One Loyal Friend is Worth Ten Thousand Relatives


Filed Under All Posts, Connie Stetson, Family, Group Posts, Relationships | 15 Comments

Connie Stetson muses on friends and relations, relatively speaking.

Not to speak ill of relatives, of course, but Euripedes got that right. I’m grateful that my sister and have become good friends, and I’m glad I only have one sister to work my shit out with, but we never had a choice. It’s the combo-pack with family. For good or ill, with deeper issues to work out, old wounds to mend; we’re all so invested in the story we made up about when we were kids that it’s nearly impossible to show up as changed, or better, or over that, ya know?

Ah, but our friends… To be able to say to someone, “I absolutely support your change and growth, but you never have to change for me to love you.” Knowing that there are a select few out there who hear your truth and your inconsistencies, and you theirs, is a mighty, mighty force indeed. To allow a dear friend, in all loving honesty to say, “your ass looks like a giant bag of potatoes in those pants, take them off now!” To stand with a friend as she walks through loss, illness, change and all of the boundless joyful stuff too—well, this is what helps keeps me anchored. Read more

Friends and Friendship

Filed Under All Posts, Christie Healey, Group Posts, Relationships | 7 Comments

Christie Healey reflects on true friendships and “china plate” mates.

Just as I started to think about this blog, an old friend from New York sent me a long email. Barbara is one of the most energetic women I have ever met. She has 13 grandchildren, plays tennis and golf and keeps well abreast of the political scene (her opening line was to congratulate me, as a Minnesotan, on the seating of our second senator after eight months of legal whining). I have not seen Barbara in over five years, but every six months or so we correspond. She comes from a nearly extinct breed, the letter writer, but now I see she has discovered email.

I have friendships of over 30 years and of less then three. All of them stroll into my mind at unexpected times and are in my most oft-visited memories.

What brought me together with my friends is still a little mysterious to me, sometimes there is an instant connection and sometimes it takes longer. Read more

Friend Request

Filed Under All Posts, Group Posts, Prudence Baird, Relationships, Technology | 21 Comments

Prudence Baird reflects on midlife connections in the age of social media.

I know why baby boomers are joining Facebook faster than Bernie Madoff’s victims are moving in with their adult children.

We’re not done yet. We’re not done dominating popular culture as defined by our presence in the media, including the “social media” like Facebook and MySpace.

We’re not done with—even though we’ve long exceeded—our 15 minutes of fame. Each. We’re not done prancing in the spotlight—even if for some of us, it’s our first time. Read more

Indelible

Filed Under All Posts, Group Posts, Melissa Howden, Relationships | 7 Comments

Studies show that people with pals lead longer, healthier and happier lives. For our group post this month, we’re each sharing thoughts on friendship.

Melissa Howden reflects on the enduring impressions left by friends, real or otherwise.

Cindy Atkins had a long blond ponytail that swung from side to side. Invariably the bow in her hair matched her dress. At six, Cindy Atkins was my first real best friend. During the course of our friendship, which lasted until about third grade, I spent hours trying to coax my curly frizzy hair into a ponytail like Cindy’s. In the bathtub I would lay my head in the water and swish my head back and forth to get the feeling of a swinging ponytail. For a time, while my hair was wet, my ponytail would be smooth and organized like Cindy’s, but then one by one, a frizzy curl would pop out of my tight ponytail, all my effort defeated by nature. Be it for our friendship or her ponytail I have never forgotten Cindy Atkins. Read more

Distance

Filed Under All Posts, Christie Healey, Family, Relationships | 12 Comments

For Christie Healey, family is chosen and distance is a state of mind.

I have moved many times in my life. Perhaps the most significant was the move from my home village to London in the late Sixties. Looking back it seems that this tearing away from my family and the small world I had known for 17 years set me on the path of the wanderer. The wanderer becomes part of a very different family.

My family is now made up of those I left behind: a sister, two nephews, a great-niece and a great-nephew; a son born in the U.S. and friends I have made over the years. My son has taken up my wandering lifestyle. He now lives in Hawaii. I live in Minnesota.

I have close friends, old and new, in Minnesota, but the rest of my magically selected family live in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, New Mexico and many other places. We come together whenever time and money permit, and sometimes when it doesn’t. Just because I need to see their faces, hear their voices and feel their presence wholly and completely. Read more

WTF California?

Filed Under All Posts, Melissa Howden, Politics, Relationships | 17 Comments

I’m getting gayer by the moment.

I’m guessing my burgeoning gayness is in part my indignant response to those intent upon denying me and my tribe, our equal rights in this country. The rights to marry, to adopt, to care for our loved ones, to have the benefits of insurance, inheritance and whatever else all ya’ll get as standard operating procedure.

It’s a strange time this. On the one hand being gay is like a newly desired accessory tantamount to seasonal fashions—the color, a hemline or a purse (Ellen DeGeneres is a CoverGirl after all). One newly “out” celebrity is proclaiming to any media outlet that will listen that she has always been out, which, I happen to know, is absolutely not the truth and who really cares anyway? So while some are scrambling to proclaim their gayness and claim their seat as the new gay poster child, the California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, which denies gays the right to marry in the state. Well that is not exactly true either. The 18,000 gay couples who were legally allowed to marry by the same Supreme Court last year in the window of time before the Mormon Church essentially paid for the Proposition to deny that right, those couples can be married. Are you following? I did say it was a strange time. Read more

Thoughts on Passion

Filed Under All Posts, Carine Fabius, Relationships | 9 Comments

Carine Fabius recently watched a romantic comedy in which two smart women behaved like “dimwits” as they searched for love and passion. That got her thinking, once more, on the topic of passion. Here’s an excerpt from her book, currently in progress.

I never recovered from Body Heat, the movie. I’ve seen it 50 times. I love everything about it—the music, the dialogue, the mood. It was all that passion—that hissing, heated, flame orange emotion. Matty Walker snared Ned Racine with it; in no time the man was hooked. His obsession led to murder. The whole thing left me reeling. I like that in a movie.

At the tender age of 18, I’d already been through the wash cycle on hot with passion, and wrung out in a dryer set on high; but that was just a preview. Soon, I’d be dancing on hot coals all over again. And again.

Why?

That’s the question I asked myself back then, and now, Read more

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