Paris • 8 August, 2020

Jennifer and Guillaume.

But really. This is Jennifer.

During my sabbatical, Jennifer’s home was my first non-blood-family home to which I went. When I was still piecing myself together, Jennifer took me in with open arms, heart, and understanding.

Sitting inside of the inner-most circle of my beloveds, Jennifer is a force equal parts intelligence, emotional bravery, and wit. She remains one of the most voracious and well-read humans I have *ever* encountered.

Watching our beloveds grow is one thing. Helping, nurturing, and encouraging that growth to go deeper and to be more understanding, and to be more forgiving, and graceful, and kinder? These are things which Jennifer continues to bring to my table, at which there will forever be a chair in her name.

Twice, she took me in while I was traveling. The second time, I was softer, but still healing.

She lived her heart pain earlier than I did. Our healing parallel, but just during different months. The circumstance oceans apart, but the end result the same for the two of us. And so, while healing, we leaned on one another with a quiet understanding.

Yesterday she wrote, unsolicited, “Guillaume says to me this morning – I feel like Maha is part of our every day lives because we hear her on video every morning 😂 and it’s true! It’s the best ❤️”

It came at a time when my heart needed to hear exactly this. And it helped push me through a deadlock into which I had been lodged, unceremoniously,  with great agitation, without my permission and which I had been fighting internally. Which is who Jennifer is, and exactly the space she has since day one occupied in my world. I don’t know if she’s aware of this, truth told; right now may be the first time this has been brought to her attention.

I was the first one of her broads to meet Guillaume. I loved him from the second I met him. Jennifer bore witness to how quickly and firmly I adored and stood in his corner. From day one, I was gunning for their relationship because he was so clearly a good egg, kind and supportive, so very generous in both of these. And the men whom I love, are all men of this calibre. They elevate, rather than tear down the women in their lives, carrying everything that the women are – the unapologetic hugeness of each woman in my life – with absolutely only pride. That I love Guillaume was an inevitability.

Because Covid is a piece of shit, I could not attend the wedding. Accordingly, and with great out loud joy, I have been waiting excitedly for every new photo to pop up. This one is my favourite, because it is exactly how I know Jennifer.  And it is exactly as I always wish for her days to be lived – with only this much love and joy.

It feels as though, of late, there has been much more to mourn than usual in this world; Jennifer’s unadulterated joy has served to lift my heart in ways unimaginable. Ways I had not realized I needed, which is – again – what Jennifer brings into my world. Without my even being aware I need it, she continues to show me what it is I need.

Thank you for challenging me to be a little less judgemental, Jenn. Thank you for demanding that I be kinder, and more understanding, and to always wonder Maybe they did their best and they too are heartbroken that it was simply not enough.

Thank you for being my friend, and for all of the love and the safe keeping you offered this broken heart so that she might mend. Your words today “I was thinking of you and the picture you posted from 2 years ago. […] there was such a sadness in your eyes where now I see so much light and joy […] the amazing gift to the world that it is,” are distinctly because you kept me yesterday.

Congratulations, you Goofs! I love you and I can’t wait to show up at yours to stay an exceptionally painful amount of time and make Instagram stories of us during the most inappropriate times. xxo

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