Friends You Love: Meet one of mine! #FYL

I'd like to introduce you to Lisa from Two Bears Farm as we celebrate friendships this month with Friends You Love!

I had the pleasure of finally meeting Lisa IRL this summer when we attended TypeAParent Conference. She was my roomie for the weekend, and she made me some delicious sweet treats (seriously, go check out her recipes. She's amazing with natural foods. I do not lie!).

Here's a picture of the two of us together from that fun weekend in Asheville:

Isn't she just too cute? Anyway, please go on and read a story from Lisa in only the way she can write one. You'll find yourself touched and moved. And please let her know that!

I am so honored that Andrea invited me back a second year to post during Friends You Love week.

I’ve been following Good Girl Gone Redneck for at least a year and a half now, and always look forward to Andrea’s warm and heartfelt posts. I got the chance to meet her in real life this summer during Type A Con, and had so much fun chatting about life as a mom, books, and PPD. She’s just as easy to talk to in real life as she is online. Thanks, Andrea, for inviting me back, and for being a great friend to me!

Since this month is all about friendship, I started thinking about the first time a friendship of mine hit an adult note. Do you remember the first time your friendships left the carefree days of youth and reached a different, more mature level? It happened at the tender age of 14 for me. My best friend, K.D., had spent long, leisurely summer days with me. We’d ridden horses, had sleepovers, gone shopping, and eaten our fill from the brand new fast food chain, Taco Bell. It was a summer of innocence, but then K.D. and I went to separate schools, and only saw each other for riding lessons. K.D. fell into a bad crowd. I still don’t know all the details of what happened, but one day my mom pulled me into the room and told me to sit down. Then, she gingerly broke the news that K.D. was in a mental hospital. A mental hospital? My summer best friend -- my larger than life, bubbly, beautiful and creative friend -- K.D.? Yes. K.D.’s mom had called mine, and said that she was asking for me to call her and to write to her.

The letters I got broke my heart and shocked me. K.D. had changed. She wrote about her 19 year old boyfriend, who was in jail, and how she wanted to have his baby (this, during a time when having babies was definitely not something you saw in high school). She wrote long, heartfelt letters about how her best friend in the hospital went crazy one night, about how she had to watch her tackled by nurses, and held down while they doped her, and eventually put her into a straightjacket. I wanted to fix things for K.D. I wanted to take away her pain, to get her out of that dark place and offer her hugs and somehow magically erase time until we went back to our warm summer days.

But I learned that sometimes, in friendship, the way you can help most is to listen. You can’t always change and fix. And you can never erase time. But you can support by calling and writing, by standing by someone when they fall. K.D. did get out of the hospital, and they placed her in a different school. It took her a while to get her life back on track, but eventually she did, and she was able to go to college and enter a successful field in the medical profession. And all these years I never forgot that sometimes, to hold your friends up, you just need to open your ears.

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