When I met this woman, I was 22 years old, engaged, thinking I didn't want to be and was trying to be free from the responsibilities of life. I started working at a camp on Lake Michigan (Camp Blodgett) that summer of 2000, thinking that I could escape everything. I didn't realize I would run right into a new friendship that would last me, now, nearly 13 years and counting.
I listened to a workshop by Shauna Niequist today about "Friendship" and I have to say that the words she spoke about maintaining real friends reminded me of the beautiful woman pictured above. I do not reasonably think that I could be me if she wasn't here. Everything about my life today has been shared in some way with her and nothing that matters to me is kept from her. She knows me through and through; she even has the ability to subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) chastise me without me raising an eyebrow or getting an attitude. (Those that know me have probably experienced "the Myama attitude" once or twice.) Let me be clear though...it's not that she's never said something I didn't agree with. She just says it in a way that makes me think about life and my response to it.
Not many people can do that...successfully.
The baby girl she is holding is her "mini-me", her daughter that resembles her in so many ways. I have watched her mother this little girl from the womb and onward, mother her nephew-now-son from the heart and onward. And I cannot wait until she is the aunt to my children that they will need as they get older. She took my wedding photos at my wedding in December, braving the freezing cold Michigan winter with her family, so she could capture my day. She dressed her (my) babies up so they could precede me down the aisle. And it was then that I realized that we are indeed friends/twins joined for life.
This woman...Toya...is the friend whose love I cannot live without. And this post of tangible love is dedicated to her...
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