Sister

A sister is the first description, the earliest description of who I am.  I was born into a family of sisters...not just one or two sisters but eight.  My memories of childhood are wrapped in sisters.  A group of girls becoming women who were fiercely trying to figure out who they were becoming and how they could stand. 

Growing up in a house of women shaped me into the woman that I am.  It also has allowed me to see the importance of women who are for other women, empowering them, cheerleading their lives, encouraging, speaking life to their life and praying for them. We are all strong with our own voice and opinion of life and how things should or shouldn't be done.  And there is value in that...and value in knowing that there is more than one way to do something, value in hearing voices that conflict with your own, value in listening to another's story.

After my daughter was born, in the quiet hours of her and I in the hospital room...I held her to my heart and told her that I know her, she is a sister like me; that we were in this together and I would fight for her and teach her to be a woman, a fierce woman and a sister among women. 

There is a greatness to sisterhood and I am grateful to stand, stand in the place that is mine. The place of encouraging, cheerleading, speaking life, empowering, listening, praying for and adding my voice to the voices of the women who were before me and to the ones who will come after.  The voices that say...we can do this, we are created for this, these abilities and talents that are at our fingertips and in our hearts and minds; they are great, they matter, you matter, I matter, we matter,