To The Sister-Friends Who Save My Life
Though 2025 has been hard, I am proud to be navigating the challenges with a grace I couldn’t have imagined even two years ago. In last month’s post, I shared a list of strategies that have allowed me to build the most resilient version of myself I’ve ever known. That list included “nurturing relationships that feel healing. When I wrote that, I was talking about my girls, my friends, my right-hand women.
I am surrounded by a sisterhood that has held me down and lifted me up, and I owe them everything. Unfortunately, I have not figured out how to pull the stars down from the sky, wrap them in satin bows, and place them in the hands of these women I call my sisters, so these words will have to do.
This is my open letter to the friends who save my life.
To my sister-friends,
I cannot imagine what I did in my past lives to deserve you, but I must have been a saint. It’s the only explanation for why the universe has been so generous about placing an angel like you in my life. You may not have wings or a halo, but your pure heart, kind spirit, and fierce love are truly beyond this world. I consider it one of my greatest blessings that you share all of that with me. So, I want to thank you.
Thank you for holding me together with your relentless softness and tireless love.
Your life isn’t perfect. You are carrying burdens and healing traumas of your own. But that has never stopped you from opening your arms to lighten my load. And you have never—not once—made me feel heavy for needing your shoulder to lean on. I am standing because you have not let me fall.
Thank you for reminding me that I am both easy to love and worthy of that adoration.
There are times I have questioned if the abandonments and betrayals I’ve experienced were my fault. I have never been able to sit in that doubt for very long because you always love me like it is the most natural thing in the world. With you, I am seen, embraced, celebrated, and protected, always and in all ways.
Thank you for celebrating my good days and showing up for me on my bad ones.
It’s easy to stand with people in their sunshine. It’s much harder to stick around for the storms. But you have never run from my lightning and thunder. Instead, you offered me the shelter I needed to make it through. Late night phone calls, last-minute sleepovers, tear-stained hugs, “don’t worry, I got it.” You have never left me out in the rain.
Thank you for seeing I was breaking before I was broken and keeping me whole.
I am proud. I don’t like to ask for help or admit that I’m struggling. When I’m low, I self-isolate and pretend that I am okay. You see through the bullshit, clock the unusual silences, notice my dimming light. You’ve taught me that it’s safe to let you know that I’m breaking because you’re determined to help me put myself back together.
I don’t know where I’d be without you. I don’t want to find out. My life is better because you are in it. You have given me the purest love—one that isn’t bolstered by romance or shaped by blood relation. You have shown up in my life, decided I was your kind of person, and intentionally worked to make this bond last.
Life is busy. It is hard. There is so much you could be doing with your time and energy. But amidst it all, you have made time to love me back to life. I do not take that for granted. I am eternally grateful for your friendship.
I will do everything I can to love you with the same ferocity; to stand in your rainstorms and shelter you from life’s downpours; to catch you when you stumble and lift you when you fall. And when life smiles on me again, I will make sure you get to bask in that light too.
Because your sisterhood has made life worth living when I struggled to find other reasons to go on. Thank you, a million times over.
All my love,
Talia
I share this letter publicly for a few reasons. First, these women have loved me out loud, and I want to honour them in kind. Thank you for reading and bearing witness.
Second, the truth of sisterly love and the power it has to breathe life should be no secret. I want the world to see and celebrate the way that women carry each other through. Female friendship is literally a factor for longevity. We should all be loud about it.
And, finally, I know I am not the only woman who has been held together by the love of her sisters. This letter is for my friends, but it is for yours too. If you’ve been looking for the words to thank your sister circle for saving your life, I invite you to use mine if they feel right.
