Since my last blog I’ve been thinking a lot, appreciating all those who said it helped their grief to read about mine. I guess I’m being a bit feminist, but it inspired in me the notion to consider all the “sisterhoods” we women inhabit. The picture above, circa 1978, records the three married female students in the Beta class of the Carr School of Nursing at Harding University. We were “sisters” in the journey to complete our education as baccalaureate prepared registered nurses. We studied together, laughed together, cried together, doubted we would ever finish together. We are still dear long-distance friends.

Then I think about my sisters in Christ. Believers bonded together by a common faith in Jesus Christ and followers of his teachings. Prayer partners, prayer warriors, teachers, mentors. We comfort and encourage each other. The elderly model Christian womanhood for the younger and the younger for the even younger. Then, suddenly, at some point comes the realization that we have reached the age of being the “core” of the local church, as elderly saints pass the mantle of leadership to us.

Of course, there are biological sisters. I have none. But I have a beloved sister-in-law who would do anything for me. She has always welcomed me into the family as true family, not just some interloper that she tolerates because her brother (thank the Lord) loves me! She is one of the most gracious, kind, thoughtful, compassionate, and hard-working individuals that I have ever known.

There is the sisterhood of nursing. We share a special bond, one of seeking to heal and comfort, protect and advocate for our patients. (People say “clients” now, but that just seems wrong–we are caregivers and they are patients!) Our humor is sometimes more than a little dark. We can spot manipulation from a hall away. We work as partners with the medical caregivers who share in our goal of helping people work through the reality of healing or face the inevitable death of this body. We cry together when we see suffering that we cannot “fix”, and we grieve together when the loss of some newborn or child or dear nursing colleague or “special” patient dies. We are a special sisterhood, seeing life both at its beginning and its end, privilege to the most private moments of our patients’ lives.

We mustn’t forget the sisterhood of friendship. Life would be such a drag without it!Friends laugh together, have fun together, commiserate with each other, support each other, acknowledge each other as special people in their world. Our lives would be forlorn and lonely existences without our friends. There are lifelong friends, like the two pictured above (I am the one on the far right.) Months may go by without a word, but the conversation seems to pick up just where it left off with each text or call or, strange concept, handwritten note. I am grateful to have multiple sisterhoods of friends–work friends, church friends, old school friends, forever friends.

Most of the comments I have received on my last blog belong to a special sisterhood–the sisterhood of loss of a loved one.  There are many “focus” groups within this sisterhood. Some have lost children–fatal illness, tragic accident, suicide, accidental overdose. Many have lost husbands, that life partner, love of one’s life, that made one whole, but now left behind as the lone part of the pair that should have lasted forever.Some have lost parents–cancer, heart disease, the many maladies that tear down our bodies. Some losses have come in the very aged, a slow, drawn out, wasting away. Some have come in the form of dementia that robs one of the loved one’s self, while their body lives on. Some losses are sudden, striking without warning, totally unexpected–accidental or sudden death. Some have lost siblings, the quality of the relationship filling one either with happy memories of childhood together or sadness over bonds broken by some foolish misunderstanding, stubbornness, or neglect and time wasted.

I guess (hope, strive, long) to belong to the sisterhood of writers. The ones for whom therapy comes in the form of the written word. We have to record our thoughts and share them in some format, sometimes to entertain, sometimes to comfort, sometimes to just share our humanity with the unseen reader world. We long to connect with the reader, to stimulate a response, to open a window into ourselves as we express our thoughts.

I wonder, female readers, how many of these sisterhoods find you in their roster? I’d love to hear about more sisterhoods, because I’m sure many others are out there, living, breathing entities that make life more bearable. And we are blessed to have them.