I have an amazing sister, and quite miraculously, we are both in recovery. She will always be my number one sister.
However, we don't have to share DNA to connect with other women as soul sisters. There is something beyond special about the relationships that we create with like-hearted women in recovery.
I attribute the closeness that I find in my many recovery relationships to a shared understanding of what pain and struggle feel like—we connect on that spiritual level. But it's also easy to get close because in the recovery circles that I frequent, we bypass the small talk and dive right into the meaningful stuff.
It's not uncommon for opening conversations to go something like this: "Hey, great to meet you. How is your day going?" Common responses might go something like this: "Pretty good, other than my post-traumatic stress disorder was triggered earlier today." I mean, we get that deep that quick.
We connect on experience, intellect, and the ways that we recover the same or differently, but most of all, we connect deep in our souls. I'm not saying that those connections happen 100 percent of the time for women, but in my experience, it's been a solid 90 percent.