09/09/2025
What a gift it is to be a friend 🧡🩷💜
My best friend of twenty-three years Is on the other end of the phone sobbing. It is 2 am and I am downstairs whispering, to not wake anyone one up.
If she were here I would hug her, as it is I am trying to hug her down the phone line as I just sit and listen to the end of her marriage.
This isn't our first, or probably last, painful call and in that moment I was struck by a profound realization.
Being her friend wasn't just something I was doing. It was something I was receiving.
At fifty, I've come to understand something that my younger self couldn't fully grasp. We often express gratitude for having friends, but the true privilege—the real gift—is being able to be a friend.
There's something sacred about being the person someone calls in the middle of the night when their world is crumbling.
Something precious about being trusted with someone's heartbreak, their fears, their unfiltered thoughts.
Something profound about being the shoulder they choose to cry on, the ear they want to hear their stories, the heart they trust with their vulnerability.
I've stood beside my friend as she buried her mother. Held her hand as she waited for biopsy results. Celebrated when her son graduated from high school. Listened when her marriage hit rocky ground.
These weren't burdens—they were privileges.
There's a unique joy in being needed, in being useful, in being trusted. In knowing that your presence matters to someone you care about deeply.
A friend recently thanked me for "always being there," and I almost laughed. Doesn't she understand? Being allowed into her life, being trusted with her story, being chosen as her confidante—these are gifts she has given me, not the other way around.
At fifty, I've accumulated enough life experience to know that we're not meant to travel through this world alone. We need community, connection, companionship.
But what I understand now that I didn't fully grasp in my younger years is that being needed is as essential as needing others.
It's a profound privilege to walk alongside someone through the decades, to witness their story unfold, to hold space for their growth and struggles and triumphs. To be trusted with their secrets, their insecurities, their dreams.
So yes, I am grateful for my friends. But more than that, I am grateful for the opportunity to be a friend. To show up. To listen. To remember. To witness. To celebrate. To comfort.
Being someone's friend isn't something we do—it's something we're allowed to be. It is a gift life has given us.
