I’m just getting over the worst case of flu I have ever had…except for when I got my last flu shot back when I was a teenager. I rarely get sick, and when I do, I usually kick it on my own within a relatively short period of time. But it’s been over a week now, and I still feel like I have a touch of it, plus I’m run down.

Of course, it could be that my pushing myself too much has finally caught up with me, although I’ve been hearing a lot of stories about people getting wiped out by the flu.

When you’re lying in bed with a fever of 102 and then some, you start thinking about things. Some pretty weird thoughts can go through your head, but sometimes an insight will suddenly flash upon you, and you, all tired out and exhausted have neither the strength nor the inclination to run away from it.

This past week, while under the covers and with a cold wash cloth across my eyes, I got a sudden thought - “I’m alone.”

Truly. I’m a single mom. Okay, I have two adult children and friends…but I’m missing something. I’m out an entire rotation at work, I have a minor child in my care, and the bottom line is I’m on my own. My oldest daughter has a toddler, and she’s starting her new life. My son just turned 21, and he’s getting his life together. Neither one are with me any more. I’m not in a relationship and don’t care to be. I wondered, “Where’s my village?”

I thought about my sister, how much I missed having her around to pick up the phone and talk to. I thought about how my closest friends used to be women, how I always had strong female connection and support system. But somehow that changed when I got married all those years ago and became pregnant for the first time. My women friends were replaced with specific kind of women - other moms, and each one of us were bonded to one another only in as much as we shared motherhood. It was just different.

Somehow I lost my connection with and to sisterhood, that bonding that may or may not have included the shared experience as mothers, but existed through the entire experience of being female - that was the central focus, the hub of what united us together.

And I was missing it…

I didn’t realize just how much I was missing it, until I was wiped out, flat on my back by a viral lifeform I couldn’t see, but certainly felt its presence. Maybe I was telling myself I was really the superwoman I was pretending so hard to be. But in this vulnerable place, I saw just how much I longed to be a part of that kind of community again, how much my tired spirit longed for that support and comradery.

And I was going to have to create it. Why can’t we create the antidote to our own isolation? Why can’t we be what we need to one aonther?

So the very first day I was able to go outside the house, I called up a coworker, someone who I have come to know as very kind and thoughtful, and asked if she’d like some tea and conversation. We sat in her kitchen. I stopped with tea cup in mid air, as she looked at me and said she was in her house the other day, thinking about her son moving out very soon, and it hit her, “I’m alone.”

I smiled. “Yeah…I understand”, I said…and then we started talking.

Demian,
~DreamSinger - Healing Songs