I was the only girl. I have two older brothers that protected me and taught me how to fart and think it's cool. This served me well in my childhood and still does to this day. But when I started my transformation into womanhood, they stopped understanding me. I mean, teenage boys cannot be made to understand sore boobs and periods right?

Around thirteen is when it started. My love for metal music turned to dreams of falling deeply in love with drummers and gutarists. I didn't want to get muddy any more. I wanted my hair spiral permed, dammit and I wanted to lay on my bed and feel deep and very serious feelings about my future marriage to 2/3 of Motley Crue. These things served to temporarily drive a wedge in our sibling relationship. My brothers just wouldn't ever understand me or the importance of perfectly applied blue liquid eyeliner.

In retrospect, this must have been the time I began searching the world over for my sisters. Because there comes a time in every teenager's life when it is obvious that no one in their life could ever really get them or feel their pain.

So I became proactive and searched for my tribe. One by one I found them. All thirteen of them.

Twenty-ish years later we are a pretty damn strong band of sisters. We are each others chosen family. Our love for each other has weathered just about every big life shitstorm you can think of. You know those times when you really can't get out of bed because your world has come crashing down around you? Divorce. Cancer. Death. Or the times when you are so full of joy you need others to explode with excitement alongside you? Weddings. Babies born. Promotions. New stomach flipping love. My sisters have been there. For all of it.

Integral to our love affair with each other is our yearly trip to the woods to commune with nature. Ha! Not really, well we are
in the woods but that’s about as natural as it gets. We spend our days watching movies and nights in the hot tub. Adorned with temporary tattoos, drag queen make up and wigs. Also glow sticks. Many many glow sticks.

We give each other gifts of our favorite things, just like Oprah. “YOU get a pair of rainbow socks! And YOU get a pair of rainbow socks! And YOU!”. 

Four days of awesome. Four days of no responsability. No rules. No expectations. No reality. Just play. 

We are ridiculous.

We dance. We roll around in the grass. And play with our camera settings.

Then we head home to the real world of sick kids, paperwork and wiping butts. We come back to the world ready once again to hold the line when a sister has a broken heart, a lost job or enters a shame spiral in the Target changing room. We are ready to link arms and form a blockade around a sister who needs protecting.  We eat our feelings together and then pick each other up off the ground and choreograph a dance routine to feel better. We are a family. A family of fourteen year old girls masquerading as responsible adults and mothers and professionals. 

And we totally have everyone fooled.