Some friendships stay with you like old poems—revisited, reshaped in memory, quietly imprinted on your life.
I don’t have many close friends, but the ones I do, I hold dear.
Until life says: time’s up, the lessons are learned, and they’re carried off with the wind.
I don’t chase them when they leave. That, perhaps, is a story for another time.
Tonight I found myself thinking about one of them.
A Friend, A Life, A Quiet Question
She’s an expat like me. Married to a long-distance boyfriend she’d loved for many years. They have a child now. They’ve built a life I don’t fully understand—intimate yet enigmatic.
I’ve sat with them, watching.
Sometimes I feel like I’m quietly learning to defend her, but I’ve never had the guts to speak up.
You see, relationship dynamics are deeply personal. They stretch and bend according to the people inside them.
I wouldn’t presume to interrupt that.
But I’ve never had what she has. I never wanted it. Not in my twenties. Not in my thirties.
I made a silent vow long ago not to shape my youth around someone else.
My Mother at 25
I met my mother when she was 25.
I was a child, but I remember the outlines of her ambition.
I saw her pursue a career. I watched her provide, give, build.
But I never saw her become the artist she could have been.
She had the gift—an artistic vein that skipped me and passed to my younger sister.
Depression almost killed it in me, and me with it.
Why am I talking about my friend, my mother, my past?
Because Being a Woman Is the Art
Being a woman is a kind of art.
Not a metaphor. A lived truth.
Life cycles through us—in our minds, in our hearts, in our bodies.
And we, too, are called to cycle through our own art.
There’s something each of us is given. Not always obvious. Often inconvenient.
Sometimes it takes decades of life to meet it at the core and say: This is mine. This is what I came here to make.
And once you do, it breaks you before it builds you.
But beware—this world will tell you to package it. To monetize it. To make it consumable.
Please, don’t. Not until it’s ready.
Not until you’re ready.
Not until you love it so much that the world’s opinion becomes irrelevant.
The Unasked Question
Sometimes I wonder what my friend’s art was meant to be.
I wish I could ask her. But I don’t. It would feel intrusive. Maybe even crazy.
So I let the thought dissolve and keep it to myself.
But I find peace in knowing my mother, after decades of raising children, nurturing a marriage, and building a respected career in education, now spends her days with the Lord—and her art.
And Me?
I wake up every morning wondering what mine is.
I pile up books. I take notes. I write quietly.
Sometimes I forget that writing is an art.
But I know it hasn’t yet matured enough—neither in my heart nor on the page—to be shown to the world under my real name.
If You’re Still Reading…
Thank you for following these scattered threads.
I hope your art finds you.
I hope you hold it close.
I hope you love it before anyone else does.
And when the time is right—may you share it, only if your heart says: yes.