What happens when friendship lasts?

Image credit: Ela Muñoz

A lot happens. Women friends offer support, provide learning opportunities, foster acceptance that goes beyond empathy and open up pathways you never knew existed. I have had the great fortune to create sisterhood with women in the Black Women’s Movement in the UK that continues to connect me to the struggles of others around the world. 

My friendships now span the world, whether in writing groups with members from East and West, North and South, or letter-writing friends in which we each look out for the post to arrive with our regular or occasional illustrated card, and sheets of folded script on blank paper. There are friends for me to sit around a table, with a glass of some libation, to discuss a book from the plethora of Pan African authors who live and write about countries and places I will never visit but am connected to through their storytelling. 

Then there are friends from educational institutions in which I have worked and students I have had the privilege of learning with in our classrooms, now grown and engaged in activities I could only dream of. There are those young friends, learning about themselves and the world and the then there are the elders, whose worlds continue to be fulfilling and creative, every day. Sometimes I have met friends only once in person, but we remain connected, knowing we will probably never meet again. The friendships in which there is no jealousy or envy, just admiration and a true desire that their lives continue without heartache are ones I continue to value. And when that is too much of an ask, and it is, we are just there for each other. 

There are friendships in which silence brings us close and others when noise, music, dance and the sounds of human life lived fully envelope and hug me in their warmth. There are friends who are travel companions to discover and rediscover places and share conversations well into the night and sometimes even until sunrise. There are friends whose close bonds in childhood last through separation, the distance of continents and time. Then, just when you think you’ll never meet again, there she is coming through a revolving door in a strange land, far away from your shared childhood home. You embrace and know that there is no time or space in friendship. Just sometimes, we have the honour of being there to accompany our friends out of this life when they reach the end. Their hand in yours, irrevocably seals the friendship.

I am grateful to each of you. Thank you for your unwavering friendship and sisterhood. 

What happens when your friendships last?