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Friends.  What more can I say.  Friends can be a strong sup­port sys­tem to help you strengthen the har­mony in your life, your fam­ily and your work.  Who else will lis­ten to you as you vent, as you try to work your way through what you are deal­ing with, as your shed your tears or help you cel­e­brate when you over­come your obstacles.

The Bag Ladies Ball

I have two dear friends who just recently helped me restore some har­mony to my per­sonal per­spec­tive and work life.  We don’t live near to each other.  We don’t talk by phone often.  We might email once in awhile.  We all have our own busy lives filled with work, fam­i­lies, friends and com­mu­nity.  But we have a strong friend­ship.  We met as col­leagues over 20 years ago.  We worked for dif­fer­ent employ­ers, but served on a state-wide asso­ci­a­tion board together for a num­ber of years.  When we went dif­fer­ent ways, we dis­cov­ered we missed see­ing each other and decided that we didn’t need con­fer­ences or meet­ings as the rea­son to get together.  So we  started get­ting together for one “overnight” a year.  That has con­tin­ued for  over 25 years.  We are still get­ting together for an “overnight.”  Some­times we can even make it two nights.  Some­times we can make it twice a year.  We have dubbed our get-together the “Bag Ladies Ball.”  (At some point in our lives, we were each close to being a bag lady.  And we also show up for our get-togethers with things stuffed in a vari­ety of bags.)  Over the years we have sup­ported each other through job changes, job losses, chil­dren being teenagers, chil­dren grow­ing up and leav­ing home, chil­dren mov­ing out of state, divorce, death of par­ents and loved ones and cel­e­brated births, new begin­nings, pas­sages into dif­fer­ent stages of life and just the glo­ri­ous­ness of being still con­nected to one another.

These two friends just helped me work through a slump I was in try­ing to pull the next few pieces of my busi­ness together.  One of them is await­ing the birth of her first grand­chil­dren.  (Yes, its twins.)  The other has recently retired after a very active career and is now tak­ing time to assess and deter­mine what she wants to jump into next.

Friends!  True friends are rare.

How do you and your friends sup­port each other?  How do you deal with your dif­fer­ences?  (even the dear­est of friends can drive each other crazy once in a while.)  How do your friends help you strengthen the har­mony in your life, fam­ily and work?