I know a lot of sorority women will read that title and have a small panic attack trying to imagine life without their Big. To those women it's unimaginable, or too painful and alarming to even think about. One of the most special and important parts of why they chose their sorority is usually because they met a woman during recruitment and thought, "I want her to be my Big Sister." Those connections are the bread and butter of how young women make the decision of which house they want to call home.

When you are a chapter founder though, there are obviously no chapter sisters to be your potential Big. There's no older generation, no pledge class before you. There isn't even really a sorority yet. Which is absolutely terrifying thinking back on the whole colony process, but I digress. I knew coming in that I wasn't going to have a Big, and I was okay to make that sacrifice to help start a DPhiE chapter, but some days it was hard not to be jealous of all the younger generations for getting to be Littles.

The hardest part about not having a chapter big is that you essentially go through the new member process alone. There is no guiding mentor to teach you your sorority's secrets, to tell you when to shut up and let it go in chapter, no one to agonize over your Little list with or sit with you while you panic waiting to find out who is joining your family. I didn't have any of that as a new member or as a newer sister. But that wasn't necessarily all bad.

Not having a Big made me bond so much more fully with my pledge sisters, because we were kind of all each others Bigs and Littles all rolled up into one. If I needed advice about boys, I asked my pledge sisters. If I needed a shoulder to cry on, I had my pledge sisters. If I wanted to go out for a wild night on the town, it was with my pledge sisters. When I had just a little too much fun and needed some one to get me home, my pledge sisters were there. Some of my favorite college memories are of nights spent with five sisters piled on my bed and three scattered on my floor, watching Harry Potter, eating Hungry Howie's after repeatedly calling the delivery guy Howie at the door even though his name was Steve or something, and talking about all of our life issues--from school to boys to graduation to all our hopes and dreams. We had to figure out what being a sorority means, what being sisters means to us together, and the bond we forged from that experience was a vital as the bond most sorority new members forge with their Bigs and I could not have asked for a better group of women to have shared that experience with, but I still wanted that Big/Little Bond that I had so long sought.

Which brings us to this past July. I entered an international DPhiE Big/Little match up, and on July 17th, I finally got my wish and so much more with my sweet international Big, Courtney Hartwell. She has been the biggest blessing in my life, even though we are hundreds of miles apart and probably won't get to meet any time soon. I'm so happy I found her, or rather that she found me, and I get to call her mine. So now I have the best of both worlds to experience this journey of sisterhood with, my beautiful pledge class and my beautiful big. And I wouldn't have it any other way.