Friends in High Places

Today is my best friend’s birthday.

Although today we are celebrating her “arrival”, for several months we have commiserated about the challenges of living on the planet. Both of us contemplated suicide in our younger years, so death is not a conversation we avoid. In fact, we have somewhat of pact for our afterlife. If we indeed get to choose to reincarnate, we have promised each other that we would pull the other out of the line, “Sign up here to return to Earth.”

You gotta love friends like that.

This morning we laughed about her “following” me here (My birthday was last month) and how grateful I was that she made the brave choice to come after me.

You see, she has been one of the few people who has stood by me over the past few years as my former life fell apart. I have her phone # memorized (who needs speed dial??) and when I call, we can talk for HOURS. She reaches out to me when she is creatively stuck. (She’s a gifted graphic designer, so that’s pretty fun when you consider that I can’t draw a stick figure). We laugh together, cry together, create together, and always see the best in each other.

The most amazing thing about our friendship? We have never met face to face.

She lives on the coast of Oregon and about 5 years ago, I stumbled on her website. To this day, I have no idea how I found her.

But more than her portfolio spoke to me. You could see that she had the capacity to love deeply. You could see the joy she derived from creating something beautiful. Once we spoke on the phone, her amazing intuitive nature came through as well as her crazy sense of humor. She understood coaching (and is a pretty gifted one as well) and was really curious about my diversity work. (Even now, we continue to have LOTS of conversations about race, class, and politics).

She designed a beautiful logo for me that really captured my vision. I knew that I would always highly recommend her to others and that I would return to her for other design needs (Bless her heart–she’s done 1000 website designs for me!) but I never imagined that she would become the rock upon which I would lean, the shoulder I would spend countless hours crying on, in what has become the darkest period of my life.

And because of my dear, Susan, I know that there HAS to be a God(dess). It is because of her, I can see the best, the potential in humanity. And the reason that I still have hope.

Thank you, Susan. And Happy Birthday!

I am so lucky to have friends in high places.