What does friendship look like?

To me it looks like;

Sharing...

Sharing my hopes;

My dreams,

My ambitions,

My fears, 

My experiences;

Including how my day went,

The things that made me really happy, really upset or really worried. 

It’s the feeling of being heard and understood,

It’s the feeling of being able to unravel myself in so many words. 

To me It looks like;

Being there...

For the birthdays,

The graduations,

The weddings,

The bridal showers, 

The promotions at work, 

The moments of success, 

But also for the other times,

Times of loss or defeat, 

In sickness or 

When faced with death; 

Being there;

Be it physically or via text or a very long voice note, a phone call or a month long count down...

It’s the feeling of knowing that I’m not alone. 

To me it looks like;

Knowing me...

Sometimes better than myself.

My friends remember the things I’ve long since forgotten,

My friends told me I had a type,
Long before I knew I had one,

My friends know where home is;

They know Mhamha and Daddy,
Chenge and Chiye, Malachi.

They know Aunty and our two dogs.
They know where we keep the spoons.

To me Friendship It’s the feeling of familiarity,

That in whatever form of self I am in someone else knows where the footing lays. 

To me it looks like;

Coffee dates early in the morning, 

And photographs, 

Lots and lots of photographs!

It looks like adventure and travel,

It looks like heaps and heaps of memories;

Like laughter, 

and 

Sometimes tears! 

It is treasure in the form of experiences. 

To me friendship looks like the faces of successful men and women who are all over the world doing their thing,

Each of them holding pieces of my heart. 

xoxo

Chido Dziva Chikwari 

I am one of those people who are blessed with many friends. I have been fortunate enough to carry on friendships from high school, I was lucky to make new friends in university and I have had the privilege of making more friends out of school and through work. Many of them much older than me and some younger. I treasure them all and thank God for such amazing connections. What does friendship look like to you? 

“A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.”

-William Shakespeare

Our First Goodbye

I thought about it tonight,

Parts of that morning I remember vividly,

I can't remember what we wore but I remember making you a cup of tea, 

And that I was late. 

I can remember what we spoke about on our walk to the station,

How who you partner with can change the trajectory of your life. 

I can’t remember the train ride; if we stood or sat or if we spoke.

I can’t remember getting off the train,

But I remember sitting next to you on the bench,

You sat on my right and while we were there it felt like time stood still,  

And in that station; it was just you and me, the bench and the passing trains. 

I can’t remember the conversation we had,

We spoke about nothing to while away the time, 

And possibly to postpone the inevitable. 

I remember a few trains came and left, 

We didn't count how many. 

I remember seeing what I thought were tears in your eyes,

I remember us finally getting up to say goodbye,

You gave me a hug,

I can’t remember if you kissed me or not. 

And then I got on the train to leave. 

These are the memories I have of our first goodbye.

xoxo

Chido Dziva Chikwari 

This post was inspired by a memory. I don’t know why the mind chooses to remember some things more vividly than others.It’s almost as if some moments in time are stamped. Signposted and encapsulated like landmarks. 

Are some moments more critical in the trajectory of our lives than others? Do some encounters touch our subconscious such that it’s difficult for us to ever let them go? Is it random or are these moments in memory form part of the bigger picture of our lives so that one day when we sit and remember it all they come together like pieces of a puzzle forming who we are? Perhaps I’m overthinking again.

I’ll end this blog post with a quote; “Sometimes you will never know the true value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” 

Keep Shining :) 

Untitled

God

I know I made that promise to you,

All those years ago.

Eight to be exact.

I promised that if you mended it,

My beating broken heart,

I would keep it safe from being torn into pieces again.

God,

I am back.

With my heart,

Still a little scarred,

But whole again.

Praying,

Please don’t let him be another one.

He that makes my heart smile

And my spirit hope.

Please don’t let him be another one,

Another one that walks away

And leaves me void,

With a mind full of bitter-sweet memories,

And with tears that may dry on my face,

But a heart scarred once more.

God,

I know I made that promise to you,

All those years ago so

Please don’t let him be another one.

xoxo 

Chido Dziva Chikwari

Have you ever made a bargain with God? They often sound like this, “God if you do this one thing for me I promise I will never do xyz again?” This piece is a mini prayer following on from one of those bargains. After going through what was hopefully the biggest heartbreak of my life I asked God to fix my heart and in return I was going to keep it safe. For a long time I did. I built walls around it and worked hard to stop anyone from coming in. Fast forward to today I’m making another prayer; What if I let someone in?

Beginning Again and others...

What Could Have Been

Ashes of the dream’s past,

And a life lived not so long ago remain.

Etched in our memories

Yet to fade.

And the bruises on our skin

Yet to heal.

All in unison,

Reminding us of what could have been.

Inspiration 

I like to think that I am not that old but over the years one of the things that has become so apparent in my life is all the loss. I have lost family and friends that were close to me and the thing about death is that it doesn’t wait till things are done and dusted. It doesn’t wait till you have lived out each one of your life’s ambitions or till your children have grown old enough to take care of themselves or remember you. The other thing is that while death takes the individual and all the dreams that they had it doesn’t erase every memory from those that are left behind. Years after it still hurts and years later we still think about them. Today on several occasions I thought about two of my friends that passed away and their children. I never know what the trigger is and what I'm supposed to do when I am flooded with memories and the urge to text but today I resolved to be more present with those of my friends that I can still text. 

I Will Write to You 

I will write to you.

The things on my heart I will put on paper.

Just in case my memory fails me. 

I will etch in history my thoughts and my feelings 

Just in case I am not here tomorrow. 

I will leave with you my words forever, 

Written in timeless prose, 

Pieces of me to you. 

I will write to you. 

Inspiration 

I love hand written letters. I have several boxes of them on the top shelve of my wardrobe and sometimes when I am feeling emotional and have time, I take them out, tip them over my bed spread, sit cross legged and read. They take me back in time and I love it. When reading them I can almost feel as if I am reliving the point in time when the letter was written.  I do this with my blog sometimes too. It is part of the reason why I write; to be able to go back in time and ‘feel’ again. I write to my son often, I started writing to him while I was pregnant and hope that one day he will read all the words of affirmation I pencilled down for him and spoke long before he was born. The things we write have the potential to outlive us and most likely will and this post was inspired by a friend of mine who recently wrote a book chapter. I was so happy about that and part of the reason why was that I believe that writing allows you to be a keeper of your own legacy. So I write.

What Matters Most

In a world full of people, 

My God, 

We found each other! 

It must’ve been part of his splendid plan, 

Because why else would you make me smile like so. 

Why else would you make me laugh always? 

Why else would my heart open up so freely?

And my mind do flips at the thought of our banter? 

It must’ve been part of his splendid plan. 

And for now, that is what matters most.

Inspiration 

A deep meaningful conversation with someone I enjoy talking to. 

As a side note though, have you ever thought about why and how certain people come into your life? I mean it doesn’t always have to be extremely profound, but I do believe that everything happens for a reason and that in most encounters there is a teaching point. I seek these teaching points out intentionally always in friendships that have lasted for years, in failed romantic relationships and in once of chance encounters with people I will never meet again. It is people and my interaction with them that in so many intertwined ways have led me to where I am today. People matter and for that reason I try to be intentional with my relationships. I try to nurture those that nurture me and I give where I am needed but I also try to distance myself from those that I feel can do me harm. I also appreciate that relationships can be seasonal, what grows you today may not grow you tomorrow but also every once in a while, you meet a forever person. The ones that never go away and see you through so many seasons. 

Myself 

I hope I never lose myself, 

In the middle of a crowd, 

Swallowed up by those around me. 

I hope I never lose myself, 

When/If I ever become yoked to another, 

When two become one. 

I hope I never lose myself, 

When I give birth to and begin to nurture my own, 

When my womb brings forth new life.  

I hope I remain true to myself, 

My hopes and dreams, 

My crazy ambitions.

I hope I remain true to myself, 

To the things that make me Me.

Inspiration 

At the end of 2018 I read Becoming by Michelle Obama and it made me mad. It made me so upset and I was ready to rant at whoever would listen. I did and at each interval I was given one explanation or the other about why what I felt like was Michelle losing herself to her husband and children was not that. Some of these explanations included how in life women go through different phases and another was how in life you have to make compromises. I don’t want to pre-empt the book to anyone who hasn’t read it but it left in me a strong desire to want to remain true to myself despite all the changes that might come with the different phases in my life. Despite all the outside forces, despite the possibility of marriage to someone else who has their own hopes and ambitions which might merge to become our ambitions and despite having the privilege to bear and raise children I want to always remain on Chido’s path. Granted Chido’s path might change over the years but I never want to find myself changing my life course or letting go of myself because of outside forces. We interpret things differently though, but this is what I felt after that read. 

Beginning Again 

At that point it mattered not what I had lost. 

It mattered not the journey ahead. 

What lay before me was a fresh start. 

An opportunity to begin again. 

To mould, to shape, to redefine. 

So here I am beginning again. 

(02/01/19)

Inspiration 

At the beginning of the year I decided to cut my hair. I hadn’t had a life changing epiphany but for months I couldn’t shake the idea of cutting my dreadlocks. I had kept them for 6 years before that and many of my friends asked WHY? Their questioning was on the backdrop of how I had struggled for so long to grow them. Then and now, it didn’t matter to me how hard and how long I had kept them. I didn’t want them anymore and all that history wasn’t history enough to keep them. I know I will look at pictures and miss them. I know I will see other people with locs and think of them and I know I will probably grow locs again but in retrospect the whole encounter got me thinking about how when you need to and when you are ready to sometimes you just need to let go of things that you no longer what . You need to let go when something no longer serves you no matter what the history is. Starting afresh is not necessarily a bad thing. Whatever you built before can always be rebuilt. I am not saying throw away everything you have ever worked for, but there is beauty in new growth and I’m not just talking about hair. 

xoxo

Chido Dziva Chikwari