Friday Kappa Alpha Theta's Founders Day. I spent my night in a comfy corner of a restaurant with four of my sisters by my side. As we talked for hours, I began to wonder what dinner looked like for our four founders.
As sorority women, I think we often see Founders Day as a stiff formality, a little distant from our everyday lives. We know our founders' names and where they went to school, but they are little more to us than black and white pictures that float somewhere in an ambiguous cloud of sorority ritual. We forget our founders were nineteen and twenty once, that they were young women like us.
In 1870, the founders of Kappa Alpha Theta were not sipping on Starbucks and refreshing Twitter. They didn't wear big t-shirts to class or make signs for each others 21st birthdays. They died decades before we were even born, but we have more in common with our founders than we think.
The newest generation of Leading Women can find a lot in common with the oldest generation of Leading Women. Our bond is not colors and symbols. Our founders aren't strikingly different-- they, too, found themselves overwhelmed to succeed academically. They, too, felt the pressure of busy schedules. They, too, wanted to blaze their own trail. To make a name for themselves. To do something that hadn't been done.
And what is maybe most important to the story of Kappa Alpha Theta is that they, too, found it beneficial and even necessary to hold onto each other tightly in good times and bad. They understood the value in having a sister to help you reach your highest potential.
In every young woman, there is a void that can only be filled with the love of a friend. For thousands of girls, for 147 years, this void has been filled by Kappa Alpha Theta. Bettie, Hannah, Alice, and Bettie likely didn't predict that in 2017 Thetas would be changing the world through advancements in business, science, humanities, and philanthropy, but they saw this potential in themselves-- in each other.
They formed a bond and a love that has held strong for already a century past their deaths, and when I look at my sisters all around me, I know that same love will bless generations and generations to come. In this 147th year of Theta, I have begun to gain a deeper sense of what it means to be a sister.
Sisters are there to hold you, to comfort you, to empower you. Sisters are open hands and open hearts. So, on Founders Day and every day, I am thankful for my sisters, may we all be a little more like Bettie.
