Abbe’s Ruminations January 2024
Friendship: A true friend combines respect, humor, honesty, love, and trust.
Recently, I challenged myself to apply to a highly competitive retreat for women writers for 2025 acceptance. The application went beyond the ones I have filled out for college acceptance, or any professional position. I passed weeks writing and revising my answers. Filling the pages with my thoughts and desires, explaining who I was and what I wanted to accomplish with my project.
It took an old friend to set me straight. A former professor of teachers, a Presidential Teacher award winner, and a grant writer, she tactfully wrote her critique. While you express your ideas well, you aren’t answering the questions. You are contradictory and don’t know what you want.
Wow! Most people would be offended and discount the comments, but I laughed out loud. Here was my college roommate from 1972 who knew me. She took the time to read my work, respected me enough to tell the truth, and prompted me to look at my intentions.
Ironically, the working title of my next project is Catch Me As I Am. Here I was caught not knowing myself. I had made a fatal error. Just because an opportunity is there doesn’t mean that the time is right or that the opportunity would take me where I wanted to go.
Later, when we talked on the phone, my friend referred to what I had written. She realized that there was a gap in our lives where I had disappeared for ten years before I resurfaced. All this mattered to her. Talking with honesty and gentleness, we laughed as we used to in our dorms. Neither of us judged what was, or what the other felt.
I took a chance to share my application with my friend. She took a chance to tell me the truth. The result bonded us further. I learned another lesson. We talk about love, caring, and kindness, but without trust an enduring relationship fails.
Another wise person once told me that I try to live too many lives at once. While I look to the future, the present needs attention. I have put aside my application, not because I failed or I’m afraid to work harder. I’m finishing my present novel, Sealy. My characters need my full attention, they too are searching, and I can’t fail them in the last few chapters.
I’m thrilled to have a gentle nudge from a friend, one who counsels by reminding me, what I already knew down deep.
I’d love to hear from my readers and friends. You can see my other writings at http://www.abberolnick.com
