Day one of a Grateful Heart - My Friends

I have some really truly amazing women friends.  (Yes, I do know some really great men, too, but this one is for the ladies.) One of them, my friend Jote, has invited us all to join her in ending the year with a grateful heart. I absolutely adore the idea, so I've set up this little extra blog space just so I can join her.
Today (and every day), I am so grateful for my friends. I am full up with love and strength after an immensely satisfying evening with a group of friends who have prioritized gathering, once a month, for the sheer pleasure of each other's company.  We talked about parenting and schools and cute youtube videos and religion and politics and cancer and food and dogs and our lives and it was, oh!, so good for my soul.
I even had the pleasure of reading an inspiring post by one of these women, just today, singing the well deserved praises of another.  Pure awesomeness.
I celebrated my 40th with a trip to NYC, this time last year, with two of my very best friends - two women who until that trip had never met. They were the perfect traveling companions and it was the most amazing trip.


Dim Sum in NYC, where we were lucky enough to share our table with other amazing women friends.



And today, my work day was especially richly peppered with forays into the world of social media and the many, many friends with whom I share an on-line and in real life friendship. Oh, the internet! The electronic superhighway has brought so many, many amazing women into my life.  The Mamas definitely springs to the immediate forefront... Oh you mamas.  How I do love you.

I have such a startling, satisfying depth of breadth of women friends.  Sometimes I worry that I'm not a core member of a rock-solid group of cradle-to-grave lifetime friends, a la the YaYas, and then I remember that I have all-occasion friends - a multifaceted group of talented women who are with me through my hobbies, my whims, my love of food and drinking and talking rocking and parenting and all of life's goodness. Whatever the occasion or need or opportunity for communion I know that there are lovelies out there who will gladly jump and join in and the longer I live the more these circles entwine and weave the incredibly rich tapestry of my life. And for that, I am truly grateful.