5. The Hype Girls

Every girl needs a crew that hypes her up — the ones who clap the loudest when life feels heavy and who make ordinary moments feel like a movie montage.

For me, that was Tamie and Dawn. My hype girls before the term even existed.

Tamie and I were the Tamie Twins. We weren’t related, but you wouldn’t have known it by how inseparable we were. She had the prettiest blonde hair, always sprayed high with Aqua Net until it practically defied gravity. She’d shake her head to fluff it out, a cloud of hairspray catching the light like a halo. We passed notes, ate ice cream at lunch, and dissected every look a boy gave us as if we were decoding secret messages. Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam was our anthem, and we choreographed arm movements to songs like bad mimes who didn’t care who was watching.

Then there was Dawn — my first best friend. The kind of girl whose laugh could pull you out of any funk. Her mom introduced me to monkey bread — sticky, sweet, pull-apart magic that I can still taste if I close my eyes. Dawn and I would spin around her living room until we fell over giggling, making up routines, talking about everything and nothing. She knew my family, my heart, and my hiding places.

These girls were my anchors when everything else was chaos. They didn’t try to fix me or question the parts of my life that didn’t make sense. They just showed up. With laughter. With music. With love that didn’t need to be explained.

We didn’t realize it at the time, but we were saving each other in little ways — with inside jokes, shared ice cream spoons, and phone calls that stretched late into the night. We were teenagers trying to find our place, but together, we were magic.

Forty-plus years later, I still talk to them. We’ve lived lifetimes since those big-hair, bad-dance-move days. But when I think about the light that trauma tried to steal, they’re part of it. My hype girls. My sunshine. The proof that even in the hardest chapters, laughter leaves its fingerprints.

We didn’t have social media then, but we had each other — and somehow, that was enough.