Amena Brown:
Hey everybody. Well, we have been talking about friendships a lot on the podcast lately and I thought it would be fitting to go behind the poetry in this episode and talk about my poem Girlfriends Poem. Take a listen.
Amena Brown:
We find our friendships in coffee shops and at lunch tables and in green rooms and quiet corners of other people's parties. We skip the shallow small talk and pleasantries. We turn public places into living rooms. We decide to bare our souls. We decide not to hide where the extra folds have made their home on our bodies. We drink wine and margaritas and chai. We tell jokes over guacamole and queso and tortilla chips. We toast to cupcakes and butter rolls because who needs champagne when you can dish over donuts because calorie counting don't count here. Your round hips are welcome here. Here, we celebrate cellulite and stomachs that never return to taut after gaining weight or birthing children or slowly losing our need to impress people who care nothing about us here.
Amena Brown:
We preach acceptance to each other. We say to each other, "Girl, love yourself the way you love me, the way you forgive me when I'm late, even though I say every time that I'm going to be on time, the way you let me cry when I'm angry, the way you let me vent when I want to be mean to the world and to myself, the way you pray for my soul to find rest when you watch me carry my stress into panic attacks and migraines." We walk together. We sweat together. We lift the weight of this world so our arms and souls are stronger for it. We try to mend each other's broken hearts by saying things like, "Remember that time when...". Like, that time I was head over heels in love with that man who looked so good but his lips could never manage to tell the truth. And, that job you hated. How I called you to make you laugh and you pretended I was a customer for the coworker who always eavesdrops on your conversations. That time I was so broke we switched cars to play tricks on the repo man. True story.
Amena Brown:
The day you found out you were pregnant and that your husband lost his job. Sometimes when we meet, we drop bombs about the parents and babies we've lost, about grieving, about starting over, about jobs and promotions that mean new locations and cities, about finding new ways to do the same old things, about first dates that never make it second ones. We are warriors. We are menders. We have watched each other become women, become wife, become mother, become boss, become single, students, activists, become so many things that we always thought we'd become. And, so many things that we thought we'd never be or we decide not to judge. You can never know the pain another woman hides behind, insecurity or too much mascara or an ill-fitting outfit, until you have not only walked in her shoes but also know her pain and wounds, how she survived her scars, that it is brave to look yourself in the eyes every day and decide to love the woman who stares back.
Amena Brown:
We are more than bestie or BFF. We are tribe and sisterhood. We are not what reality TV tries to convince us woman friendship is. We do not pull weaves and throw martini glasses and derogatory words. We hold each other up with grace and laughs and love, just because, girl, we are here. And so, we stop hiding our grace until the generation after us begins to take care of us and so we help them stand while they help us sit, until we turn our porches into town hall meetings and drink wine to stave off sickness and can barely hear out of either ear because we danced too close to the speakers at all the parties and concerts, with no regrets, with no we haven't dreamed and done that yet.
Amena Brown:
We carry the meaning of the word friend in the wrinkles of our hands. We take each other's secrets and stories to the grave with us.
Amena Brown:
Oof. That poem. It always make me feel my feelings and I'll talk about this later on in the episode, but I have mostly done this poem in front of audiences that were either all women or predominantly women, and it is a very emotional experience to perform in front of those crowds, but in a good way, in a joyful way, I think. So, I always like to start by telling you what made me write this poem, and the first beginning lines of this poem, "We find our friendships in coffee shops and in green rooms and quiet corners of other people's parties." I think I had the first two or three lines in the Notes app of my iPhone for a long time and I think what made me write that is I realized several years ago that most of my closest girlfriends don't live here in Atlanta.
Amena Brown:
Even if I met them here, maybe they've moved, and some of that fact is because of my work, that prior to the pandemic, I was traveling a lot. So, a lot of my friends that I knew, we knew each other from having worked together in the event space, and so, that's how I ended up with a lot of wonderful friends that were all around the country. My two best friends don't live in Atlanta. My one best friend that I've known since high school, she still lives in Texas and so now we have... We have been friends long enough that most of our friendship has been us living not in the same city, even though we went to high school together, right? We went to college in different cities and have never lived in the same city since high school. And, my other best friend, she lives overseas now, but she used to live in Atlanta and I feel like maybe we're almost at the half and half where half of our friendship was when she lived here in Atlanta and then the other half has been since she moved overseas.
Amena Brown:
So, I think me thinking about that and because most of my close friends don't live in Atlanta, all of the various ways that I find myself catching up with them and the different places we have to just get down to it and have a conversation when we do have time to be in person somewhere together. And, when I think about my girlfriends, I feel like there are two... If I... I was going to use the word two tiers, but I don't think tiers is accurate. I think they're more like concentric circles almost. Like, there's a very inner circle of girlfriend that I have. There are only a few girlfriends that fit into that inner circle that I really, really talk to them about what's really going on in my life and same with them.
Amena Brown:
For my best friends, my friends that have known me since college, some of them, we've had a long time to walk through a lot of stuff in our lives together. And then, I have what would be the next, I guess, concentric circle of girlfriends which are girlfriends that, they may not be my super close girlfriends but I just... I love them. I love hanging out with them. I love catching up with them. Maybe we're like part girlfriend and part work colleague or maybe we're part girlfriend and we have a hobby we share. I have some girlfriends that I do talk to them about what's going on in my life and they do the same with me, but we also just talk about reality TV stuff, which I really love.
Amena Brown:
And so, I was just thinking about all of these women in my life that have brought so much to my life and wanting to write a poem dedicated to them. So, when those first two lines came to me, then I spent some months working on the piece, seeing how the piece was going to come out. And then, bringing me to the next question, the real life story, or stories in this case, behind writing the poem. If you've ever watched a movie or a film that's based on a true story... I'm very nerdy like this, that whenever I watch a movie or a TV show that's based on a true story, I always go back and Google all the facts after I watch it. And so, sometimes you'll find that maybe that person actually was married three times but in the movie or TV show that you watch, there was only one spouse. Or, maybe they hustled a bunch of people but in the movie or the film you only see two of the victims that they hustled, you know?
Amena Brown:
And, when you go back and like read into all the information of how the TV shows or the films get made, they'll basically say that sometimes a character can become a composite of a few people or become a composite of certain other characters in the story. But in the movie, they don't have time to address all three of the spouses, right? So, they make one character out of what having those spouses represented to the central character. And so, in a way, for me, Girlfriends Poem is a composite of a lot of the girlfriends that I have just loved and been loved so well by as friends over the years.
Amena Brown:
So, a few of the real life stories that are mentioned in this poem. In the beginning, I talk about friends in green rooms, that that's where we meet, that's where we find our friendship. And, when I was writing that line, I was thinking very specifically of my friend Candy. And, Candy and I have been friends now... Gosh, it's almost 20 years that we've been friends. We met each other when we were 22 years old and at that time, even though we are both doing very different things from what we were doing back then, but at that time we were both artists performing in white, Christian, conservative spaces. She was a singer at that time and I was doing what we would call in that context worship poetry or poetry that you would do during the singing time of like a Christian church service.
Amena Brown:
And, over the years... I stayed in Atlanta all this time but over the years there were different times that Candy and her family would move in and out of the city, and so, there would be times that she would get booked for something in Atlanta and our only time to catch up was going to be in the green room between sessions of a conference or between services on Sunday wherever she was going to be singing. And so, I would drive over there and meet her there and we would sit in a green room, typically at a point in time where everybody else was leaving for like a lunch break or a dinner break or sometimes everybody else left to go be in a session, and instead of being in the session, we were sitting in the green room, like, catching up.
Amena Brown:
And, because we had such a limited amount of time, there wasn't a lot of like, "Woo, it's been hot outside, girl." Like, we weren't talking about that. We would just jump right in, like, "Who you make out with, girl? What's his name?". Like, jump right in talking about that. And so, that line was very specifically inspired by Candy. And, since then, I have gained some other green room friends because over the years some of my other really good girlfriends were also speakers or performers and so, that was also the space where we got to know each other.
Amena Brown:
I also really loved writing the section with all of the donuts and here we celebrate cellulite. I... I loved writing that because when I think about a lot of my girlfriends, especially being at this point in my early forties... Even though sometimes, y'all, I'm not going to lie that I say early forties and to myself I still feel like I'm in my thirties. I don't know if maybe you have that experience with your age. Like, it's not bad to be in your forties. I think it's great. But for some reason, when I say that, I'm like, "Am I? Am I? Oh, I am. I am in my forties." So, now being in my forties, you know, a lot of the friendships I've had, I've had for a long time and over these friendships of 20 years, 15 years, 10 years, you go through a lot in your own body. You're watching your girlfriends go through a lot in their own bodies as well, you know?
Amena Brown:
So, I have been through cancer diagnosis with friends. They've been through medical diagnoses with me as well. Experiencing surgery, experiencing weight gain and weight loss. For some of my friends who had children and experienced birth and pregnancy and the different changes that that brought to their bodies, and surgeries and what that brought to their bodies, right? And so, I just loved this idea. You know, I was sort of trying to... I mean, if you've been listening to this podcast long enough, you know that I have a lot of fascinations with the living room as a room in the house because for me, when I think about my girlfriends, that's the room that comes to my mind. That's where we're like... We took our shoes off. We're curled up on the couch, you know, under blankets, like, talking to each other in there. And, wanting to think of this space where you as a woman are there with these other woman friends of yours and however you are, whatever body you are in at that moment, it's accepted here.
Amena Brown:
And, I loved that idea because that's the thing I want for myself, that I continue working on in myself, is loving the body that I'm in at this moment, not wishing for the body that I had back then, but loving this body in this moment but also wanting to provide that space for my friends as well, wanting to accept them. And, over the years, you know, as we're aging and growing and developing, you know, we may experience cellulite. We may have had cellulite all this time, you know? And, loving that body when there are so many ways that society send these different messages that we shouldn't love those parts of our body, those folds of fat on our backs and stuff like that, you know? So, I... I really enjoyed writing that section. That was a lot of fun and a lot of fun to perform in front of a crowd full of women, for sure.
Amena Brown:
I loved talking about dating here. I loved getting to that section of, you know, we mend each other's broken hearts by saying and thinking about how when you have girlfriends, they know your dating history. They know your dating mistakes. And, you do have those funny stories to bring up. The men that I totally thought they were going to be it, that was going to be it for me, that was going to be the love of my life, and my friends were begging me, "Please, please stop dating this man. Please."
Amena Brown:
I loved talking about friendship and work in this poem as well. Big shoutout to my best friend Kimberly because there are two mentions in this poem that are actually about her. One of them is... She and I went through a season of time where we were both receptionists at different companies and so, of course, you'd have some days you were just slammed with calls. But on the days that calls were slow, we would call each other in the afternoons and talk on the phone, but of course, if anybody walked by, we had to pretend like we were on some sort of a professional call. "Okay, thank you so much. Goodbye." And, like, we would totally hang up on each other any time and, you know, that... That was part of the rules of engagement, you know? That we were answering phones for a living. If so and so manager or supervisor walked by, we'd just hang up and call each other back later, you know?
Amena Brown:
And, the line when I talked about switching cars to play tricks on the repo man. That was also my friend Kimberly. For those of you that listened to my 40 AF episode, I think I may have talked about this a little bit because I was addressing my thirties, too, what it was like going into my thirties as well. I think I may have talked about this there and also in an earlier episode. I think it was episode 18 when I was talking about that time I quit my job. This was around that time because I quit my job to become a full time writer and performer and went broke.
Amena Brown:
And so, my car was, at that time, what I'm mentioning in the poem, at threat of repossession. And, Kimberly had a very nice car at the time, so for her to switch cars with me and drive my little raggedy car to let me drive her really nice car just so I'd have peace of mind for a few days while I was trying to get my life together, which of course it's even more ironic to think now that I did all that and the car still got repossessed. But you can listen to that other episode. I'll tell you more about that.
Amena Brown:
And, my friend Kristen was what inspired me to write the line about how we meet together and sometimes it's when, you know, you find out your friend is not only pregnant but that her husband lost his job right at that same time. She's finding out she's pregnant and he no longer has a job at the same time. And, I remember Kristen and I were actually newer friends at that point. We had only had... We had met at an event where some mutual friends introduced us and it was totally like a friend match made in heaven, honestly. And then, we went from that to having coffee together. We had a great time talking and our second coffee was literally her saying, "So, I'm pregnant. Also, the place my husband was working when we met, he's not working there anymore. Also, looks like he's going to get a job in Texas, so we're moving." It was like all the bombs, which is what made me write that next line that sometimes we meet and we drop bombs on each other, which is true.
Amena Brown:
And, all of the sort of announcements, I guess, that you live through with your friend, whether that's new jobs, it's breakups. Sometimes, it's a divorce. It's all these different things that when we meet, because we do have limited time in our schedules to meet, we meet up and we get right to it and really have to just start digging in to what's really going on in life, you know?
Amena Brown:
And, I mentioned reality TV in this piece and if you've been listening to this podcast, you know that I love reality television. It's one of my favorite things, honey. But I wanted to mention it here because I'm... I'm a huge fan of shows that are set up, like Real Housewives, that are supposed to be around this group of women who are friends. Of course, with Real Housewives, who are also supposedly rich or very well off, so we're getting this window into their friendships but also into their, you know, lavish life. But there are things that those shows are saying in the stories they tell that, for me, have not been true of my friendships with women in real life.
Amena Brown:
And, I of course have come to understand in my own work in production as well as just becoming a fan of these shows that there's so much about how things are done on the show that are totally real. It totally is reality. But also are things that are set ups in a way that you wouldn't have if you were just living your regular real life. And, I have had disagreements with my friends. I've had to have hard conversations with them. I've had some friendships where we had to just do the breakup and all that. But I have never pulled on the hair of a friend and I have never thrown a martini glass. I haven't had any friendships where I've just like cussed a friend out, you know? I'm not a person who really cusses people out, so maybe that's why. But I wanted to say that there's a lot more to the wonderful things about being in friendships with other women than those types of scenes in reality TV can really show us, right?
Amena Brown:
And, I loved closing with this idea of the longevity of our friendships with other women. And, of course, I have thought about my own friendships. I've told you I, you know, have some friends that I've been friends with for almost 20 years or sometimes it is over 20 years at this point. And, I thought about my mom. My mom and her friendships with some of her close woman friends were really that model for me of what it can look like when you really have wonderful and depthful friendships with other women. And so, I'm looking at my mom, you know, and her years ahead of me. And, my grandmother has a couple of friends that I think she had from high school that I think she even still, you know, has stayed in touch with over the years. And so, it's beautiful to me to think that your friendship with another woman could last you until you go gray, could last you until you are in sort of that twilight of your life.
Amena Brown:
But what's really amazing about that is, you know, when we look at the women who may be older than us in our lives, you know, we may be seeing them only as mom, grandma, aunt, as elder of the community in whatever way they are. We didn't know them when they were young and flirty and going to all these parties and dancing and dating and whatever that is, you know? And, I love that idea of getting to this certain age of life where I am now living in whatever that body is at that time, but I am still the person that went to all the parties and danced too close to the speakers and that I did that with my girlfriends, you know? That those are memories and secrets that we share.
Amena Brown:
And so, I... I loved sort of getting to include a lot of Easter eggs in this piece because the women who are close to me would hear this poem and go, "Oh, oh, that's me. That's me talking to her in the green room." And, I love writing a poem that at a certain point is very personal, that there's a lot in here that is very specific and unique to me and my friends. But when I perform the piece, I love that other people hear the poem and it feels like them, too, and it feels like their story, which is really beautiful.
Amena Brown:
What is the real life story behind performing this poem for the first time? Okay. So, to be honest, I really don't remember. I don't... I don't remember the first time I performed this poem. I feel like... Because some of my poems, I kind of write in batches, and so, I feel like there are a couple of other poems that got finished around a similar time as this one. And so, I feel like because of that, I think I would probably guess that my first time reading this was at an open mic, that I tried it out there. But at the time that I was finishing this poem, I was still performing in a lot of Christian spaces, but very specifically women's event.
Amena Brown:
And, it's interesting to me to think... You know, I had a very long career doing a lot of Christian spaces, mostly white, but I also had some Black churches that I went to as well and it was interesting to me that even though I was like a grown adult, I didn't really start getting invited to women's events until I got married. And, I don't know if like the update of my bio, the new pictures... Like, I don't know what it was. But I started getting gangbusters of invites to do women's events. And, honestly, over time, you know, I just started getting less and less comfortable with certain types of Christian events that I was performing at just because my work felt like it was getting beyond the scope of what would be performed in those environments, right?
Amena Brown:
And, really, the last one for me was women's events because that was one space in sort of church and Christian industry... Large air quotes, right? That I could actually go there and be entertaining because it wasn't a Sunday service, which is pretty hard to do anything entertaining on a Sunday in most churches. And, it wasn't something where I had to do something that was exactly a sermon. And, a lot of times at a women's event or women's conference, you know, they were going to get plenty of preaching, you know? So, I didn't need to come in and do that. I got to come in and just do some poems and tell some stories, you know?
Amena Brown:
And so, doing this poem in those environments was a lot of fun. I think first of all, people don't always know what to expect from a poet in that setting and they're thinking, "Oh, I mean, she's a poet, but it's probably still going to feel like a sermon." And, when they end up laughing and you know, having that sense of nostalgia from their own joy and memories, then it's just a beautiful moment we got to share together on stage, you know? And, when I would do this poem, I would always give the women in the audience an assignment and I would tell them, "You know, think about a girlfriend that you really love, that it's been way too long since you've talked to her, and like, your assignment is before the weekend is over, text her and just say hey, girl. I was thinking about you or I heard this and it made me laugh and I just want to know how you were doing."
Amena Brown:
Because a lot of times in our friendships with other women, sometimes... I mean, I'll tell y'all what happens to me and you all can tell me if this is true for you. But sometimes what happens for me is, you know, I have these friends in my life. I love them. I'm close to them. But then, my schedule just gets really wild and all this time goes by and, you know, I haven't talked to them. We haven't caught up. And then, I'm kind of waiting for this perfect moment where I'm going to be some place alone and they're going to be some place alone and we can get on the phone and talk for an hour or two hours. And then, you know, that moment never comes because maybe I didn't have an hour or I know they didn't have two hours or whatever it was. And then, we look up and a year passed and it's been a year since we actually talked to each other.
Amena Brown:
Well, now I feel bad to just text and say, "Hey girl. Thinking about you." You know? I feel bad because we haven't talked and we haven't had a chance to connect to each other. And so, I tried to encourage the women when I would do this poem live and I would say to them, "Don't worry about how long it's been. If that's a woman you love, you know? You love her. She loves you. Y'all are good friends. Just text. Send an email. Drop a line." You know, sometimes we're waiting for this perfect setup that, according to our real lives, is never going to happen. Most of my conversations with my close friends to this day is through texting, email and different communication apps that we are able to use. You know, record messages to each other or record video to each other. That's how it is.
Amena Brown:
It's... It's more rare for me to have moments with a friend where we can actually, like, get together. I mean, especially being in a pandemic right now as of this recording, right? Even more rare now, where you would be getting together in person or having a night where you would just go out and do these things together, you know? Those are going to be fewer and farther between, but don't let your friendship ride only on those moments. There are ways to still stay connected while we all have the busyness of life. I mean, at this point, when I look across at a lot of my close girlfriends, some of us are caring for an ailing parent. Some of us have started a business. Some of us are in graduate school. Some of us are climbing the corporate ladder and some of us have a partner or we have a marriage that we're tending to that relationship. Some of us have children that we're taking care of and wanting to nurture them and make sure they've got everything they need. Some of us are selling a house, buying a house, renting a place, moving again.
Amena Brown:
You know, there are all these things that come up just in life that make it difficult to have the kind of free time that you may have had when you were in high school or in your early twenties. But it doesn't mean that we can't still cultivate those friendships. So, I give that same assignment to you, listeners. Think about a friend or if you have a good girlfriend. You know, think about a girlfriend that you haven't talked to in a while and today... You can even do it while you listen to this. Text them. Text them and say, "Hey. I was thinking about you today. Hey." Send them this GIF. "Remember when we saw the blah blah blah." And, "Remember when you was in love with that person and they were terrible? Remember?" Do those things. Cultivate those friendships. Stay connected so that you don't look up and realize you don't have the women, the people, close to you that could really walk through life with you.
Amena Brown:
How do I feel about this poem now? This is still one of my favorite poems to do. I really, really love most to do this poem when I am in front of a predominantly woman audience and I really had an idea from this poem that still hasn't been fully realized. I got to do one night of it. I had an event idea I wanted to do when I wanted to call it Girlfriends Night and I wanted it to be a night where women could come out to my show and they could bring their best friends and bring all their girlfriends, bring their friends from college, their friends from work. And, I would look out in the crowd and it's just a crowd full of women hanging out with their girlfriends that they've loved and met over the years, you know? And, we would just have a night of celebrating our various womanhood experiences and laughing about some of that and probably crying about a little bit of it, too, you know?
Amena Brown:
And so, this poem really inspired that event idea in me, and so, I hope to be able to eventually do like a Girlfriends Night tour one day, you know? Where I could just go across the country and get a chance to meet with all these women and their best friends and their good friends. So, this is still one of my favorite, favorite, favorite poems, and I love that it has a way, like Lorraine Hansberry used to talk about in her writing... I love this poem has a way of being specific and being general all at the same time. So, that's Girlfriends Poem.
Amena Brown:
Thank you all for going behind the poetry with me. I really appreciate it. And, don't forget to check out the show notes which will have links to any of the episodes that I mentioned here and any of the other little fun tidbits that may be links you can click on. You can definitely go to there and all the information will be there. I appreciate y'all. I hope you will get in touch with one of your good girlfriends soon. Thanks for listening.
Amena Brown:
HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of The Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.