The Ties that Bind

Second Life Fashion for Life for Relay for Life benefitting the American Cancer Society ends June 20th, 2014

Dress: Miamai, Dalida **FFL** . Shoos: Miamai, Jelly Summer **L’Accessories** . Glasses/Grape Leaf: Elysium, Junia **L’Accessories** . Hair: D!va, Kalli2 . Pose: Nantra .

This second blog is written about friendship and love between women and yes, there is a purpose. I don’t know if you know, but for this Fashion For Life, Squinternet Larnia the designer for Donna Flora has items being sold in the Fashion For Life event. I am sure most of you remember Squinternet, she was a friend to some of us, known by most of us, but to each of us whether friend or acquaintance we know right about this time last year she lost her life to cancer. I think few know the pain of the loss of Squinternet more than Monica Outlander of Miamai and for this event, for her friend Squinternet, she has released several items in the Donna Flora line created by Squinternet and Monica together with 100% of the sales of the outfits going to the American Cancer Society. 100%. You give to the American Society every Linden you pay so please, go buy this line, buy it all if you can. But, that’s not what this blog is about, this blog, as I said is about friendship and women. Love.

Dress: Donna Flora, Doris peacock **FFL** . Hair: Vanity Hair: Ma Belle . Necklace: GizzA, Peacock .

I once overheard the comment, “Yeah, well, you get two women together and it’s like bitch central.” I could have told him he only needed one woman, me, but my thoughts were unimportant what I realized to be true is the important fact, people diminish the real power and strength of female friendship, which is either supposed to descend into some kind of perverted male’s view of a lesbian love scene porn fantasy or be dismissed as meaningless or be re-written as a story of competition. But the truth is, friendships between women are often the deepest and most profound love stories, but they are often discussed as if they are ancillary, “bonus” relationships to the truly important ones. Women’s friendships outlast jobs, parents, husbands, boyfriends, lovers, and sometimes children. Ask my friends, they know it as do many of you.

My friends stood with me in the middle of the scary medical ordeal last Fall, they knew they couldn’t take away the pain of the experience, but promised to be there when I emerged on the other side of the pain of surgery and when the grief hits that my of dreams of having children is gone. I felt them, every day, supporting me when I was sad, walking for me when I no longer could. Smiling with me, when I found my smile again, and going through it all again, one more time, when my father past away rather suddenly in December. It is not an exaggeration to say that I would not have survived, that I will not survive, without my girlfriends.

Somehow it is always easier to figure things out when you are not involved in them, when you watch them from afar, and one day as I read Momo’s (Monica’s) blog post about Squinernet on Miamai’s website and as the days grew closer to the day Squinternet lost her fight with cancer, I realized I was given a view of what a true friendship could be. I saw, on that afternoon, that it’s possible to transcend the limits of your skin in a friendship. A friend can take you out of the boxes you’ve made for yourself and burn them up. This kind of friendship is not a frivolous connection, a supplementary relationship to the ones we’re taught and told are primary – spouses, children, parents. It is love. Support, salvation, transformation, life: this is what women give to one another when they are true friends, soul friends, what the Irish call anam cara.

Mo anam cara, my soul mate. All these years, I had it wrong, it’s not the relationship of a man and woman, but of the love of two people who when thrown together their lives just get a little bit better, brighter, and filled with peaceful joy. It’s what the women do for one another in real relationships with real consequences in real time, every day, what my friends do for me. We help one another other live and sometimes, we watch – and help – one another die. That’s what Monica Outlander has done for Squinternet Larnia, she has allowed her to live for one more day and to die just as gracefully as before. She has helped Squinternet help the other victims who will fight the ravages of cancer in years to come. A more noble honor of a friendship I’ve never seen.