Instead, I hold it dear as a humbling lesson about what friendship truly asks of me (and most of us): not an endless reel of jubilant get-togethers, but an invitation to show up and tell the truth, however disappointing and messy, and to answer for myself and clean up my mess when I falter. Was she seriously offering to accompany me on two legs of my West Coast tour? “I’ll meet you in San Francisco, and then we can fly to L.A. So what if it all happened in a six-week flurry? “I’ll sleep when it’s over.”Įllery shook her head. When I looked at the schedule, I saw the coordinates of my wildest dreams - the chance to meet booksellers and readers in 10 cities. “Whoa, that’s a lot of cities in a short amount of time!” You’d have no way of knowing that the pandemic brought us together again when a mutual friend organized a weekly Zoom call, which I was able to join because I’d finally done the inner work - the self-excavation around my friendships - described in my new book.Įight hours after my memoir about friendship was published, I’d already received an extraordinary and unexpected gift from a friend.Īctually, the extraordinary gestures of friendship had started two months before the book was published, when my friend Ellery reviewed the itinerary for my book tour. You’d never guess that shame had prevented me from reconnecting with Lia for more than 30 years, even though I had dreamed about her regularly, and every year on her birthday, I said a blessing for her health and happiness. From the scene on my porch, you’d never know that I’d abandoned Lia our senior year when I dove into a tumultuous relationship with a not-very-kind basketball star. Lia had flown 950 miles from Dallas to Chicago to celebrate our friendship, which began our freshmen year of high school when we were two Catholic schoolgirls with braces, perms, and crushes on Patrick Swayze. From the video my daughter took, I can confirm I also jumped up and down and clapped my hands like a kindergartner on Christmas morning. My shock turned to glee as I gathered Lia, one of the heroes of my memoir, into a hug.

The Art of Friendship: How to Ask for Help.

Friendship, Digital Connection, and Death.

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