There is a version of sisterhood that gets talked about a lot.
It’s loud.
It’s affirming.
It’s framed as strength, support, solidarity.
And while all of that is true, it’s not the part I’ve been sitting with lately.
What I’ve been noticing instead is how sisterhood shows up when nothing is being asked of it.
Not when we’re rallying.
Not when we’re organizing.
Not when we’re fixing or encouraging or pushing through.
But when we stop carrying alone.
For many of us, sisterhood didn’t begin as choice.
It began as necessity.
We learned early how to read a room, how to hold space, how to translate pain, how to make ourselves useful. We learned how to be present for others long before we learned how to rest inside ourselves.
That kind of sisterhood builds capacity.
It also builds fatigue.
And sometimes, what we call “the power of sisterhood” is actually the quiet exhaustion of being the one who always holds.
What’s shifting for me now is a different understanding.
Sisterhood as shared weight, not shared responsibility for outcomes.
Sisterhood as witness, not rescue.
Sisterhood that doesn’t require explanation, performance, or proof of belonging.
The kind where silence is allowed.
Where nothing needs to be solved.
Where presence is enough.
There is something profoundly stabilizing about sitting with women who are no longer trying to impress one another with resilience.
Who aren’t narrating their strength.
Who aren’t rushing to name the lesson.
Just women, noticing what it feels like to put something down.
That, too, is sisterhood.
Not as a concept.
Not as a movement.
But as a practice.
A remembering that we were never meant to carry everything on our own.
And that being together doesn’t always mean doing something together.
Sometimes it just means staying.
What changes when sisterhood is no longer something you do—
but something you allow?
You don’t have to answer that.
You can just sit with it.