Those friends.  You know the ones.  The ones who got me to do the things that maybe I really shouldn’t do, or really don’t want to do, but do it anyway?  Those friends.  Some of them I have had the times of my life with.  Others, (sometimes the same ones), had the scariest times with.  Yea!!!  Those friends.  Some of them are with me for a very long time and some are with me for a short time.  They all had an impact on me.  EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.  I never realized how much those friends affected my life.   Most of them I still speak with, a few I don’t.  Are they all good for me?  Absolutely.  Even the ones that were probably not the best of influences.  Why were they good for me?  Because each of my friends, each member of my family has taught me something.  It may have been that I don’t care for a particular food to I need to head in a different direction.  Each completely added something to my life.  I can think of a couple of friends that honestly, if I was still friends with them the way I was, I would not be on the amazing journey I am today.  I have begun to look at each friend, each family member and say thank you so much for the gift.  What completely selfless gifts they each were.  And honestly, when in the middle of each horrific, amazing, perfectly fun time, I was slowly being taught.  I was being taught about patience, judgement, acceptance, forgiveness and even self-love.

I know, I am jumping all around on this beautiful blog of mine.  But my journey has not been a straight line.  As much as I would have liked it to be.  Some years were fantastic and then others were not.  And my loathing for my own self has come at a cost.  Some days the cost has seemed larger than other days.  But right now, As I sit here today, writing this fun blog, I understand.  That nothing comes with a 0-price tag.  There is always a cost.  For some of my lessons it was the cost of friendships.  Ones that, as the days progress, I can see what the gifts were.  Some I am still learning.  I have a couple of friends, and they said to me a number of times, “you are who you hang out with”.  Ummmm.  Right.  Well, I thought that the friends that I was hanging out with were good for me.  I thought that they always had my best interests at heart.  What I did not understand, was that they were not good for me and did not have my best interests at heart.  It took years for me to understand this.  I went thru lots of counseling, personal development workshops, personal development books, intuits, and tears before I understood this one simple concept.  It is so simple.  So incredibly simple…not easy, just simple.  The concept?  Love yourself.  If I don’t love me in all that I am, how can anyone else?  How can anyone respect me if I don’t respect myself?  Now I had heard this, multiple times.  But understanding and really, truly loving me was something so foreign that I could not get my head around it.  I had been telling myself lies for so long that I completely believed them.  I believed that If I wanted friend A, then I would have to do what A wanted.  If I wanted friend B and friend B needed me then I would be there.  Did not matter if I felt like crap or felt my world crashing in.  I did not matter.  Now these gifts that I have talked about, the ones given to me by my friends and family, the ones they were trying to teach me, I did not realize what it was that they were trying to do for me.  Maybe they did not either.  It does not matter.  Because now I know why everything that has happened in my life to date, has happened.  It is so I would come to fully understand what self-loathing does to a soul.  Do you understand that I had to go thru all of that?  All of the tears, the hate, the crumbling interior.  I had to be that person that was imploding.  And my friends were crucial in that.  I did not know it at the time, but as I was leaving some friends and finding new ones my life was becoming my own.  My life was becoming fantastic.  I was starting to understand that I could take the initiative and become a completely different person.  I began to understand that I did not have to do anything to have friends like me.  I just had to be my own authentic self.  I had to show my vulnerability.  I had to be true to myself.  As I did this my whole world shifted.  My world became clear for the first time.  Those friends, the ones that led me down many weird paths and uncertain times.  I say thank you.  You gave me a gift that I can never ever repay.  Gifts that will be cherished and nurtured as I continue down the path of Intuition.  Gifts that are one of kind.