Ode to my friend

Ode to my friend

What is a woman?

What has she got that differentiates her from the girls and make her shine?

Her age? Her hardships?  Her bitter experience? Or her intelligence?

In life, you can grow old regardless of whether you have grown up mentally and spiritually.

You could hide under the bed for a year, not do anything for a year and still be older by one year.

Age then becomes just another number that only make the difference to the number of candles that your birthday cake has to accommodate.

In life, too, there will be ups and there will be downs, there will be hardship and there will be laughter. There will be moments to take your breath away and there will be moments you have to take a deep breath and march into the rabble.

We all have to go through this at some point in our lives. We bleed and we laugh. We cry and we shop like crazy.

 Then, what truly separate us into being either girls or women?

It is undeniable that we will each have different sets of experience and that there will be no two experiences exactly alike.

However, while we experience the different sunshine and different rainstorms, it is the woman who can still laugh in the rain, seeing the humour in the storm and smiling softly even through the tears.

It is easy to laugh through the sunshine, bask in contentment of the warm sun and run wholeheartedly with the joy of living on the warm grass of summer protected and enveloped in the golden rays of the sun.

When the rain comes in, however, it is the girls who cry over the wet dresses and lament with the howls of the cold wind and refuse to stand up in the bitter cold, preferring instead to wallow in the self-pitying puddle of their tears and rain.

It is in the rain that we see the difference.

When we are not blinded by the sunlight and the rain cleanses the earth, through cleared eyes, we see the woman.

So, cry a little, if you have to, my friend

 But let’s not hurt our hearts with all the what ifs and if only-s

And stand up again in the bitter wind wearing our hearts on our sleeves

To dance in the rain as if we see the sun shining

Then maybe we can become our own shining sun to shine through all our life to the end of our days.