It’s Just Love

Originally published in January 2019. The opening and dedication reflect the moment when Lisa had recently received her diagnosis.

The intention behind starting my blog is to highlight women I know well: women who have inspired me, women I have taught, women who have taught me, and women I love.

This post has been at my fingertips for several weeks, buried beneath the responsibilities of the holidays and my studio. Sharing other people’s points of view on my blog is my ultimate goal. Still, I feel it’s important to share my positive experience as a member of the Delta Gamma sorority at NIU. I’m not writing to lecture anyone about sorority membership or its exclusivity. In fact, that part has always felt a little strange to me, and I know it can seem unappealing—even offensive—to many people.

This post is about friends I have continued to cherish and make a priority. I first learned the value of these relationships from my mother, now a 50-year member of Kappa Kappa Gamma. She has always had wonderful friends. She taught me to value and maintain my relationships with women, and showed me how much they enrich our lives. It may be the most important lesson she taught me.

On this snowy Saturday, as I was writing this post, I received an email from one of the 12 women it’s about. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer 14 days earlier. She didn’t know many details yet, but expected to go through at least a year of intense treatment.

Lisa, I dedicate this post to you. I know you’ve got this, but you need to know that WE’VE got this, too. We’ll do everything we can to help you fight this fight, and we’ll love you through every weird, tiring, funny, painful, and happy moment ahead.

The way sorority life is typically depicted in television shows and movies couldn’t be farther from what I experienced in college. Sorority girls are often portrayed as shallow, perfect-looking mean girls who are out for themselves and willing to humiliate or sabotage anyone they see as competition.

The young women who recruited me into Delta Gamma, the women recruited alongside me, and the young women we recruited were all darling, kind, funny, smart, and self-deprecating. They have become fixtures in my life. There are 12 of us from two pledge classes who have stayed in close contact and get together regularly. We graduated from college 25 years ago. Since then, we’ve kept three annual traditions and added other impromptu outings, lunches, and dinners whenever we can.

My favorite is our annual holiday party. We take turns hosting it, and depending on what works best, it either kicks off or closes out the holiday season. The tradition began 25 years ago, and we haven’t missed a year. Every year, we exchange ornaments. Whenever I unpack them and put them on my tree, I’m reminded of my loving sisters. This year, our party began my holiday season and helped me see the chaos of the rest of the month through loving, grateful eyes.

In the beginning, we shared secrets, clothes, academic pressure, themed-party outfits, dances, countless crushes, late-night talks, studying, workouts, heartbreaks, meals, libations, classes, meetings, rush, philanthropy, advice, tears, makeup, cleaning duties, “flushing!”—and just about everything people share when they live together.

After graduation, we supported each other as we started careers, shared apartments, searched for “the one,” got engaged and married, started families, bought houses, and became adults.

Now, in our mid-to-late 40s, we’ve been there for one another through our parents’ declining health, illness, and deaths; divorces and second marriages; infertility; financial ups and downs; raising teenagers; and our own health challenges and those of our spouses. When we made our commitment to Delta Gamma, we agreed to be one another’s champions in our absence and friends always. We do just that.

When we plan an event, we work tirelessly to find a date everyone can attend. That’s nearly impossible, but it never makes us cancel. We know some of us getting together is better than none of us. When one of us loses a loved one, someone takes charge of ordering flowers and a memorial gift, signed by all of us. Whoever is available attends visitations and memorial services. It’s understood that those who are there represent those who couldn’t be.

We’ve made a point of meeting and getting to know each other’s families and friends outside Delta Gamma, and asking about them with genuine interest and concern. When one of us is recovering from surgery or facing another health challenge, we do our best to help, including joining neighborhood meal trains and offering support.

We don’t live close to one another, but luckily, with the exception of two of us, we’re all in northern Illinois. Recently, through the blessing of social media, we learned that one of the DGs from my pledge class had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Through Facebook Messenger, 60 of us rallied together, sending her gift cards, meals, and gifts for her daughter. Some even accompanied her to chemotherapy appointments. We’ve since formed a new group and are planning a reunion with DGs who pledged over a 10-year period.

We’re a long way from the practically perfect bodies, faces, and hair of our college days, but every one of these women is more beautiful and stunning to me now than she was 25 years ago. As I pondered why, I realized that after all this time—and through every life event we’ve endured—what remains is love.

It’s just love.