Keep Your Women Friends

WBF Col 4 Keep Your Women Friends
womenbefriends@yahoo.com
Date: Dec 17, 2004
From: MJS
To: CW

What a wonderful visit we had! And yes, they are all too short and too far between, and we will just have to work around the obstacles as they arise. We are not leaving to Snowbird until February this year, so some how we will get a chance to visit. I know you’d like to write a book, but maybe later. Meanwhile, let’s make good use of this modern marvel: email!

My grandmother told me this: “Always keep your women friends. You will need them.” She didn’t really tell me a lot, but I have never forgotten that good advice, and she was perfectly right too. Husbands have a lot of good points, but only another woman really understands. We have so much to talk about! Church, children, health, spiritual insights, some unmentionables, but we’ll get to it all. I wish we could meet for coffee every day. This will be a modern version, right?

I didn’t remember to ask you about Power of Myth (Joseph Campbell). Have you finished it yet? What do you remember most from it? I think I was most impressed with his advice to “Live joyfully the sorrows of life.” I have missed out of some good by avoiding the feeling of the bad. “Living joyfully” would be the best thing in life, and I bet we can’t have one without the other. I think one of his best insights is that we are not committed to a person in a marriage, but to the relationship itself. It’s a lot of work and sacrifice to make that relationship work, in and out of the years and circumstances.

Happy to report I exercised four times this week. I have a new purple outfit for the Red Hat shindig tonight, with a red blazer. With a red hat, I am as bright as the Christmas tree already! My younger daughter will be home in the New Year, and my younger son and his wife will be moving out to their own home. Change is good!
Hugs, MJS