What is Friendship?

“Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.”

-Ann Landers

The quote above is one of my favorites about friendship.  Friendship is not conditional, it is not expecting perfection, it is truly loving someone for who they are and what they will be in the future.

Friendship is like the changing of the seasons.  Some stay with you through one or two seasons and leave when the weather changes. Maybe some stay with you during the fall when the weather is mild and leave when winter arrives.

While other friends stay with you as the seasons change throughout the years.

Each year, you make new friends, maintain old friends, and experience different phases of life together.  Some may stay and some may leave, it doesn’t mean the ones who leave were not important.  It means that it was their time to go, but no one goes without leaving some type of mark.

For the past few years, I have tried to pick a few friends who have impacted me in some way that year and share how they have changed my life.

Life hasn’t always been 100% roses and rainbows.  Over the years, I’ve grown new experiences, opportunities, memories, LOTS of photos, and amazing friends. And I say it time and time again; I must have done something right in my previous life to have such wonderful friends who in sickness and in health, good times and in bad, have never let me down even when I have my dramatic moments.

Many people struggle with finding a handful of good friends and I have a castle full.

Each year I look back I’m speechless at all the incredible things that have happened.  My life would not be as fabulous as it is without all those people in my life.