Ask + Answer

I got no resolutions. But man do I have a full heart. I will not bore you with a laundry list of things I'm grateful for; let me just share a little bit about what all my wild friends are teaching me. I feel truly blessed to have so many women (at least 5!) in my life with whom, on a regular basis, I can spend an entire day doing nothing more than sharing ideas and feeding children.

I read in a book once that friendship is the collective search for answers to the big questions. You may know the ones. The type of questions you can spend all day talking about and they lead to tangents and at the end of an hour-long conversation you're looking at each other with another question: "wait, did we answer anything?"

That's what I have in all these women. It's amazing. As often as possible (we've all got children!) we find a way to spend some regular time together and afterwards, I'm always blown away. For days I'll be a little lost in thought...somewhere between the lands of awe and challenge. Our experiences have similarities, but they're different. They see sides I cannot see. They gift me their willingness to accept my invitation to step outside their comfort zones and share their thoughts with me. All of them knowing, full well, that I have strong opinions on just about everything. We talk about all the "divisive" things:

What does it mean to be "brown?" Do my kids understand that they're not "white"? What are these arbitrary categories? Should we put our kids in public school even while we have the privilege of making alternative choices? Is "middle class" relative? Might commercially available status symbols be okay if we don't wield them publicly? Is three kids too many? Is just one kid ok? What if I didn't vote? What if I voted for Trump because Harris didn't convince me? What if I voted for Harris? Should I boycott Starbucks because the CEO flies too much? Or because of the Isreal/Palestine debacle? Or not at all because I can't even watch the news anymore? When should you opine? When should you be quiet? Am I doing enough to show my kids that we can believe our beliefs are rights and fully respect the humanity of the neighbor that believes something else? And you know what?

These "divisive" conversations bring us closer together! We cry together. We laugh together. We shake our heads together. We hug...or we don't. But ::SIGH:: to be able to just say these things...work them out...out loud with real people rather than an algorithm that just gives you back what you already think and see...

So on this New Year's eve, I was sitting here a little lost in thought, having recently spent time with almost all of my amazing girlfriends and yet thinking "man...there are so many random bits of rich wisdom to share and I can't even keep my blogging promises to myself. I started a friendship series...never finished it. I said I'd check in about the big kiddo's pine needle selling business and now we don't even own pine trees." Yeah, berating myself. And do you know what happened? It's incredible...

One of these women, the only one I hadn't spoken to in a bit, unexpectedly added her voice. She sent a simple text message:

Pro Tip from a Wild Friend - advice on time.

It's not just applicable to homeschooling. It spoke to me on a much grander scale. In this moment, I'm still here and there's still time. Whatever it is I feel I need to share, I can share it. Whatever questions I need to ask, I can still ask them. You can too.

What would you ask? What would you share?

I invite you...ask; share. Here, with a friend, a neighbor, anyone you think might answer based on feeling rather than math!