Shout Out to the Ladies!

It's that time of year again.

Halloween is upon us.

I break out the Vampire Wine (Sip the Blood of the Vine" ha ha ha ha), make the Dracula truffles, post ridiculous things online like the Count's counting video from Sesame Street (love that guy).

  Mmmmmm...chocolates...

I am currently reading The Rules of Magic, the prequel to Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman. That also happens to be one of my favorite movies even though I know it doesn't follow the book very well. The Dovekeepers was the same. Didn't follow the book too closely, but the movie was phenomenal. I never liked that actress on NCIS, but I developed a love for her when I saw The Dovekeepers.

And it occurs to me, lots of my favorite movies and books celebrate women. Many of Alice Hoffman's books celebrate women and sisterhood, and she is one of my favorite authors. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Hot in Cleveland, The Golden Girls, and  Designing Women name a few more. Even Sex and the City, which got a little ridiculous. At its very core, it was a celebration of friendship and sisterhood. Women don't need to be related to feel close as family.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer boasts a strong female lead, but it also celebrates her sisterhood. Her circle of friends are the most important thing to her, and without her witchy friend Willow, she wouldn't have gotten as far as she did.

And one of my favorite scenes in Practical Magic is near the end, when Sally needs help banishing the evil spirit from her sister, Gillian. The elder aunts ask her, "Do you have any friends?" So Sally uses her daughter's school's phone tree to contact all the women she knows, and they band together, creating the circle needed to cleanse Gillian of the evil spirit of her boyfriend.

I may not be a witch, but I do have a sisterhood. And who says witchcraft is what is fabled in the books and movies? I use a broom, I live alone at the end of the block with several cats, and I'm pretty sure Puckett is a familiar.

Also, there is magic in my truffles.

I'm just saying.

Women need each other, I believe, to keep their sanity. A sisterhood is essential to a woman's emotional and mental health, and those women who say they don't need friends or they only get along with men because other women are nasty and catty, well, I feel sorry for those women. They are missing out on one of the most magical experiences living a mortal life has to offer. We all tear each other down, or make snide remarks about other women, and in recent events on the heels of the #MeToo movement, I start to wonder why we do this. And I am not innocent. I've done it, and I'm just as culpable.

But where does this come from? This catty, petty way of tearing other women down to make ourselves feel better or more desirable in the eyes of men? And it really does seem all in competition over men. I've been called a slut, a whore, a cocktease, a prude, and all by other women, usually because I had the nerve to smile/talk to/say hi to a man.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't hate men. I have a boyfriend and the coolest dad in the world. I have a brother who's pretty awesome and nephews. I love my friends' husbands, and my guy friends: The Cowboy, the Paleontologist. Men are great. And we cannot blame men for the discord among women. Most men are oblivious to such things. They want their food, their beer, a good game on TV, good sex, and to be treated with respect.

They do seem to be the root of the problem though, and generally, with some exceptions, through no fault of their own. Again, with some exceptions, women do this to themselves. I've had women friends drop me because they'd rather spend time with a man. I've had women I don't even know, have maybe spoken two words to, loudly proclaim to anyone who will listen that they hate my guts. I've had women tell my friends they dislike me because I flirted with their husbands and when said husbands were pointed out, I had no idea who they were. I've befriended ex-boyfriends' new girlfriends, and boyfriends' ex-girlfriends, and people think I'm insane.

Is this necessary? Is it just bad form anymore to be friendly to others without any agenda? Upon meeting new women I usually look for something I have in common with her in order to bridge a friendship. I want to be friends with everyone until they give me a reason to not want to be friends with them. I have encountered other women who look at all women with suspicion until proven otherwise. I find this sad.

So this Halloween, let's embrace the sisterhood. We all know how it feels to be a woman, and we have all experienced the same challenges. I know there are people out there rolling their eyes at the #MeToo movement, and I normally don't get involved in these social media campaigns myself. But there is one thing it has taught me, it's that nearly every woman I know has been the victim of some kind of sexual assault or harassment. She may not have outlined her experience, but she posted #MeToo.

And so did I.

We need to support each other in this, not tear each other down or victim blame or discredit someone's experience as being "lesser" than someone else's. For my own experience, I've spent years saying I should have known better and not gotten myself into the situation in the first place. I own my responsibility in what happened, but at the end of the day, maybe I should have known better, but he should have too.

The worst is when another woman tells me I had it coming, or that I deserved it.

We should not do this to each other.

Let's support each other. Let's embrace the circle and the sisterhood. Let's be those women in Practical Magic, who when Sally really needed them to save her sister's life - a sister many of them had cut down as a promiscuous threat - they banded together and rushed to her side. Instead of leaving Gillian to her fate and saying she deserved it because she should have known better or because she was a slut, they formed the circle and supported her, letting her know she was not alone.

Men are not the enemy, but other women aren't either. Instead women should be each others' allies in this mortal life that's hard enough without all of us turning on each other with hate and vitriol.

I thank God every day for my sisterhood. Some of them I haven't seen in months, talked to in years, but every single one of those women is precious to me. Every single one has had an impact in my life that I treasure. They are my family.

In the words of Alice Hoffman:

"Do as you will, but harm no one.
What you give will be returned to you threefold.
Fall in love whenever you can."

And I'll add my own words to it: "Eat as much chocolate as you want, enjoy fine wines, and always share both with your sisters."