We are Strong

As I sit here on this Saturday morning of Christmas break, with my 1980s sweatshirt quilt wrapped around me and a space heater humming at my feet, I feel like I want to write.  Probably because I just spent the last two hours reading.  Reading makes you want to write.  Or at least it does that magic for me.  Reading someone else's fantastically woven words inspires me to sit down and peck something out.  All full knowing, it won't be to the caliber of published works. 

 

But it's writing.  For me. 

 

And writing is a funny thing.  Sometimes I don't feel like I want to ever do that business again.  To sit here in this blue paisley chair and put any thoughts from my head down to this paper.  And then I go with that feeling and don't do it just for the sake of it.  But then it strikes again, the pull to make sense of an intangible train of thoughts.  And then I go with that feeling too and sit here with my space heater to say something. 

 

 

Which in this case is...

 

I love my book club. 

 

You want to talk about something that makes me feel inspired to read, write, and to live like I could jump off any risk at any moment?  Let's talk about book club then.

 

It's a sacred thing.  I don't toss that word around lightly either.  Sacred.  Sitting around a table or in a cluster of chairs or we could even sit on the floor, with that group of ladies...is magic. 

 

We had our annual Christmas party the Friday before all of the festivities started and this year proved to be as epic as all previous.  Complete with the Bison game on in the background playing to a vinyl records soundtrack of the old country of George Jones mixed in with the shatteringly beautiful Your Song by Elton John. 

This time of year is always bittersweet.  One celebration after another while the ever present nag of this the end of another year pulls at my heartstrings.  This party was the kick start to the nostalgic feeling of wrapping up the past 365 days.  All of us went around the table and reflected upon our favorite moments from 2013.  Our challenges and our triumphs and our misgivings came through, like they always do. 

 

It's a rare commodity, to be fully accepted and never judged and to put it almost unfairly simple, that is precisely what my book club is for me.  I often say things in book club or think things aloud in book club which I believed in my head would never see the light of day.  For I know those thoughts flying out of my mouth, have a safe spot to land.

 

It's a sacred thing.  Book Club.  At the end of every meeting, there is usually a mess of wine glasses and empty martinis and leftover bits of food and crumpled napkins but as we all put our coats on and shake our hair out of their collars, we are never a mess.  Quite the opposite, we are aligned and back to our core...ready to tackle the next month.  Because anytime we are given the full acceptance we all crave and so desperately need, everything else - all the little - quite frankly doesn't freaking matter.  

 

For we have been reminded we are strong.  Strong women who can and will do anything.