What I Know To Be True

My mother taught me about friendship. She didn't do this consciously, she did it simply by living her life and loving her friends and giving me an example of what it is to be a woman and to be a friend.

The women in this picture are the "Club Girls". The women who comprised a support group long before there was a name for it. A group of women who loved each other and supported each other through the ups and downs of life, the joys and sorrows of life, the reality of life. Those times when life was joyous and those times when life was a struggle. They loved each other through the wonders and the defeats, the ups and the downs, the good and the bad. This was my example.

Tonight I was reminded of the joys of the friendship of women. The joy of the freedom of friendship with true abandon. The joy of the purity of acceptance. I have pulled back from my life as I grieved for the loss of my mother. I have removed myself from my family, my friends, my church and my work. I have purposely secluded myself from the pain that love evokes and tried to hide from life. Tonight, as I sat with people from my church, some friends, some acquaintances, I was reminded that life is for the living. Life is for the pure abandon of joy. Life is to be lived because even though we are promised eternity, what we can achieve now is connection, connection to each other and to life itself. Life is to be lived.

I am thankful for the example I have from my mother and her friends. For the women in this picture. For their example of love and kindness. Their example of love and friendship. I am thankful for the friends I have and those I sat around the table with tonight. For my lifelong friend, equal in stature to me....who meets my six feet and takes it to new heights. To my friend and Pastor who knows the depths and breadths of my joys and sorrows. To all the women who share my life and my journey, those who live and love, those who care and bear the joys and sorrows, the grief and sadness that is life. My sister and my sisters-in-law, my nieces and my daughters, my friends and my acquaintances. It is truly a privilege to share my life with you.