Thursday, March 22, 2012

scintilla day 7: I Got Life

(Weird title to the post I know. But as soon as I read the tribe prompt, I started to get songs from the musical Hair in my head. What?)

Today's Scintilla prompt asks: List the tribes you belong to: cultural, personal, literary, you get the drift. Talk about how the experience of being in your element with your tribe.

You totally know when you’re with your tribe, don’t you? You feel looser, happier, energetic. You feel surrounded by love. Support. You feel right.

This is another Scintilla prompt that reminds me how lucky I am, because I am card-carrying member of some pretty amazing tribes.

My family. The only person in my family I speak with (or really, email with) several times a week is my mother. I usually see my brother once a week, maybe, and exchange some texts and FB messages. My two sisters, every once in a while, my nieces and nephews, on holidays and birthdays…you get the drift. It’s not like we’re all coming together for Sunday dinner every week. But what I know is this: they are there for me. I am there for them. Whenever something hard hits our family – and it has, it has – we are there for each other, hardcore.

My friends. Well. I’ve talked about core group of friends an awful lot on this blog, haven’t I? My tribe I’ve been besties with for over 30 years now. I might as well have put them up there with my family, for how close they are to me. And am so lucky to add so many other fabulous people to my friend tribe – from work (present and past), my fellow happy-hour loving moms, from college, etc. I am lucky lucky lucky.

My book club: OK, OK, so my book club is also made up of my friends. But I love it, OK? We’ve been going for well over two years now, and one thing that I am always excited about is my next book club meeting. We take it seriously, y’all. We theme the snacks around the book, we have printed out lists of questions, an order in which we answer them – oh yes. It’s nerdtacular.

My theater peeps: I mean, really. Can I even express how much I love doing shows? I think I expressed myself best about it in one of my favorite posts ever here – and the fact that another show is brewing next month has got me very excited. I have a need to be with my theater peeps sometimes. If I don’t address that part of myself, I start to get itchy.

I love the idea of tribes, and I feel extremely blessed to be included in my own

5 comments:

Kim said...

I read another prompt response earlier today about how lonely motherhood can be... and reading this, I am so soul-happy to know that you have such a strong network of love around you. You said it right in your opening--you feel right when you're with your tribe. And I think the title works VERY well.

Bibliomama said...

I just realized I've been with my book club for twelve years. TWELVE YEARS. My book club is older than my kids. Amusingly enough, I just commented on another blog, though, about the fear that trying to combine my book club tribe with my day-to-day movie-night babies-at-the-same-time girl tribe would result in some kind of epic disastrous chemical reaction. Some tribes beg for combination - some not so much, am I right?

Stereo said...

A lot of the responses to this prompt have been about how the author doesn't feel like they fit into any particular tribe or how they fit into a large overarching tribe. This post talks about the close-knit personal tribes you are part of and I love it for that and love that you are not alone at any turn.

Unknown said...

I love this. I knew your response would be that of strength and you would be writing about the people you surround yourself with because you are such a wonderfully social and happy person. I love this. It makes my heart happy that YOU have this in your life.

Dwayne "The Train" said...

i'm totally shocked you made it through an entire post that had the word TRIBE in the prompt, and you didn't even mention Survivor once.