The power of a smile

There is a picture on the bulletin board in my office. Often, when people come in and glance up at it, they ask why I have it up there, because it looks almost like an accidental photo. It isn’t well framed, neither of the girls in the picture are looking at the camera; they likely weren’t even aware the photo was being taken. But I kept this photo because in it, two of my closest friends, the girls I laughed with, whose hair I braided, who I had tea parties with and sleepovers where we'd eat so much we'd then lie on our sleeping bags and marvel at how much capacity our stomachs had to expand, the girls who went on to become the women who held me when my heart was broken, who packed up all my clothes in garbage bags when my longterm relationship ended and all I could do was stand helplessly by and cry, the girls who cheered me on when I graduated from university and when I got my first real job, these girls are in the picture and they’re laughing so hard there are tears welling in their eyes, and when I look up at this photo, I know, I believe, that I will be ok, that everything will be alright, because they are in my life. There is a power in friendship between women that surpasses all others. And we are so rich for it.