simultaneously. And I can just come as I am. And that is plenty.
The next time you need a lifeboat, grab a woman instead of an oar. It feels like a miracle.
Come as you are.
Wow. Road rash sash. And boy did I feel it. 👏👏👏