friendship – hellomelissa.net

December 16 Prompt

Author: Martha Mihalick
Editor at Harper Collins
@curiousmartha

Prompt: Friendship. How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst?

reverb10.com

I don’t think I can think of a specific incident where a friend changed me or my perspective. It likely happened, but nothing sticks out.

Edit: December 21, 2010, 9:35pm

So my husband read this post through Facebook and wrote me the following comment:

Weak sauce..you have friends on the Internet community that helped you be more social, friends that are pregnant that allow you to appreciate the miracle children give, a November weekend that allowed you to appreciate alone time and remind you that your still a woman and not just a mom..would you like me to write these for you 🙂

I wrote the following back to him:

Point taken. Thanks for calling me on it. I have to admit, I haven’t been giving some of these posts the thought they deserve. I’ve been just trying to push them out. Not everything needs an over-the-top story, but that subject didn’t deserve such a weak response.

I think I’ll go back and edit a little later and incorporate what you’ve reminded me of. Thanks.

(For those playing along at home, I’m at my folk’s place right now so that is why Sean and I are talking about this here instead of face-to-face.)

So yeah, Sean was totally right. Hear that honey? You were right. We’ve since talked offline (well, technically online since it was a Skype conversation, but it was just a conversation between the two of us).

I was thinking about this the wrong way. I was thinking about how an individual friend had completely changed my life. I wasn’t thinking about the gifts that my friends have given me this year.

Each of the three things Sean mentioned are extremely valuable to me. I’m not a good friend. I don’t keep in touch as much as I should. I don’t nurture my friendships very well. Yet people still talk to me.

That is a gift unto itself.

I need to change my perspective and return that gift to them.