February 3rd, 2009
Relationships Among Womenby Kristin Hannah
What better to talk about on Allthingsgirl.com than the relationships among women? Like so many women my age, I read love stories and thrillers and historical fiction and even fantasy (love the big good/evil epic–have since I was a teenager), but what I love most is a story about women. Our lives, our problems, our issues, our relationships, out losses and our triumphs. Mostly, our triumphs. Nothing fills me up quite like reading about a woman who has battled incredible odds and found her inner strength.
Why is this? Maybe because we’re all out there, in the trenches every day, fighting in our own ways to make the world a better place, and sometimes we are barely acknowledged for this endeavor. I mean, really, what is harder in this life than raising children and keeping them safe? We all know how terribly difficult it can be in this dangerous world to keep our kids’ attention and teach them right from wrong and send them out into the world to be their best selves. And while we’re busy doing all of this, we are also wives who work to keep our marriages happy, employees who struggle to do our best work, sisters who know how important is to stay in touch over long distances and daughters who come slowly to understand our mothers’ lives as we grow older. There’s a lot on our plates.
That’s really what I write about. How we women work to keep all those plates in the air, and how our friends and our sisters are often our best defense again the losses we face along the way. The relationship among sisters is at the heart of True Colors. It’s a story about what happens when three close sisters face the sudden, unexpected realization that their family foundation is not as strong as they’d thought. With this realization comes another, harder one: that sometimes we have to forgive and forget in order to keep our families solid.
I celebrate, over and over in my fiction, the solidarity of women. The older I get, the more I understand how my relationship with other women enriches my life, and in fact, keeps me both steady and buoyant. A round table, a pitcher of margaritas, a plate of chips and salsa, and I can remember how to laugh at almost anything–especially myself. Ultimately, that’s what I love to read about, too, and what I write about. A celebration of the women we are, the women we want to be, and the women we turn to when things get tough.
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Kristin Hannah is the author of Firefly Lane (now available in paperback) as well as True Colors, which becomes available today.
