on the qualities of a soul-friend.

I am a lucky gal because I have some awesome beautiful soul-friends. Right now my best friends and I are separated by massive geographical expanses. I feel close to them in heart yet I miss them both dearly. Thank god for the powers of technology that can bridge us all together on this round-blue planet.  I don’t feel like the media is smeared with examples of how edifying gal friends can be. I have collected a few treasures, starting with the notable 90’s classic Now and Then. Of course, there is also the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Aw the memories…

I think I once did a whole blog post on the topic of BFF movies. You can search my archives if you need more to this end. When I was a kid “BFF” was not common vernacular but I am grateful for this tender abbreviation. However, the topic at hand is the qualities of a soul-friend.

Soul-friend. Noun. 

1. The plutonic version of a soul mate.
2. A person with whom one has a strong affinity for, shared values and tastes.
3. A person who fits you and gets you.

Currently, I have two soul-friends by my own definition.I found my two soul friends in college. College was a good time to find soul-friends because in the (on-going) process of finding ourselves we found each other. I was afraid that I wasn’t going to make any friends, let alone soul-friends, at school because after attending community college for three years I yielded not-a-one-friend. However, upon transferring to university I summoned all of my courage and jumped into my two extracurricular areas of interest: environmentalism and feminism. The results: (a) I got a couple on-campus jobs and internships, (b) I squiggled out some lines for my resume that most certainly secured my graduate school position, and (c) I found my soul-friends!

Now these soul-friends are extra special, they are so good they deserve–at the very least–a blog post dedicated entirely to them (you know who you are, love you guys)! We make a good team and the three of us hang out all together in a loving friend-trio. Here are some of the qualities that elevate our friendships to the status of soul friends:

1. We mutual adore each other. I can be myself with these friends and they love me for it. They laugh at my jokes, they listen to me, they go along with my silly ideas and fancies. I can be my goofiest self around them and let my hair down so to say. By the same token, I adore these girls and who they are and reciprocate this love through all the same actions.
2. We have fun together. This may seem obvious, but in the past I have had close friends that really bring me down. However, my soul-friends and I can totally nerd out the same things. We all love tarot cards, flower crowns, social justice, women-focused media, eating picnics, writing, lord of the rings and harry potter… you know, the important things. So we can get together, have fun, and enjoy each other and enjoy our time together. This is where the memories are created. My favorites have been on our notorious self-care retreats and celebrating the sacred holiday of galentines day.
3. We have matching values. As previously mentioned, I found these girls in the worlds of college activism so there was a good chance that some of our passions aligned. We may lead different lives and invest our energies in different ways. We may even have different ideas about some things, but we have a lot of heart in common. The fact that these girls are ardent feminists (like me) also really helps because we understand much of each other’s lived experiences, value these experiences, and can talk openly about matters of the mind and heart. Both of these girl friends also help me grow my ideas and passions and values too by introducing me to new thoughts, ideas, art, news. These girls inspire me all the time: major bonus.
4. We show up for each other. Not all people are willing to invest time and energy into your friendships. This can make or break a quality friendship. We don’t live super close by right now and so we make up for it by committing ourselves to monthly get togethers, quarterly sleep overs, and letter writing/messaging while we are away from home. It’s grounding to know that you have people to show up for you when you need them because they show up for you other times too.
5. When shit gets real, we can bear our souls to each other. And believe me, shit gets real. This is where the trust comes in and is really built upon showing up for one another. It’s difficult to maintain the intimacies of close friendship when you have little to no contact with each other and this is actually how I measure the number of actual friends in my life: do my friends know the major occurrences of the last year? Do I know the major occurrences of my friend’s last year? If both hold true then the person is likely a close friend and perhaps has the potential of becoming a soul-friend. I have to be able to let my guard down and be honest, even if I’m off track, even if it’s not cute or not entertaining. These friends are particularly good in the supportive role and I hope I can reciprocate. I often get into this really women socialized rut of feeling like I am taking up too much space and these girls recognize this as it pops up and kick it to the curb each time. They have bore witness to some of my major life traumas. They have facilitated major life growth by hearing me and loving me in vulnerable/difficult/ugly times. This is where real beauty comes in.

That’s all I can think of right now, but I hope this may be useful to any and all who are asking themselves about what they are looking for in their friendships. It took me a while to get me here but it’s a beautiful place to be. Happy friending to all.

On working shit out through dreams…

I consider myself an intuitive person and clumsy mystical-sort of Jew. I really got in touch with my spiritual self in recovery and as a product of a long awkward process that still gives me the heebie jeebies sometimes. I don’t want to call my current spiritual state  “woo-woo” but yes, I am a bit eclectic and open-minded. New-age is not part of my identity though, I don’t dress in flowy garments and recklessly appropriate other people’s cultures. I’m all about using pluralistic tools and building materials that I’ve pick up along the way to build a bridge back to the traditions of my ancestors. I say this on Shavout, our delicious day for eating cheese cake Jewishly. I so far have not done anything today along the lines of studying torah, staying up all night, eating dairy, or talking about Ruth. That’s okay: I’m still building. To repeat the beautiful wisdom of my seven-year-old cousin, “It’s not perfect but yay!”

Okay, that was context. To the subject matter at hand: please sample from this case study of how spontaneous subconscious dream work has actually created resolution to real-life issue for me***.

The case of the unsettling friend-boyfriend.

Several years ago a dear old friend of mine was dating this guy, who was considerable older. She was just out high school and he was in his early thirties. Age difference aside, he was not a big catch by my estimation. That’s fine, except a few short months after dating him she leaves her school, moves in with the guy, and drops off the map. Now, I know in the heat of romance friends tend to fall off the radar sometimes, but this was getting scary. She wouldn’t give anyone in her family her address. That’s right, no one knew where she was living. I became so troubled by this scenario I ended up calling an abuse crisis line, describing her behavior and expressing my concerns. The folks on the crisis line were really validating and gave me some suggestions for reaching out to her.

Well, she ended up being with this guy for a long time, and bringing him around more so my fear settled. Still, I did not like the guy. I had a bad feeling about him and it wasn’t serving my friend, it wasn’t serving me, it wasn’t serving anybody. I simple couldn’t drop it. Then one night I had a dream worked it out for me. It wasn’t dramatic. I dreamt that I was sitting across from the guy and said, “Listen, I’ve had these issues with you. I was really scared of you, but I am ready to let it go now and just accept that you are who you are and you are in my friend’s life.” When I woke up in the morning it was gone: the resentment, the fear, the blame, all of it. I felt completely neutral toward the guy and every time I’ve seen him or thought about him after that I have no emotional response. He just is who he is. I just am who I am. Another positive bi-product was that my relationship with my friend improved. It wasn’t me in my cognizant self who got me there. It was something bigger or higher that shifted me just enough so that I could see past all my issues and rise above. Pretty cool, huh?

I actually have two other case studies that I have decided to refrain from sharing. Both involve communication with people who have passed on. It doesn’t feel right to write about at the moment. Just know that I am a believer in life-altering resolution coming to us in our subconscious mind before it hits our conscious mind. Also, for brevity sake I am leaving out other mystical spontaneous life moments where I have sent a message to the universe and received an odd prompt response. Perhaps another blog post. Until then, happy dreaming. May your subconscious elevate you to the next level.

on growing thicker skin and returning to my blog (again).

I love to write. Writing has been one of my truest lifelong passions. When I was kid, I always wanted to be a writer, maybe a journalist, yet it never felt like a career choice attainable to me. I dabbled in creative writing during my undergraduate years, taking a few classes to empower my voice and improve my technical craft. The choice to pursue sociology was mostly driven by a love for writing and of critical thinking. Following this calling worked out well for me. To write a thesis was–for all intents and purposes–to write a book. I now know I am capable of working and reworking a writing project, of really investing my whole being into telling a story and of completing it with some success. This work lead me to a profession which entails writing reports and academic manuscripts. And I write for myself too. I write for friends. I write for my daughter and my husband. I have even attained some celebrity within family for my great birthday cards that combine my own mix mandermanian poetry, prose, and doodling. However, to write a blog really scares me. The audience is more ambiguous and fear-shame puts a real limit to what I am willing to put out there.

When I was in high school, livejournals were really popular. It was during that exciting time when home access to the internet was still new.  This was when we used to wait by the dial tone as our computers logged on to the interwebs. If you weren’t alive at this time watch “You’ve Got Mail” and it will fill you in. Reading and writing livejournals was a revelation. Suddenly, I had access to the majority of my social circles thoughts and feelings like never before. You were passing a note to the entire class. Livejournals contrasted sharply to the facebook and twitter of today because the word count was longer and the format was more intimate. I poured my heart there, day after day and awaited eagerly the validation of friends. The internet and I were both in our adolescence and created products that reflected our melodramatic natures. Thin-skin is an understatement. I was walking around guts exposed on a daily basis. One day, I wrote a post that was angsty and exposing. It wasn’t particularly refined and it did not receive a lot of attention, except one cold-cutting anonymous comment. As a reminder, this was a time before “trolling” was in the common lexicon and so the cruelty of the internet was not widely acknowledged. You also have to remember that the audience of live journals was my peers, so though the comment was anonymous I knew it was from someone who knew me and knew me well enough to really hurt me. I had my suspicions but any amount of detecting would of just opened myself up to more vulnerabilities. Instead, I had to just take it and armor up. Nobody was going to do that to me again.

And so, I have filtered myself to internet audiences for years, 12 years precisely.  I have done a lot of internal work in that time and I don’t need all this armor any more. I’ve learned boundaries and have thickened my skin. I have an understanding of myself and positive self worth that has taken a lot of time and healing to develop. I can write about my life and put it out there and it can be vulnerable at times. All this is to say I am back to my blog and my life has changed considerably since I last visited a year and half ago. I will have to get more into that later. Mustering up the courage to post this is enough for tonight.

Goodnight.