āThe obstacles to female friendship finally serve to remind us that friendship is ongoing. Befriending women means continuing to befriend others even after deep friendships may be lost, or working through the obstacles in the hope that a friendship will be able to continue.
Friendship is a process of ārepeated acts.ā In this sense, friendship is a habit that reoccurs in the face of betrayals, ruptures, and disaffection from women. It is a creative habit that doesnāt happen through wishful thinking but through arduous practice, through repeated acts. Repeated acts of friendship must fly in the face of the āparadise lostā of former friends.
There is an enormous amount of practical wisdom about friendship that can come from its failures as well as its successes. In the grip of failure, there is always the temptation to ask, āIs/was it worth it?ā Was it worth the time, energy, intensity of feeling, and the giving of Self?
When a friendship awakens a woman to the possibilities of a deeper life and then denies the fulfillment of those possibilities within the friendship, was/is it worth it? Would it have been better to have been left unaffected by a particular friendship, even if that particular alliance did not last? We might all take heart from Alice Walkerās words, spoken in the context of the civil rights movement but very applicable to the crisis of female friendship:
Part of what existence means to me is knowing the difference between what I am now and what I was thenā¦ IT is being able to tell when I am being wronged and by whomā¦It means being part of the world community and being alert to the part it is that I have joined, and knowing how to change to another part if that part does not suit me. To know is to exist.
If female friendship does any of this, in spite of the rents and fissures in its fabric, it is well worth it.
The obstacles to female friendship, for many women, have given them a reason to back away from other women because they feel that too little is gained from [female friendship.] They ignore the gifts of female friendship that have been given. Female friendship has given us the experience of each other, and it has given us the gift of self. It has given us a purpose and it has shown us that we can be for women. It has demolished the facade of [patriarchally relating] that draws us away from our selves and each other. It has given us a history in which we learn that women have always loved other women. It has given us an understanding that a life of mere survival is insufficient for the spirit. It has given us the ability to express our love for women in different ways. It has given us lives that are touched by women, breaking the universal patriarchal taboo against women-touching women.ā
- A Passion for Friendship by Janice Raymond (read here)
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