Friends

Coco, Susan and Ms. P

F is for friends. I've been lucky enough to have been blessed with a handful of truly amazing, long term friends. The photo here is of three of them at my 50th birthday this past May. I've known them all for at least 30 years! Each has given me a huge part of themselves and I've thanked them again and again, but it will NEVER be sufficient. These ladies have seen me through so many phases, moods, events, ups and downs...husbands! Hahahahahah! One of them is even going to fly out to the British Virgin Islands on her own dime to witness what better be my best and last marriage this coming January.

I'm so grateful we've been around to embrace, accept, defend, annoy, coerce, console and celebrate one another over the years. They are all amazing women with different traits, strengths, and unique and wonderful ways about them. I have had so MANY great times with them. Concerts, dancing, travel, work, child births, birthdays, holidays. We've laughed 'til we cried and cried until we were over it and decided to go have fun again! I love these ladies, and the others not shown here, with all of my being. 

Some people don't have even one friendship in their whole lifetime that has been as rich as the one I've shared with each of my dear friends. It didn't happen by accident. We each chose to make the effort, to be there for one another, to reach out, to show up. It's not that it's all been rainbows and roses. Sometimes good friends do what real friends do...call you on your flaws, challenge you to grow! We've had tough times between us here and there, but never lost sight of what we have, and never withdrew our love. We decided to value each other, stick around, invest. Sometimes we've taken breaks, spent a little less time together when life got to be demanding, but like everyone says, true friendships pick right back up where they left off and ours always have. So I say to each of my dear friends, stealing the words of Winnie the Pooh, "If you live to be a hundred, I wanna live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you!"

And there you have it!