I've been thinking quite a bit about friendship lately. A fact you may have already realized, what with the title of my last post and all.

Whether Andy realizes it or not, this whole change-our-world-change-our-life movement didn't start on a lake in the summer of 2018. Instead, it really began earlier in 2018…on a cold February morning.

I was at work in the greenhouse: 15°F and snowing outside, 70°F and sweating inside. With my pants rolled up and my feet bare, we were standing around the planting table putting up tubs of Geranium combinations when my friend looked up, gasped (shrieked), and crossed herself with an “Ay, Dios Mio” muttered under her breath. I turned to see what caught her eye, and she grabbed my arm and told me I was going to die. When I saw what caught her attention I had to laugh; there atop the van, sitting in the fresh snow, was a huge crow. He stayed on my van for about 20 minutes just watching us and cawing before he flew away.

I laughed, because in my experience most people don't realize that the symbolism of a crow isn't necessarily one of physical death, but rather one of spiritual death and rebirth. That was the day I knew things were going to change in a big way. What I didn't understand at the time was that there were changes coming that I was definitely not going to be prepared for.

Sometimes people can feel threatened when they see someone living their life the way they choose, instead of the way we in the US are all conditioned to live - live to work, work to consume, consume to fill the empty void that would be a life well-lived and full of love. It's a viscious cycle and one I’m glad to no longer be a part of.

When you change your life so completely, and you begin to live it for yourself instead of others, you will find out who loves you and wants what is best for you,, and who simply sees you for what you can do for them.

The friends that stick around, the ones that continue to answer texts and send their own, the ones who send me snapchats of their day, the ones who go out of their way to make sure I know they love me, the ones who ask if I've found any good rocks lately…those are the ones who make the list of people I'll make sure to visit when I go back to Minnesota.

The coworkers who were good friends, but stopped returning messages when I left the job I loved (but that paid absolute shit). The best friend who I dropped everything for, for years, when a crisis occurred - real or imagined, but was nowhere to be found when I experienced loss and grief and needed her. The friend whose big soft heart I covered with my own in order to protect it from complete decimation, whose needs pushed an energy shift that literally had me on my knees puking for two days…only to have the love returned with complete dismissal when I chose my family's needs over an automatons life of misery.

I said I've been thinking alot about friendship lately…because those people that I loved who could not give me love in return, were a very big part of my life and, oddly enough, all from the same corner of my life. I've been reminded lately that those friendships were there for a reason. Having learned what I did, through those people that I loved, I’ve also realized that those empty spots that hurt so much at first, have slowly been filled up by new family and new friends I’ve met along the way. I NEEDED that space to be empty, for new energy to come into my life. If I had known then what I know now… I don't know that I would have changed a thing; the good or the bad. I needed those lessons.

With this realization also comes the awareness that I don't really think of them much now. I'm already moving on through the rest of this place and time, and they've only been brought into focus now by the energetic need to completely release them, and the sadness I allowed them to bring me.

I shall say to them only, God Bless you and I wish to you all the best that you deserve in this lifetime.

*sometimes this blog is much more of a journaling than I realize, more personal than planned. I know some people come here because of the bus, some come here because they are part of my life…but others… There are others who come for reasons that are peculiar to their own minds. It is those to whom I speak now: I see you. I feel you. I send all of your energy back to you filled with love, to bring you peace, to light your way.