Girl Joy and That Other Super Woman

A phrase stuck with me from a recent interview with Nehir Erdoğan, an actress I admire both for her craft and her artistic stance. While describing her character in her new project Mira, she said: “between girl joy and female depression.” I paused when I first heard it. Neither term was new to me, but the way they sounded from the outside; one standing as something natural, something that comes from within us, from childhood; the other resonating as something we learned over time, something that doesn’t actually belong in us, added on later. It made me think. At what point was our innate girl joy, knowingly or unknowingly, pushed aside as we were pulled into unpredictable depressions under the weight and responsibilities of being a woman? My aim wasn’t to look at it from a sharp, all-or-nothing perspective, choosing one and discarding the other. It felt more like we needed to use the healing power of one to lift the weight of the other, to make one the antidote to the other. Something we think of as simple but so often stumble on in practice. Let’s take a short thinking tour together.

When we were children, being able to play the same games and having roughly similar temperaments was enough to make a friend. Just think about how many criteria get added to that choice as we move from youth into adulthood. This time, temperament perhaps takes a back seat while everything else becomes crucial. Starting with the foundations that fill the substance of communication: being able to talk about shared interests, having the empathy to understand each other even on topics you can’t discuss, seeing life from roughly the same vantage point, laughing at the same things or worrying about the same things, and of course, being able to trust. What we call true friendship layers even more delicate nuances on top of all that: being a shoulder on someone’s hard days, standing at the front on their happy ones, channelling those very human yet ultimately unhelpful emotions well enough to build and protect a relationship rooted in genuine connection. And when the moment comes, being able to guide someone toward a decision whose aftermath could be as consequential as choosing the red or the blue pill, and being guided in return!

Although it’s possible to give different answers to the definitions of friendship from a male and female perspective, at the end of the day those delicate scales are similar. Still, we have to acknowledge upfront that women carry those scales a little differently. We are beings more affected by our hormones, generally speaking capable of more complex thinking, and often more detail-oriented when it comes to expectations. These subtleties, expectations and sensitivities tend to make relationships between women more fragile compared to men’s. But here’s the interesting part: that very same sensitivity also makes us need each other more. When faced with stress, men tend to go into fight or flight mode, while we women instinctively turn toward those close to us, trying to form bonds. Our biology tells us in our lows, our anxieties, our fears: “don’t stay alone.” Maybe that’s why losing a female friend hits us so deeply. The fact that a female friendship breakup can create trauma as significant as ending a long-term relationship is, thankfully, being talked about much more now.

You don’t need to look far to understand what a powerful healing force same-gender support can be; we can simply look back at different periods in our own lives and do a quick inventory of our happiest times. Maybe we should look around us with an observant eye at the close friend circles of women who’ve successfully come through their worst chapters. Somewhere in there, at the other end of every phone call, in our late-night conversations, at our favourite big celebration tables, in the moments of important decisions or their aftermath, in those fits of laughter that turn even the most dramatic moments into absurd comedy; we’ll see the female friends whose shoulder we leaned on or whose arm we walked arm in arm with. When for various reasons we keep those shoulders at a distance or lose them altogether, life suddenly takes on a single colour, becomes harder to bear. In the series too, what keeps our protagonist Mira standing after her 10-year marriage abruptly ends, a woman who has barely gotten to know herself, is above all her friendship with her closest friend Melis. Troubles shrink when shared, what one hand can’t carry two hands lift, what one eye can’t see the other spots and points out. With sometimes the simplest suggestion or comfort from that other super woman who loves us, wants our best, makes life more liveable, someone we've nurtured our bond with not out of obligation carried from the past but by deliberately choosing to invest all that effort, who has witnessed so much of our lives, a comfort that won't split the atom but is for us in that moment the light at the end of the tunnel, our fallen shoulders rise again.

The joy inside us women never actually goes anywhere, it just gets pushed back from time to time, covered over: buried under responsibilities, expectations, the daily rush, trapped inside the wrong moulds. What it takes to bring it back out is, more often than not, another woman. A woman you can be your unfiltered self around, be silly with, who never takes her supportive hand off your back, who maybe completes a puzzle piece you're missing, or maybe fits into the same puzzle gaps together with you. The one who says "you go, girl" when you've even forgotten to give yourself credit, who reminds you "you don't deserve this," who sometimes says nothing at all and just stays, who sometimes makes you face yourself, and who sometimes says "come on, get up, we're going" and pulls you off that couch. Only this way can we lighten the struggles we face on the rough roads life pushes us into, and reach shore a little easier. As delicate, gentle, nuanced and demanding of effort as any relationship between a man and a woman, and among the most precious things in life: women's support for one another and the power of sisterhood that grows from it. Here's to being there for each other more.