Girlfriends

Today I connected with two different girlfriends that I hadn't seen in a while. First, I went out with my delightful friend Molly, and we shopped in the Junction, had lunch at Alki, zoomed around in her "fancy car" (what Tessa called it) with the top down....and talked, and talked, and talked. I honestly believe that if life hadn't called to remind us of other things we should be doing, we'd STILL be talking, laughing...and probably drinking wine. ;-) The other girlfriend is my lovely friend Lynn, who brought us a great dinner tonight (yum and thank you!) and stayed a few minutes to chat and catch up. Lynn is a deeply spiritual person and I find myself wanting to absorb that spirituality into my own inner being - she has great wisdom in her words and I try to catch the gems as they fall from her mouth whenever I see her. Lynn is also beautifully, roundly pregnant, and I had so much fun catching up a little on the subject of her pregnancy while reliving my own in my own mind. Both of these friends are precious, and I guess I'm actually grateful to the stupid **** cancer for reminding me to bring them back into my life. Like everyone, we're all busy, and these friends had fallen through the cracks a little - it had been a while since I'd seen either of them - and I'm so glad that we were able to reconnect and remember the things that we adore about one another.

People always talk about cancer's gifts. I wish I was smart enough to figure out these gifts - which are available for the taking by ANYONE, it's not necessary to get cancer to get these gifts - without having cancer present them.

What gifts?
I am reminded of the incredible sisterhood of girlfriends. The sisterhood means that since getting breast cancer, my closest friends have grown even closer, and I have watched my friends near and far gather their strength to give to me. I have taken this sisterhood for granted, certainly....though I've always loved my girlfriends, I think that I'd forgotten just HOW deeply I care about them, and vice versa. A good girlfriend can make the bad days bearable, and that is really saying something. More than my good friends - on whom I've always relied - is the reminder that ALL women are part of the sisterhood. Total strangers have reached out to me to share their stories, to offer encouragement, and to cheer me on. Women that I barely know, who have never visited my home, have brought me incredible home cooked meals. Women in chat rooms for breast cancer patients have shared the most intimate details of their diagnosis and offered me hope. Acquaintance friends have offered deeper friendship to me. To all of this, I say THANK YOU! I love the sisterhood. I'm proud to be a woman, and to feel this incredible connection to the incredible women in my life.

Another gift is the gift of living purposefully. We all know that a bus could hit us tomorrow, but honestly, nobody is counting on that. I'm not counting on dying from breast cancer (I plan to die of old age, in my sleep, at age 100. Ryan will be at my side, and will also die in his sleep, at age 105, the same night.) but I'm certainly reminded of my mortality. This gift makes me want to make the minutes count, to use my life for something purposeful. I'm still thinking about what this means, but I think I know two things: 1) I need to help eradicate this terrible disease, and fundraising is probably where I can do that best; and 2) I need to write. I don't want to make my writing a series of random blog entries, I want to make my writing something purposeful, meaningful, and (let's hope!) literary, and I will work on that in the future. The NEAR future.

There are other gifts, but one of my greatest gifts - Tessa! - is calling me, and I must run. Love to all - I hope that at this exact minute, you are thinking of YOUR gifts.

With love,
Kristina