As I reflect on my college career as a second semester senior, I can’t help but think about all of the friendships, bonds and communities that I have been fortunate enough to have cultivated during my time here. I have made some of the best and most loyal, uplifting and supportive friends here at Dickinson and I am just so grateful for that. 

I am a firm believer that especially relationships (and by relationships I mean more than friendship, but not quite romantic relationships, although there is a level of intimacy involved) between women are survival relationships because there is something special about a bunch of strong, badass women uplifting each other and being sites of love, light, mutual growth and healing. 

As a women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and English double major, I have been fortunate to be in classrooms dominated by women, which is where I personally feel the most comfortable to be my most authentic self; to use the classroom as a space of healing, of understanding and to empower one another. This is not to say that I hate men or that I never want to interact with them–if that is what you take from this you are completely missing the point and that is out of my hands.

I just wanted to use this platform to acknowledge and say thank you to all the women in my life, past and present, who have helped to shape me into someone I am be confidently proud of and also to urge all of you (not just women) on campus to appreciate the survival relationships you have in your lives. It’s easy to give up when relationships get hard, when there is pent-up anger or resentment or unspoken issues, but remember that either way, you will always have bumps in the road with relationships at some point. 

As long as the person or people are not abusive towards you, I beleive that it is important to remember why they are in your life in the first place, what they have given you (in terms of growth and happiness and support), and what is it about them that makes you love them. 

It’s easy to leave people when things get hard, but I encourage you–challenge you, even–to work towards cultivating real bonds, loyalty, peace, love and spiritual bonds.