Nature and Nurture

Our fathers were brothers.

I’m a decade older than Tracy and Lori, we grew up in different parts of the world, our mothers never met and would have despised each other if they had, and we didn’t meet till 2009, and yet we are as familiar to each other as if we’d grown up in adjacent houses.

We rebelled against our conditioning as southern women. We turned out independent, hard-working, and persistent. We have loved and lost and loved again. We are ferocious as mothers, loyal as friends, responsible to a fault, resilient beyond reason. We were all born in the month of July. We’re the reliable elder sisters who stayed up late and made sure the doors were locked, the dishes were washed, the lunches were made, the dogs were fed, and the babies had clean diapers. Once on our own, we organized and ran things, we met deadlines, we finished what we started. People said we were strong, but we often cried ourselves to sleep.

Now we’re all reading Brené Brown and trying to wrap our heads around the concept that vulnerability is the route to connection.