After I post this today, I’m heading to the airport to pick up my critique partner, Linda Castillo. She lives in Amarillo and is flying in for a day just for a “sisterhood fix”. We’ll be joining with another critique partner, Jenna Mills, and doing our traditional dinner at Olive Garden (soup, salad, breadsticks—always!), perhaps with a glass of wine. We’re also going to drink some champagne from the infamous plastic cowboy boot mugs, to celebrate some very big deals which are working for Linda, and just being together. The champagne in the cowboy boots is another tradition, started with the first book sale in our then-all-unpublished critique group. The sale was mine, and the year was 1998. When my CPs looked for plastic champagne glasses to go with the bubbly they’d purchased, all they could find were the boots. Now, however, we wouldn’t dream of celebrating without those silly boot mugs.

But more importantly, we wouldn’t dream of missing the “Great Sisterhood rituals”, ones I believe all women perform with other women, across the world, and—who knows?—perhaps across the universe. There’s just something in our makeup that leads us to create bonds with other women. Perhaps it’s our intuitive or nurturing tendencies, or maybe our openness to our feelings, but we women innately reach out to one another, especially in times of great emotions, be they joy or sadness.

I grew up with two brothers, so I never had the experience of a biological sister, or the quibbling and the love-hate relationship sisters seem to share. But I had three best friends, and we were inseparable through the school years. One of those, Beth, has reconnected with me, and we still correspond. I added another friend in the sixth grade, Janet, who became my closest friend, and still is, after forty plus years and with many miles between us. She and I are so in sync that when we see each other, even after months apart, it’s like we were never separated. When we get together, it’s sixth grade again (telling dirty jokes and laughing uproariously), or our first crushes on guys, our first kisses, our marriages (we were maid of honor and matron of honor for each other), the birth of our children—and the death of our mothers. Two other friends from high school and early adulthood—Debbie and Jennifer—have also remained very close despite both of them living across the country (and in other countries). These lifelong friends and I walk this Earth in total kinship and understanding.

It’s the same with my critique partners. We might go weeks or months without actually seeing each other, but that bond never wavers. If one of us hurts or is troubled, the others send support and encouragement and love. It is that same basic message of empowering love that fuels the romances we write and read. It’s just there, flowing out of us as naturally as a spring flows from the ground.

Some guys have bonding experiences with other guys, but it’s not the same. Because no matter how sensitive, aware, or self-actualized guys become, they’re just not tapped into that mystical goddess energy that connects women the world over. It’s innate within us, and it gives us a sense of oneness with other women that is superseded only by our bonds with our children. I’m not convinced even husbands can compete with this oneness, although they might come close.

We women are born into this Great Sisterhood—no initiation or secret handshake necessary. How wonderful, how glorious, how female!

Today I’ll drink champagne from a scratched plastic cowboy boot mug. And not only will I toast my critique partners’ amazing successes, I will also celebrate being a woman.

How many of you have special friendships that have endured time and distance?  Here’s to those friendships, and to all of you, members of the Great Sisterhood.

~ Catherine