Stiletto Sisterhood

Original Edition: Six| Love is not an act of completion

You complete me.

I always hated that line from Jerry Maguire because it inherently implied you were lacking before this other person came along to magically fill all those cavernous voids you somehow weren't able to fill yourself.

While it might often feel that way when the dusty season of a dating drought comes to an end, it's the wrong message.

Love should compliment you. Enhance you, even, but never, ever complete. You should complete yourself. Period.

After all, wasn't it Anna's act of love to stop Elsa's frozen magic?

We are the generation of women who must learn to save not only each other, but ourselves. To take charge of our own happiness and sense of self-worth, to tackle our greatest ambitions, our fears.

And conquer them.

Not to imply that commitment can't be a beautiful thing. A powerful thing.

It takes an individual of unique ability to bind themselves so completely to a cause or a person. For the intricate facets of self and soul to grow and shape alongside each other so that all lines run parallel instead of diverging.

Isobel was always a creature of commitment, of organization and ruthless routine. Reliable, dependable, constant as the North Star, she possessed the biggest heart and an unflagging sense of loyalty forged in true selflessness. A beautiful trait that can easily transform from virtue into vice, blinding us with the prettiest shade of rose coloured glasses that obscure the infinite gray of the world. Of people.

She was seven when her mother, battling with chronic depression, walked out the door and never came back. Perhaps that's where it all started for Isobel, the need to keep everything in place. The same. Growing up as an only child with no one else but her father for guidance and comfort, she'd latched on to the Sisterhood and became its emotional glue.

It's beautiful, beating heart. A heart that must be carefully and ruthlessly protected because, when broken it shattered.

But only through adversitycan we hope to know our truest selves...