Framily

Friends do things together

In 2012 I left Oregon, where I went through middle school and high school, and I moved to Nashville, Tennessee. I moved to serve the Baha'i Faith in a metro area where the junior youth program was just beginning. I found a place in Nashville through a Baha'i friend who was already there, and since I'm a musician it kind of made sense.

I knew that moving to Nashville would be difficult because the cultures are so drastically different between the west coast and the southeast. But I had no idea what kind of culture shock I would experience. The two friends I already knew when I walked into town, I never ended up seeing more than twice a year in my five year stint living there. My closest family member was an 8 hour drive away. The Baha'i community felt foreign to me. They were so excited to have a youth (I was 18) with experience in the junior youth spiritual empowerment program, a relatively new Baha'i core activity. I was immediately thrust with no cultural context or real friendships into leadership rolls. As I got to know more and more people I realized that the isolation and difficulty making friends was not unique to myself. There were people in the general population who grew up together or lived together and didn't know basic facts about each others' lives, such as the existence of siblings, a death in the family, what people did for work, or basic likes. The first question asked by anyone, anywhere, was, "Where do you worship? Where do you go to church?"


Most Baha'is my age didn't want much to do with me, and so I was there for almost two years with little to no meaningful connections. Until, a Baha'i lady was moved by my singing voice and came up to me after a devotional gathering and said, "You need to come to my house!" in a soulful plea. So I did. We hung out, and she became my first real connection and lasting bond in the Baha'i community. She's a mother of two sons, she's a black woman in an interracial relationship, and she's a writer, a thinker, and a rebel. Her best friend is a flaming red haired MENSA member Italian Jewish Baha'i. These two became my best friends for the last four years.

We liked to go out and "mess" with people who didn't understand why we would be friends. It's not common in most parts of the country to see strong multi-generational, multi-cultural, and multi-ethnic relationships, let alone to see three people outwardly so different laughing to the brink of peeing themselves in an Applebee's restaurant on a late Friday night, because that's the only place open and Mama be hungry.

We talked about knowing Who you answer to. Not putting other people or things in the God seat, if you will. I spent many a night those first few years on their couches processing through the latest struggle or disappointment in my ongoing attempts to make friends. We've decided that the most important family you have is family you choose, and we are that for each other. We bonded over BTS (Korean Pop). We talked about sex. I don't know many women in their fifties cool with talking about sex and marriage. They say that after a certain point they found the confidence and self-worth to keep their relationship with God clear and not give a damn about the opinions or idle chatter of others. We all need strong women, intelligent, powerful women in our lives. They are teaching me how to be one.