Last night I laughed until I cried. I wept and screeched like a banshee and hooted and howled. I laughed in a way that only women can make each other laugh. From the belly and from the soul.

It’s so easy to moan. Really it is. Some days I make it an Olympic sport. I moan about the house. I moan about the weather. I moan about money, or lack of. I moan about my children. But today I’m not going to moan. About anything. Not one tiny thing. Because last night two girlfriends gave me a tonic that will set me up for days.

I don’t see them that often, but true friends don’t have to. We can pick up wherever we left off, and we know that should we need each other, we’ll be there. Absolutely. Friendship is a bit like a plant. Sometimes it’s in full bloom, fragrant and bursting with energy. Other times it is dormant and quiet. But it is always alive; living, breathing and growing. Last night we were in full bloom. One has just danced with cancer, but thankfully has now left him stranded on the dancefloor. The other has things in her life that would darken many a lesser person. But these two magnificent women brought only sunshine last night and we laughed and talked till the wee hours. That’s what I love about women. We can be talking about death and the depths of our despairs one minute and be clutching each other in laughter the next. There are no disparities between the two, because as in life, they are inter-linked.

Family is the blood that pulses round our bodies keeping us going, keeping us warm. But friends – good friends – are like the air we breathe – they invigorate us and stop us suffocating on life.

According to the African proverb, women hold up half the sky. Indeed we do. But many women I know hold up half the sky with one hand, and brush a rainbow in the sky with the other. This is a thank you to the wonderful women in my life. To the girls that keep me a girl no matter how old we get, and to the women who are a place I call home.