(ThySistas.com) Right now we are living in a time where there are so many #Movements. There is #LifeGoals, #RelationshipGoals, #BodyGoals and one of my favorites, #HairGoals. One hashtag that I’ve seen recently was #CheckOnYourStrongFriend. This is on that really resonated with me. I cheered for the empathetic soul who created this one because I know we are kindred spirits. I re-read, re-tweet, re-post and reuse the this hashtag a lot of other hashtags but this one I cower away from using. Why is this? Because I am the strong friend and the strong friend doesn’t solicit help, check ups, attention, sympathy or love. It just goes against all of the things that qualifies me as being the strong friend.
Just Incase you are looking at me sideways and thinking “girlfriend this already sounds like a cry for attention”, I have to let you know that I’m not writing this for me. Nope. As the Strong Friends Club 
President, I have written this on behalf of all of the strong friends who are typing “just checking in on you girl” into an iMessage. This is for the ones who are leaving voicemails that with affirmations sprinkled with black girl magic. They need me right now so here are:
3 Things That Your Strong Friend Would Want You To Know.
1. There is no such thing as bothering
Your strong friend has a family, runs a business, does hair, drives Uber, takes care of her elderly mother-in-law but still has time for a “Hey girl hey” text message. While a lot of the time she is the sender, she lights up when she is the receiver. No you are not interrupting her day. No your problems are not petty to her, well maybe they are but she’s a real friend and will let you know you’re being petty if you shoot her that text followed by a petty rant. She is already locked and loaded for that conversation.
2. Asking us how we are doing is sometimes enough.
A lot of times, we move about our day checking on everyone and making sure that things get done. We may be completely fine one minute and the the next we realize that we haven’t actually done a wellness check on ourselves. Having someone ask how we are doing will probably not appear as a cue to start a dialogue about how difficult it is to breathe while driving an Uber with a stinky passenger or how you haven’t taken a day off in the last 3 months because you are really trying to pay off that last credit card bill. It is simple a tap on the shoulder for us to say “I’m cool”, check in with ourselves, make some adjustments and keep it pushing. The key here is that we need that so that we don’t for get to self assess our own needs.
3. We often need an escape from the strong friend zone.
While it may seem that we are perfectly content with always being in the strong friend zone, we often spend some of our time with our faces pressed against the glass door between there and vulnerability. We do want to tell you about the grueling day as a mother of 4 toddler triathletes or explain how we almost cried at forgetting to add the eggs into the cornbread thus ruining an otherwise perfect opportunity to eat greens with hands like we did in our post vegetarian life.
We would love to share those falling apart moments but, unless there is some glitch in the matrix, we just can’t. We are hard wired to keep those to ourselves.
By now you are probably thinking, well what am I supposed to do with this information. Well, the committee has decided that we are ok if any of the following is done:
- Invites To Ladies Night
- Random care packages in the mail including wine and bath bombs
- Offering to babysit if only for 2 hours
- Send funny GIFS
- Tags in Throw Back Thursday posts depicting simpler times
- Or none of the above. Because we are the strong friends. We won’t judge you and will manage either way
Here is a bonus tip: we are all the strong friend at some point. Just make sure you take the time to recognize when it’s your turn.
Staff Writer; LaMisha M. Readus
One may also follow this talented sister over at; IllRegularGirl.