Sisters I Chose (and Who, Somehow, Chose Me Back)

Let me go ahead and say this upfront, before anyone gets any ideas. I know what you’re thinking. They’re not really your sisters. You don’t share a mother. There’s no DNA test, no family tree, no legal document with all your names on it.

To which I say: respectfully, and with my whole chest — you can F off… all the way from the top of F-off mountain.

These women are my sisters. Full stop. No asterisk. And if that doesn’t fit neatly into your definition of family, I will fight you about it, and I will win, and I won’t feel bad.

I have three of those people.

Jenny

Jenny came first. And the way we bonded is one of my favorite stories to tell, because it is deeply, hilariously unglamorous. There is no romance here. No meet-cute. Just two very pregnant women and a lot of bad decisions involving processed cheese.

But before we were friends, we were actually enemies. I didn’t like her boyfriend (who would become her husband someday) hanging out with my brother. They were a bad combo. So I threatened to fight her. Even got all up in her face. She was genuinely afraid of me. (And I’m not proud of that, friends.)

But that was before the boys… before we were pregnant at the same time. Our oldest boys are six weeks apart. We spent those months doing exactly what two enormous, delirious, first-time moms should do — eating unconscionable amounts of Taco Bell, playing Monopoly and Yahtzee for hours, and getting way too fat growing our first boys and not caring even a little bit.

I was in the delivery room when her first two children were born. I cut the umbilical cord. Twice.

We have been through everything together since. Marriages and divorces and kids growing up and all the beautiful chaos that comes with two women navigating their lives side by side. And last year, I had the absolute honor — and I want to be clear, I mean that sincerely, even while I’m also laughing — of standing beside her as Maid of Honor at her fifth wedding.

Her fifth. Which, if you’re counting, puts our combined husband total at ten. Between the two of us. Ten husbands.

That’s its own series. And it’s coming. But today is about Jenny — my first acquired sister, the one who made me an auntie, the one who let me be there at the very beginning of her family. I love her in the way you only love someone who’s seen you ugly-cry over a game of Yahtzee at nine months pregnant.

No takebacks on that one, Jen.

Stacy, my siSTAR

Stacy walked into my life at a winery on a Sunday evening. That sentence alone should tell you everything you need to know about how this friendship was going to go.

She is a nomad in the truest sense of the word — she has worked all over the world, on cruise ships, at resorts tucked inside national parks like Yellowstone, in places most of us only see on screensavers. She has lived more life than most people twice her age, and she carries it with this sparkle that I genuinely cannot explain except to say: you feel it the moment you’re in the same room with her. My ex used to refer to her as — SPARKLES.

Stacy is also a three-time cancer survivor. Three times. She has faced down the kind of thing that would level most people, and she has done it with more fire and grace and humor than I have words for.

Two years ago, she was battling colon cancer. She had half her colon removed. I packed a bag and I stayed with her for two weeks, because that’s what you do when someone is your siSTAR. You don’t ask if they need you. You show up. You bring snacks. You stay.

She is sparkly and feisty and unfiltered and she is, without question, my biggest fan. She believes in me in the way that makes you want to be the person someone thinks you are. That is a rare gift. I don’t take it lightly. And I will absolutely throw hands for her if I have to, because that’s what sisters do.

Kelly

Kelly came to me by way of tragedy, which is sometimes how the most important people arrive.

My partner at the time knew her first. And then grief introduced us properly.

A few years ago, Kelly lost her son Jake in a motorcycle accident. It was sudden, and it was devastating, and it was the kind of loss that reshapes everything — the people around it, the days after it, the way you understand time. We were together every day in those early days, gathered at her sister’s house, just trying to hold space for something that couldn’t be held.

We miss Jake every day. He was Kelly’s son and everyone’s friend, and the people who loved him called him Maple — after his last name — with the kind of affection that tells you exactly who he was. His best friends got matching maple leaf tattoos in the days following the accident. They showed up at the funeral, all of them dressed to impress and ready to speak. And, speak they did. I only hate for my sister that she doesn’t remember every single word, due to the grief fog she was in, because what those boys said that day was the greatest honor of Jake that there could ever have been. It’s a testament to the job she did as his mother, and the gift Jake was to the world.

After a few days of being there, Kelly’s sister looked at me, head slightly tilted, and in front of God and everybody, she said: “We were determined not to like you.”

SAY WHAT????

But before I could react — she followed it with: “But you’ve proven yourself. And now you’re our sister. Forever.”

And Kelly looked at me and said: “No takebacks.”

If you want to tell me that’s not real sisterhood, I genuinely cannot help you. Some people earn a title. Kelly’s family gave me mine in the hardest moment any of them had ever lived through, and I will honor that for the rest of my life.

These days, Kelly and I spend afternoons with charcuterie boards, lots of red wine, and laughs — the kind that come coupled with tears, because that’s the only kind worth having. I love her so much I can’t describe it. I can’t imagine being without her, or her without me.

We honor Jake every day, wearing red — his favorite color, chasing dreams — because he was a dreamer, showing love — because it was the single most important thing he did every day — love others.

And —

She is my heart. There’s no other way to say it. Kelly is my heart.

There’s one more piece of this story I want you to have, because it matters.

Stacy — my siSTAR, the woman who calls everything a party and survives everything with glitter on — created a piece of art for Kelly after Jake. Stacy is an incredibly talented artist. A maple tree. The background was made entirely of lyrics from the songs we played at his memorial service.

She made it because she understood. Because Kelly and Stacy have both lost a child. In fact, all three of my sisters have. It is a bond I never would have wished upon them, and it is a bond I pray no one reading this ever understands from the inside. But they share it. And somehow, out of all that grief and all that distance and all the wild, winding ways people find each other — they are sisters now too.

Blood didn’t make us family. Life did. The ugly parts and the sparkly parts and the Taco Bell and the Yahtzee and the winery on a Sunday and the hospital rooms and the funerals and the moments where someone looks at you — right in the eyes — and says you’ve proven yourself, and means every word of it.

And I choose these women. Every single day. Without hesitation. Without qualification. Without needing anyone’s permission or validation or blessing.

And if you want to argue about it — I’m available.

— Moe