The great liberation

What I Learned This Midsummer About Freedom, Friendship, and Fun with Females

One piece of advice I want young women to learn from me early on in life is this: Take care of your friendships.

Because here’s a non-negotiable fact of life: women need other women. And while they may want men, they are fine without them if the right ones don’t show up.

This truth often gets forgotten when we fall in love, start families, have children, and live through what we in Finland call the “rush years”, the hectic part of life where we juggle family and career obligations and try to make things work, often failing.

Falling in love is risky business, especially for women. We tend to immerse ourselves so completely in that emotion that the rest of the world disappears. We willingly let go of everyone else in our lives for the sake of our One and Only, even though we know how fragile a construct romantic love is.

How crazy is that?

Women are in a more vulnerable position than men here, because for centuries, we've been programmed to attach ourselves to one partner, reproduce with him, and then care for our children, and even for the father of those children, because family comes first, and mother is the beating heart of it.

This leaves women in a precarious position. One day, the kids, and perhaps even the husband, will leave the nest and the Mother is left alone in an empty house, wondering what happened - and why.

When that happened to me, I felt a deep sadness. Even panic. What on earth am I going to do with the rest of my life, I wondered, alone, with no one to care for?

This is often the phase when women get dogs and cats to fill the void. This is also the phase of life when women may suddenly experience an awakening that takes them out of the decades-old funk.

They suddenly realise that they are free at last - and that it feels f*cking great!

This happened to me.

Sure, there may be grandchildren to dote on. But because they’re not there all the time, there’s space for a single, post-menopausal, non-reproductive woman to enjoy her freedom that comes with having no or very few family obligations while having all the time in the world for herself and the occasional pets. And occasional lovers, if that is what she wants.

Midsummer Magic

I thought about all this over the weekend, as we celebrated Juhannus (Midsummer) in Finland.

A little background: Juhannus is a big deal here. Probably because of our long, harsh winters, midsummer has always been deeply celebrated in the north. Traditionally, Finns escape to the countryside, near lakes or the sea, and gather in summer cottages to bask in the midnight sun by the bonfires we've burned since ancient times to ward off evil spirits or just to have a warm place to drink beer and vodka. (Another beloved Juhannus tradition is getting drunk.)

This year, I spent Juhannus with my three friends in the Eastern Finnish archipelago, very close to the Russian border (!). We’ve spent at least one summer weekend there together for 45 years. We met at university when we were barely 20-year-old girls with big dreams. Since then, we’ve weathered love affairs, heartbreak, marriages, kids and their problems, breakups, and divorces - together.

In the early days, boyfriends and later families came along. Now, it’s just us again. We’ve all separated from the fathers of our children. Only one of us is in any kind of romantic relationship.

Friends for Life

Yes, there are sometimes hiccups when four strong-willed women share one cottage for an entire weekend. Arguments flare, doors slam, tears flow, and harsh words get tossed around. But we always make up. We’ve never left each other like we’ve left boyfriends and husbands. Or like they’ve left us.

Friendship never ends, as the Spice Girls sang.

This year’s Juhannus trip started with a little tension, too. But by Friday evening, after a few drinks in the sunshine, we relaxed. We remembered how magical it is to spend time with just women (and perhaps a dog or two), with no kids, no men.

Everything flowed. We cooked together. There were no fights about chores, no one shouldering the invisible burden of responsibility. Everyone helped, organically, without negotiation, nagging, or martyrdom. We ate when we were hungry. We spent three glorious hours in the sauna, unrushed, watching rain beat the beach through the window. We talked, drank beer, and baked sausages on the hot rocks of the sauna stove. We had a lovely dinner. We drank wine. We danced. We did a Tarot reading. We went to bed when we felt like it, and slept as late as we wanted, without anyone waking us up to meet someone else´s needs.

The Dirty Plates in the Sink

After my divorce, I grieved the loss of my family for a long time. I felt like I didn’t belong anymore. Like I was left over. I saw myself as worthless wreckage, just because I’d lost a spouse.

I’ve thought about this a lot since. Why did I define my worth by my marital status? Why didn’t I understand my own value? Why didn’t I recognise the value of my friends?

More importantly, why didn’t I realise that I never actually enjoyed holidays with my family?

It’s still hard to say that out loud. It makes me feel like a bad mother, which is probably the worst thing you can ever be.

But it’s the truth.

I was always the one responsible for making holidays happen. I planned the menus, did the shopping, cooked, cleaned, decorated, and created the festive atmosphere all by myself. By the time the holiday arrived, I was too exhausted to enjoy it. I was cranky, overwhelmed, and went to bed early to escape the mountain of dirty dishes in the sink.

The worst part is that I did it all without anyone asking me to. I was like a remote-controlled drone, fulfilling expectations that no one had actually set. I didn’t know how else to be. I followed my mother’s example. She worked full-time as a nurse and still managed to run a perfect household. She never complained. She seemed to truly enjoy family festivities, however hard she had to toil to organise them.

My mother is an exemplary woman, except in one crucial way: she made the mistake of living entirely for her family. When she was widowed at 66, the age I am now, she found herself alone. She had no friends.

But I do. And this Juhannus reminded me just how vital they are.

I might not have realised it without those exhausting family holidays. Sometimes you only understand the value of freedom after years in a kind of prison. That may sound dramatic, but I’ll allow myself the exaggeration, because I want to pass this message on to younger women:

Take care of your friendships.

Jane and Cassandra

Your friends will carry you through life. Falling in love, romance, is beautiful, but true friendship runs deeper and lasts longer. Female companionship is profoundly important in a world that constantly tells women to ignore their own needs.

Jane Austen wrote the best romantic literature in the world, but she never married. We know little about her romantic life, but we do know one thing: she had a sister, Cassandra, who was the most important person in her life. I used to pity Jane for never finding love, but now I understand she did. She had two great loves: her writing and her sister, her unwavering supporter, her hype girl.

Jane and Cassandra lived full, rich lives as independent women. And I believe they died happy, knowing they had lived well.

May their legacy light the paths of modern women, too, and give them the courage to prioritise their most important relationships: with themselves and with their friends.

(And by the way, it is the fulfilled and happy women who make the best mothers and partners, too. I wish I had known this when I was young, but now that I do, I want every single woman to know it, so that they will have their happily ever after, with or without husbands and kids.)

(Photo: helsinkikuvia.fi)