It’s Tuesday and I’m bucking a little trend today, and making this Throwback Tuesday! Why? Because I can, and because this post got me thinking. It got me thinking about the village of colourful characters that make up our life, and that one time in a flat on a hill where two gals had a barrage of great ideas and a litany of funny stories to tell.
I’ve been thinking about Sheena a lot recently, as our friendship and connection has taken on a zillion different mediums over the years. We’ve been through what feels like a million metamorphoses, and yet the easy nature of how she and I talk to each other stays the same. She says it on her blog so well, when she describes me as “Cath – my ex-housemate, soulmate and sharer of womb in another lifetime. We’ve been in each others lives forever, we just didn’t know it”.
It always makes some people’s eyebrows shoot up when we tell them that we had never truly met, in person, before deciding that we’d like to be housemates. Hah. Truth is, what started as mutual blog stalking, turned into Facebook messaging, and then I actually think I invited her to live with us via a blog comment, that mentioned lavender and baby powder. But, let’s back up a bit…
My friendship with Sheena started with a simple Facebook message, after we’d “mutually stalked” each other online, thanks to the then-little world of blogging in SA. Back then, there were very few bloggers in South Africa, and we all sort of found each other through the Queen, Tertia. Sheena and I shared our stories with each other, without inhibition, because we both knew that blogging was therapeutic for us. We’d laugh at each other’s chaos and calamities, and commiserate together over our sad moments. We had written a hilarious history book together, full of quips and private references, long before we’d even met.
When I was in my teens, my dad used to tell me how the poetry I’d write and the graffiti I emblazoned on my wardrobe was my “primeval swamp”, because, from there, I’d hone my craft and learn to write. For me, I think the primeval swamp became blogging, and from it, grew not just my career, but my village too. Sheena, for me, has always been – and always will be – the head chief of that village.
Our time living together was peppered with laughter, fighting over how to hang the laundry (yes, really) and, as young adults trying to find their place in the world, we would talk long into the night about our respective hopes for charting our ways through life.
We’d laugh over our fears of being alone for the rest of our lives, and how we’d probably never “settle down”. Sheena taught me not to doubt my inner voice – she reminded me not to let anyone question my parenting, unless they had a damn good reason to. Sheena stuck with me as I faced a horrible time in our life, and she helped me laugh at it, because… “the best thing you can do to get past something that scares you, is poke fun at it”. Sheena was a friend to me at the worst of times, and another mom to my kid when she needed a circle.
Of course, we were never going to live in our little big flat on the hill forever. We’d talked about our dreams and hopes, the futures we would create. And then the time came where we needed to stop talking about them, and start making them.
The rest, as they say, is history. Sheena’s gone on to create the career we always knew she would, and marry the love of her life (turns out, he was actually not just around the corner, but a little bit more inland…). I’ve gone on to be the writer she believed I always would be, even when I did not believe it myself, and to have the family unit I dreamed of, but had sometimes deemed impossible. Sheena would always believe in my dreams for me, when I could not. She still does.
While we live in different places now, and our lives have the hue of the dreams we’d dare each other to dream at 2am, over boxes of tens and laughter… yet, the essence of who we are remains. Life changes came at us and we at them, like cheese on toast. But us? Our village is exactly as it always was, just bigger. Our life in the little big flat on the hill was colourful and sometimes so noisy. But from colour and chaos, has been built a village. Thank you, funny girl on the Internet, for helping me believe in the village.
I’m tagging Sheena to share her story on how life has changed since we lived in that little big flat on the hill. YOU should get involved too, because BrightRock are looking for your #LoveChange story.
Sheena replied to my post here and it’s BEAUTIFUL!
Are you a budding writer? Then #LoveChange and win!
BrightRock loves change and now, they’re looking for your big change story. Share your story about your experiences with one of Life’s biggest Change Moments – whether it’s Landing that Job, Tying the knot, Starting a Family or Making a Home – and you could win R2 000 in cash and the chance to become a regular contributor on BrightRock’s exciting Change Exchange. It’s an asking, learning, sharing, changing space – packed with tips and tools to help people live through, and even love, life’s greatest Change Moments. I love reading each piece as they’re published, because life – even though I hate change haha! – has taught me that Change Moments are what make life move forward!
Here’s how to win:
Submit your #LoveChange story – of no more than 650 words via the “Your Story” tab on the Change Exchange. Feel free to upload a pic to go with it, or include a link to an Instragram pic or YouTube video. You’ll find all the competition rules on the Change Exchange. Get writing folks, because this is a damn good way to kickstart your dream!