Last week, I went to the movies with two girls I have known for almost as long as I can remember.
Dawn and Lisa grew up across the street from us, and their family had three girls just like ours, almost perfectly matched by age. I was a year older than Dawn, although we were both March babies; my sister Toni and Lisa were in the same class, and our younger sisters, Nikki and Jill, were the same age. Our moms were friends too, talking on the phone or sitting together over coffee while the six of us ran back and forth across the street like both houses belonged to all of us.
We played Barbies and board games, kickball and basketball and kick the can, and spent entire summer days riding our banana-seat bikes around town thinking we were complete badasses. We knew each other’s parents and grandparents, and our lives were intertwined before we were old enough to understand how special that would become.
My first sisterhood, though, was right at home with Toni and Nikki. The three of us share the kind of built-in history that only sisters can because we didn’t just hear the family stories—we lived them together. Now we’ve become the memory keepers of our family, reminding one another of the people, places and stories that made us who we are. We became aunts to each other’s children, and now that our kids are grown, another generation of family stories is being made while the three of us are still here remembering where we came from and showing up for one another.
Back when we were kids, showing up could be a little more literal. When the tornado sirens went off, my sisters, Mom, and I ran across the street to Dawn and Lisa’s house because they had something we didn’t—a basement.
More than 45 years later, Dawn and Lisa and I went to see The End of Oak Street, which I had somehow determined was going to be a good scary movie.
It was not, and it was decided I have lost movie-picking privileges in the future.
We were the only people in the theater, which was fortunate for everyone involved. Dawn had smuggled her leftover pizza inside her big purse and was sitting in the dark eating it like a little pizza gremlin, while the three of us became our own version of Statler and Waldorf from The Muppets, except there were three of us and we were providing a full-volume running commentary on one of the dumbest movies we had ever seen.
There were dinosaurs. There were feathered dinosaurs. People kept making spectacularly stupid decisions while we yelled instructions at the screen, and at some point, a dinosaur ate somebody’s dad. Oh, and how could I forget the unnecessary dinosaur mating scene…where the dad posed for a Polaroid moment…I mean, why?! We also spent a considerable amount of time wondering what in God’s green earth had happened in Anne Hathaway’s career that led her here.
Then we realized Ewan McGregor was in it too. Obi-Wan Kenobi. What are you doing here, sir?
The movie was terrible, but we absolutely got our money’s worth because we laughed.
Somewhere in the middle of all that ridiculousness, I was reminded how lucky I am to have women in my life who have known me through nearly every version of myself.
A week earlier, I had almost skipped another gathering because I had things to do and my house needed cleaning, but instead, I went for coffee with my mom, Dawn and Lisa’s mom, Dawn, and my cousin Bridget, who has always been more sister than cousin. What was supposed to be a quick cup of coffee turned into one of those conversations that leaves everybody feeling a little lighter afterward.
My besties Michelle and Tracy came into my life in middle school and high school and have been my sisters from different misters and mothers ever since. They live a couple of hours away now, but we are still part of one another’s everyday lives through reels, GIFs, memes, inspirational quotes, good news and the occasional full-blown venting session. When the stars align, we have our slumber-party weekends with pizza, wine, charcuterie served on a penis-shaped board, and what we lovingly refer to as cackles and therapy.
Then there is Anita, another bestie I have known my entire life and the one who lives closer to me. She will show up at my door when she knows I’m having a hard time because sometimes I don’t need advice; I just need a hug. We’ll go for a cruise and get some ice cream, find somewhere to sit under the stars and moon and talk about life, or act completely stupid together and laugh until it hurts.
Anita was also the friend who went with my mom and me to see Practical Magic 2, and maybe that’s part of why I’ve always loved that story so much. Sally and Gillian have each other, but there are also the aunts, the daughters and eventually other women who are welcomed into the circle. When life gets bigger than one woman can handle alone, the circle closes around her.
I think real-life sisterhood works that way too, except mine probably looks less like one perfect circle and more like a giant Venn diagram. I have my sisters and they have their people; my friends have sisters and friends of their own; my cousins have their circles, my mom has hers, and our daughters are building theirs. Those circles overlap, so sometimes an extra sister gets pulled into mine and sometimes I get pulled into someone else’s. We borrow each other’s sisters, friends, moms, daughters and cousins until it becomes a little difficult to remember exactly whose circle belonged to whom in the first place.
Maybe that’s the best part, though. There’s always room for one more woman in the Venn diagram.
Mine includes my grandmas and my mom, the women who first showed me what it meant to show up for one another; my sisters, my daughter and now my daughter-in-law; my mother-in-law and sister-in-law; my cousins and aunts; and the childhood friends who became family. Some were given to me by birth or marriage, some lived across the street, and some I collected along the way.
These are the women who know the backstory, so I don’t have to spend twenty minutes explaining why something matters. They know my family, my husband and my kids; they know where I came from and they know my crazy, but they also know when I’m hurting, even when I’m pretending I’m fine.
They’re the women who show up with groceries, paper products and lasagna when your dad dies, and they’re the faces you see walking into the funeral home that make you crumble because your soft place to fall has arrived. They’re also the women who show up at your son’s wedding when your heart is so full of joy you can barely contain it.
They’re down for all of it.
I didn’t know when I was a little girl running across the street with my sisters and Mom because the tornado sirens were going off that I was already learning something I would understand much better decades later.
When the storms come, women need women.
We need our girls. We need the girls who know us through every season—the ones who remember who we were, know who we are, and show up for all of it.
The storms. The celebrations. The heartbreak. The ridiculousness. The laughter. The memories. The sisterhood.
We need our girls
Find yours. Love them. Show up for them.
Anyway—Off We Go 
© 2026 Erica Shoemaker. All rights reserved.
#MondayMoments#AnywayOffWeGo#WomenNeedWomen#Sisterhood#FemaleFriendship#FindYourCircle#ShowUpForYourPeople
