my Didis
A few days ago, I had a beautiful realisation:
I feel held by my Didis (elder sisters) so often.
These are women whose art I turn to when I am feeling small and folded. They live inside songs, sentences, peculiar strokes. With the lightest contact, I feel so seen, known, and accompanied. And this intimacy was a revelation to me.
They feel so near. I don’t know them, yet I do. Just like a neighbor who keeps her door open, the aunt who presses a mango into your hand without asking what happened.
Their work is my medicine, my daily or monthly dose of aliveness. When I feel like a contracted ball, I return to them over and over again. Their tenderness tucked inside their work always saying you are not alone re— softens and unfurls me again.
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Do they know the role they play?
The invisible work of keeping others alive?
What they carved out of themselves, their own feelings, heat, and honesty. That is what creates the shelter. While reading, watching, listening to them, it feels as though I’ve entered a room where someone familial has been waiting for me all along.
There is a song, for instance, that has walked beside me through so many seasons and years. Unassuming song but it carries me every time I forget how to carry myself.
What a strange and holy thing to be held by women I may never meet, and to love them quietly, forever.
