good friends

Yesterday I went to my last girls’ group meeting, which I actually didn’t run. I have been trying for over a month to encourage my girls to take over the group themselves so they can continue the meetings without me. Yesterday, even though I attended the meeting, was their first meeting held without my guidance. 

The theme was “are you a good friend?” and two of my girls, Yocairy and Ambar, lead the discussion. They gave real life situations about what a good friend would do if, for example, they knew their friends’ boyfriend was cheating on them. Or if they knew someone was saying bad things behind a friends’ back etc. 

At the end of the meeting, Yocairy handed us all hearts cut out of construction paper and told us to go around one by one and talk about our best friend. Later, we would give the hearts to our friends with a brief message about why we love them. One by one, we opened up about the friend closest to us until we got Yenni, who started crying because she said she didn’t have a “best friend.” Sure, she has friends, but not that one person who is above all others.

Dominicans are not the best at dealing with emotional things (unless someone has died), and when Yenni started crying the room did get a little awkward. However, within minutes, all of my girls, especially the two leaders, started agreeing with her and told her how they understood where she was coming from.

Validation. I was so proud of my girls in that moment, because although they didn’t rush over to hug and comfort her, they did validate her and her feelings just by saying, “yes we get it. We have felt that way too.”

My girls group has been one of my favorite projects in Peace Corps. When the girls come together and discuss real life situations that matter to them (like boys, their body, sex, women’s rights), I can’t help but swell up with pride. Especially, when one of us starts to cry and the rest of us do exactly the right thing by making her feel okay for feeling that way. 

At the end of the meeting, I made all the girls get in a circle so we could have a group hug. I told them how proud I was of them and how they have changed my life and made my service what I was always hoping it would be. I told them how even though I am leaving, I will always believe in them and want to know all about their lives 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now. I knew at that moment that hug was mostly for me, because saying goodbye to good friends is never an easy thing to do. 

La Caya's Chicas Brillantes.