Day 142 – April 14, 2006

There is something spiritually healing about a slumber party.

And I’m not saying that ironically, though obviously I am also exactly the kind of woman who would say something like “slumber party theology” with a straight face and mean it completely.

But really.

There is something about women together, at night, in softness, in laughter, in mess, in honesty, in sleepover energy that feels bigger than the moment itself. It feels like a kind of feminine language the world never quite knows what to do with because it doesn’t perform well for people who only understand intimacy when it comes dressed as romance, sex, motherhood, or therapy.

But women together like this? Friends. Family. Girlishness with depth. Humor with love under it. Beauty and nonsense and emotional intelligence and probably someone half yelling across the room while another person is laughing too hard to breathe properly?

That is sacred to me. And today I keep thinking about how deeply held I felt. Not managed. Not entertained. Held. That’s different.

Because there is a kind of tenderness that only happens in the presence of women who are not trying to own you, fix you, flatten you, or turn your vulnerability into some weird little power transaction. Women who simply know how to be with you. Fully. Correctly. Without asking you to become less complicated first.

That does something to me. Especially after the year I’ve had.

Because after violation, after disappointment, after all the ways reality has taught me to read every room twice and some people three times, there is something almost shocking about ease. Real ease. The kind that doesn’t make your body tense. The kind that lets you laugh from your stomach instead of your social instincts. The kind that doesn’t require beauty to come at the cost of safety.

That is rare. And I felt it.

I felt it in the energy. In the love. In the silliness. In the softness. In the complete and utter absence of having to explain who I am before I’m allowed to exist fully in the room.

That last part might be the biggest gift of all.

Because the women in my life do that for me. They make room without making it weird. They love me in a way that feels both grounding and expansive. They let me be funny and hot and emotional and thoughtful and strange and still somehow adorable without reducing me to any one version of myself.

That is no small thing. And honestly, it’s hot.

Not in the obvious way. In the deeper way. In the way that feeling safe enough to be fully yourself around other women makes a whole body soften. In the way laughter can turn into emotional repair without anyone announcing it. In the way a room full of women can become its own little counter spell against the world’s stupidity.

Roger, for his part, took the gathering very seriously, by which I mean he seemed fully convinced this was an elite event held in his honor, and that his responsibilities included emotional support, room supervision, and looking devastatingly handsome while everyone adored him appropriately.

He was not wrong.

And maybe that’s part of what makes this whole thing so beautiful. The utter ordinariness of it. A sleepover. Women staying the night. Love moving around the room in casual clothes. Nothing grand. Nothing performative. Just closeness. Shared air. Shared time. Shared womanhood in all its chaos and grace and ridiculous brilliance.

That kind of thing saves people. Maybe not all at once. Maybe not permanently. But it saves something. Its saved something in me. And I think I needed that more than I realized.

Chaos in one hand. Grace in the other.

And the deeply sacred, slightly ridiculous, absolutely real theology of slumber parties and making the world feel softer again.