Through the eyes of my younger self, I imagined what my 20s would look like and I can tell you- 26 felt a lot older back then. I remember thinking in college I had to get my bad decisions out of the way for when the adult switch flipped to on. And my time to get things pierced was slowly running out. Slowly and surely, you start to collect more concrete building blocks of who you will be and what your life will look like. For instance- I know that I have a job that supports me, I know I want to live in Chicago and I know who I am and who I want to be. Each of these entities have grown and bloomed throughout the years. Everything else—and even those things—are subject to change, sometimes with your permission and sometimes without. One thing that has never changed is the way that women have unknowingly helped heal me in this morphing of becoming. 

On the night of the election, I woke up in the middle of the night, coming down from being drunk from a work event, with a pounding in my head and a bad feeling in my stomach. I knew before I looked at the phone that the world for women was a little darker. I remember feeling as if I was mourning. I woke up the next morning and looked on tiktok to see thousands of other women feeling this betrayal and the same darkness over their head. That night I watched the Barbie movie and cried. The country had decided that a convicted felon and rapist was a better candidate than a qualified woman. 

I was in a meeting this week where I was the only female. We were talking about a male candidate who just had a baby and was being considered for a position that would take him across the country. The 3 men at the meeting joked that leaving his wife and newborn baby to spend 4 days of the week across the country sounded like the perfect scenario. As the only woman on the call, I reluctantly smiled while the men laughed. 

I can honestly go on and on about times being a woman has felt unfair, gross, cruel and sad. But I can give you even more times when being a woman feels powerful, strong, and healing. I recently read in a book that men created God because they couldn’t imagine that life would be created by a woman. Women have this secret language with each other that is given in a look, a hug and a listening ear that says “I am also feeling this. I feel this for you and me, and her and her.” 

Female friendships have been the foundation of my growth throughout the years. While boyfriends come and go, they are what I come home to. A house built from bricks and bricks of shared experiences, tears, and laughs. Where we know each other’s coffee (and taco bell) orders by heart and can recite stories that still make us laugh years later. I don’t know who I will be marrying, but I do know who will be standing besides me. 

I think about my hairstylist standing behind me as I catch her up on my life, I notice she washes my hair for longer than usual. I think about my two female coworkers sitting in my office while we talk about our shared experiences in failed relationships. We listen and reassure each other it won’t be like this forever. I think about sitting across the table from my best friend with a bottle of wine between us as we both finally cry for the first time in a long time. She’s used to being the strong one. I think about meeting my grandma as Marilyn rather than my mom’s mom. She talks to me about how she wishes she could have done what I’m doing right now when she was my age. When she was 26 she bought a drawing of Chicago from 1926, she is going to send it to me in the mail. Her 26 year old granddaughter, now living in Chicago. The healing. 

It’s easy to dwell on the hardships of being a woman. But I have never fallen and not been caught. And I owe that to the women who love me, and women who love themselves.