A meme floats around the internet with the phrase, Find your tribe, love them hard. For Diana Register, those words became a lifeline. After losing her husband, her tribe was the group that sat with her in the ashes, the friends who held her hand as she planned a funeral she never wanted to plan, the women who laughed and cried with her when she wasn’t sure she could stand up on her own. That support was nourishment, healing, survival. But Diana also knows what happens when women are not kind to each other. Words can give hope to a widow who feels like she is failing, or they can crush a mother already drowning in stress.
Like many, she sometimes turned to social media to connect and broaden her circle of support. Some of her dearest friends are people she has never met in person, yet they know her heart better than neighbors ever could. The internet can be beautiful in that way. But it can also be cruel.
Not long ago, Diana wrote a lighthearted post about raising a teenager. She usually writes about grief, but on that day she needed a break from sorrow. Parenting teens felt like familiar territory, and humor was the only way to survive. Many laughed along, recognizing their own struggles in her words. But others pounced. Strangers called her names, accused her of being a bad mother, even labeled her a bully.
The irony stung. The piece was meant to lighten the heaviness, yet the backlash piled on more weight. One commenter even sighed, “Women are awful to each other,” Diana had to admit that sometimes that is true. Women can be fiercely supportive but also be each other’s harshest critics. And the question that lingers is, why? Why tear down someone walking a parallel path when we could just as easily hold them up?
Her widow’s story has taught her plenty about judgment. Wives are judged. Mothers are judged. Widows are judged. Parents are forever told what they should or should not do. And somewhere in the background, someone always seems to be waiting to remind you of your failures. But Diana insists we do not have to join in. It is a choice. Supporting one another does not mean agreeing on everything. It simply means letting each other live our lives without insults. Differences are what make life enjoyable. If everyone parented, loved, or grieved similarly, the world would be full of robots instead of resilient humans with unique scars and strengths.
Her daughter, the so-called “teenager being a jerk,” reads everything she writes. She laughs, rolls her eyes, and most importantly, she knows she is loved. She knows she is valued, beautiful, and strong, even when she is moody or difficult. She has already survived a loss most adults never face, and one day, she will understand that those scars made her even stronger. Diana hopes her daughter will also find a tribe of women who will never judge her for being real.
Because that is what real women do. They support each other even when they disagree. They love without condition, like Diana’s tribe has loved her through her darkest days. One friend, once just a stranger, gave advice Diana did not follow, yet loved her just the same afterward. That is the kind of friendship that saves lives. The widow’s reminder is simple: Words carry weight. They can build or destroy, turn social media into a lifeline or a battlefield, and every person has the power to choose which kind of words they will use. Women need each other in grief, motherhood, or everyday chaos. They need tribes, sisterhoods, and circles of support. And the only way to create them is by remembering the power of our words.
