Five Minute Friday - On Friends

I write for five minutes flat on Fridays.

I join others and write because I want to, not because I have to. Together, we write for fun, for joy, for discovery.

We just write without worrying if it’s just right or not.

Won’t you join us here with The Gypsy Mama for a five minute discovery of your own?

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link over here and invite others to join in.
3. Go a little overboard encouraging the writer who linked up before you.

OK, are you ready? Give me your best five minutes:

On friends…

START

Friends come in many shapes and sizes.  They come both older and younger than you.  Sometimes, they have lots in common, and sometimes they aren't at all like you.  But the one thing they all do is love and accept.  Often, when I think of friends, I think of the ones that I dreamed about as a child.  The ones who could take a bad day and somehow, transform it into a wonderful one.  The ones who came to my house to play, in my imagination, and I would go to theirs.  Friends who would share dreams with me and just accept me.  

Friends were never easy for me to make.  I struggled to have people close to me.  I craved a relationship that I wasn't sure how to cultivate.  In growing up and having children, friends had to take a back seat to work and family.  Every spare minute of my life seems to have  been spent cultivating the relationship with my husband and children.  

I used to think that friends would come.  That if I just was kind and good, they would appear in my life.  I had several years of not feeling good enough for friends; of being a loner and an outsider.  I had to learn to let people into my heart if I wanted friends.  I had to learn to love without holding too tight.  I had to learn what a friend really is.  I had to heal and become healthy.  

I still don't have a lot of friends, but I have enough.  I have wonderful people in my life that care for me, help me, talk with me, and listen to me.  In addition to the friends I have made, I have learned that I have wonderful, amazing friends in my own family.  I have been able to cultivate friendships with my adult daughters and my adult sons.  I have been able to learn about them and admire them on a whole new level.  For me, having family as friends has been an amazing journey.  There is an old saying about people who can't choose their family, but they can choose their friends.  I am so grateful that I have been able to have both.  I am so grateful that they have chosen me to be their friend.
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Now it is your turn.   What can you write in five short minutes?