Rally: feisty verb, means; to call together for a common purpose, to assemble. To rouse or revive. To reassemble and restore to order.
These women. Dang, these women. They look like adorable Lululemon models (is that how the hell you spell that store? It's very brainfusing to me). One of them is going through a divorce from her fuckwad husband and finding her BIG ROAR, one survived brain surgery and is parenting 3 tiny children (nbd), and one is the sunshine hero for kids who have walked through the worst kind of hell.
We rallied to revive and restore order to ourselves, with each other's help.
We rallied. And it was good. My friend experiencing the divorce is fighting her way through it, head above the water, warrior shield gleaming, but as importantly, she's reaching out for help. She doesn't want to just not drown alone, she wants fellow swimmers. She doesn't want to have to create all her own armor in isolation, she wants craftsmen who can help her build and reinforce it and then remind her to pick it back up in those moments when it's hard to carry.
She sounded the horn so her tribe could gather, and I'm so impressed. I don't do that enough and I'm learning lessons from her. When I've had trauma with loss and hurt, I've withdrawn into myself and found a whole lot of unhelpful sad there. Humans are meant to live in community, especially women, I think. We need to force the Red Tent notion (1997 novel written by Anita Diamant about some of the big names in the old testament sharing "lady time" every month away from the rest of the tribe) because we live in our own private family pods of isolation now a days and don't have access to our women for support and education, like we once did.
BTW- no one sat on straw and menstruated during this sojourn. We sat in saunas and eucalyptus-scented spa rooms and didn't menstruate. I don't think. I'm pretty sure, but I guess I don't really know. Stop saying menstruate, Sarah. Anyway, it was crazy posh. There was a warm indoors waterfall. We felt like Oprah. Who doesn't menstruate, cuz she's, like 60. STOP SAYING MENSTRUATE. But I think we had similar conversations to the ancient women. We talked how to best raise our kids, manage our relationships, monitor our health, what exactly they might serve at the Mexican Sushi place nearby where it's so hard to get a reservation....
It was beautifully healing and empowering to be with these women. I'm so glad we rallied and so hopeful for the path our warrior is blazing through the pain. What a privilege it is to see how these women fiercely fight the obstacles that try to stop their progress or tarnish their dignity, and miraculous to see how they retain their grace and tenderness. I'm inspired and emboldened by how they're doing life.
(You're probably wondering. Yes, I am a good friend, so, of course, when my friend experiencing divorce first told us about it, I offered to have her ex killed. Obviously. She has respectfully declined all my assassination offers even though I keep telling her how discrete I am. So discrete, in fact, I just talked about it in a public post on the internet. But how funny would this paragraph sound read stiffly aloud in court by a prosecuting attorney and then read back by the court reporter while everybody in the room stared at me? Come on!)
So, we assembled and helped each other restore order, or make a new order within ourselves. We roused and revived. We drank rum banana drinks. We never found out whether Mexican Sushi means you're now allowed to put corn tortillas around guacamole and spicy tuna, but boy we hope so. It'll just have to live in our dreams until we rally again.
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