When I started my first year at uni, I prayed and asked God for good friends. Partly due to my new-found anxiety around my ability to make friends in my semi-adulthood (I can be painfully awkward) and partly because my mother has always stressed the importance of having good friends (she never runs out of examples of the perils of having bad ones). So the prayer felt important to me, right alongside “God, please help me graduate cum laude“.

We will get to the friends thing in a second neh (what this post is really about)! But I just wanted to interrupt this transmission with an example of the power prayers we prayed (see above) because we did the cum laude things (and did them three times over – ahmen).

Anyway, in line with the wise old adage, umkhuleko unamandla (again, see above), I turned my little Lord-give-me-good-friends prayer into a habit. In the face of every major life transition, I would ask God for new friends to navigate the seas with and create lasting memories with. With time, I started to tweak the prayer a little bit – I started to ask God specifically for black, female friends.

Thereby eliminating men.

Ngiyabonga Baba, I am enough! 

And waai’ peepo!

They don’t know my struggles! 

Looking back, I am extremely grateful for the intentional focus on building strong relationships with black women in my life, even if, with some, it was only for a season. These friendships fundamentally shifted the way I engage with myself and my being in the world as a brown, female body.

Growing into black womanhood is an extremely traumatizing experience, best understood by those who are also wading through these waters. Coming fully into consciousness of the extent to which black, female being is disregarded and detested in all aspects of our society is more than a rude awakening. My life continues to be made bearable through relationships that anchor me in the truth of my identity as a beautiful, unyielding force, more than capable of re-imagining and re-creating a world in which I am at the center of the universe. These kind of relationships were particularly comforting in the awkward adolescent phases of my life.

Letting go of self-hatred and self-doubt continues to be the biggest and most arduous project of my growth-journey! Impostor syndrome always insists on being the shadow that casts itself over every light of achievement in my life. But no truth has been more powerful than the magnificent sun of black women’s affirmations, shifting every object blocking the light. I can recall many conversations that I have shared with close friends, usually over wine, where we have come together to exorcise the demon of not-enoughness that often stalks us into living lesser lives.

In the different places I have lived, in Johannesburg, Washington, DC, Kigali and Mauritius, black women have often convened to speak life over me in the fashion of Ezekiel prophesying in the Valley of Dry Bones.

In a world where whiteness and its standards work around the clock to choke our breath; where the violence of patriarchy threatens our safety and well-being and where male mediocrity does nothing less than thrive, we black women often stand right on the brink of insanity. I often send urgent WhatsApp texts (basically everyday) asking a black woman on the other end of the line to witness with me, cry with me, laugh with me, come and have a drink with me because maaaaan…this life! And I have never been disappointed. There is a deep understanding that these friendships we have are important to our mental and emotional survival.

Aside from being there for me through my deepest insecurities and my deepest hurt, black women have also been the best and most enthusiastic cheerleaders during times of triumph. My friends celebrate my wins literally like they are acts of God forming the universe out of nothing! Perhaps this is because of the knowing that we carry in our bones that every inch of ground one of us gains is a nod to our ancestors’ wildest hopes and dreams, and a promise that we are on the sure path to reclaiming it all.

In my absolute favourite quote from Beloved, Toni Morrison says it all:

She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.

Black-woman friends, you have been the most amazing, life-altering “YES” that God has given me. Thank you for lighting up my life with your stubborn, glorious magic. Thank you for holding up the sun.