Day 13 / A Love Letter to Girlhood

SPF, sisterhood and sending postcards home

May 31, 2025

Want to know the worst bit about hermit life?

The sheer impossibility of applying suncream evenly to your own back.

By now, I’ve developed a contortionist-esque method that involves elbows at uneasy angles and just a tad of shoulder dislocation. It sort of gets the job done, but it sure ain’t pretty.

So today, as I’m subtly (evidently not) struggling to slather myself up on the beach, a girl gives me a wave and heads over.

“Want a hand?” she asks.

I gratefully accept and I’m soon SPF’d up and good to go.

It’s a small gesture. Tiny, really. But I feel my cup fill right up.

The kind of gesture that reminds you of the girls in night-out toilets who hype up the haircut you’re not sure about. Or the instant tampon delivery straight to your desk after an emergency call out on Slack. The unexpected voicenote that you didn’t know you needed.

Small sisterhood things. The best things.

Girl Ganging

This year began with the boom of a sudden breakup. One that started with tears but ended with a much needed reboot and recentring of the rest of my life.

When my ex and I broke up out of the blue on a Sunday morning, I made one call and thirty minutes later, the girls were assembled on my sofa.

There were carbs. There were tears. We watched Wild Child. It could’ve been a university afternoon in 2015. PJs. DMCs that lasted all afternoon. The first few post-break up smiles started to peak through. That soft, safe, silly girlhood love.

For the next few weeks, I woke to a message every morning. Was cooked for. Checked in on. Offered beds, baths, hugs, walks, wine. Unconditional, unfaltering, unshakeable love. No questions asked.

Learning Love

And it was while I processed the end of my relationship that I started to really explore themes like love and intimacy.

I reflected a lot about my childhood (who doesn't in these situations) and how our parents and upbringings shape the emotional scripts we use to navigate relationships.

Looking back, my life growing up was fairly military and rigid. It felt like love was earned. Affection often tied to performance. Vulnerability and emotions? Not so much.

It’s something I’m now exploring in therapy. Starting to unpick the knot where love and achievement got entwined over the years. That sense of needing to do something to be worthy. Maybe (gulp) never quite feeling enough?

Even in more recent years, I have always been the one who has it together. Who gets stuff done. Who plans and fixes. Who presents (albeit subconsciously) a filtered front to the world.

But on that fateful Sunday, the most undone version of me - raw, teary and vulnerable - was met with nothing but love. Not earned, not conditional. Just love.

Postcard-ing

So today, with my back freshly suncreamed and my heart a little cracked open, I pulled out a pack of postcards.

Not so much to tell them about the lovely time I’m having or the amounts of hummus I’m consuming. More a chance to thank them and to tell them just how much they mean to be (because come on, we really don't say it enough do we).