Are friends as important as family?

Published by Alison Wem on

Family are given to you but friends you get the opportunity to choose.

Family often love you unconditionally and stay with you throughout your life.

Friends often stay for a period in your life and then drift away. However I have noticed really close friends stay for the duration.

Some friendships are as close and as strong as a blood tie. They can be based on a common interest or less obvious things like the same sense of humour, life values or the joy of giving and receiving.

The picture of the three flowers represent me and my two closet friends.

  • I am the pink orchid on the right.
  • Sue, the flower in the middle is a lovely vibrant red as she loves being with and helping people to feel safe, secure and happy in their lives.
  • Jan is the flower on the left. She is tall, slim and gracious. Always positive about life and living, she encourages us to be our best selves and to enjoy life.

Sue is often the link person between Jan and me. In fact she introduced me to Jan. We met when we were teenagers and were discovering boys….. We became firm friends and have always laughed a lot and had fun. Together we have been young wives, mums, pursued careers and now we are waiting to become grandmas.

Nothing has changed the closeness of our friendship in the 40 years we have known each other.

If you look closely at the flowers none of them are perfect. We have each had our challenges but we have laughed and cried our way together through them.

Jan and I were unexpectedly widowed in our early 40s while our children were still quite young. Sue was there for us being our rock when we felt there was nothing in life to laugh about.

I am grateful for my friends and thank them for accompanying me through the journey of life. I feel we are true spiritual friends and we will be together always.

Hit comment and tell me your story of friendship. 

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Emotions

How do I move forward after great loss?

Loss comes in many forms. A sense of loss is felt when you no longer have a person you love in your life or something such as a job, business or a home. The cause of the loss is varied such as death, a breakup, redundancy, a failed mortgage, but the outcome, a horrible feeling that strikes right at your heart, is the same.

For me loss and fear feel very similar. I lost my husband through an unexpected death in my 40s and experienced real fear from a very public failure of a business project I was leading in my 50s. Both had an enormous impact on my life and my security.

Loss and fear strike right at your heart as if someone has stabbed you.

How do you recover from such a strong emotion it affects you physically? You can’t make the loss go away. It is what it is.

Allow yourself to feel the pain and then let it go. It is not healthy to hold onto the pain as it will ultimately affect your body. In many cultures, it is encouraged to wail – a loud cry of pain, grief, or anger. All of these emotions come with loss and get muddled up together. Wailing is part of the process of letting go. In western cultures, it is not so condoned in modern times. But you can wail in private.

After my husband died, I use to wail in my bathroom late at night with a towel stuffed in my mouth so my children couldn’t hear me.

I needed the release of letting the pain out. Visualise your pain coming out of your body and floating away on a little white cloud. Give it to Mother Earth to deal with so nobody else absorbs your pain.

To help you get up in the morning and put one foot in front of the other – don’t look too far ahead. Take each day as it comes and deal with it. Just getting through the day is an achievement. You should congratulate yourself and not allow your thoughts to go around in your head with – what if?

Know that in time you will feel calmer.

Despite how you feel, the old adage time is a great healer is true. Only then is it right to consider a longer time horizon and what you might like to do next. It is alright to take your time. It is your life and everybody grieves the loss of something at their own pace.

Once you feel calmer, it will be easier to connect with your soul through your intuition. Your soul will help to comfort and heal you. It will give you good guidance.

Try to listen to your intuition and feel your guidance.

Emotions

I feel so alone….

When life is really challenging, sometimes we can feel really alone. Typically, this is at times of change. Most commonly this is as a result of one of the three Ds – divorce, debt and death. Sadly, more than one of these can happen at the same time.

How do you cope when you feel very alone with a big challenge, like one of the 3 Ds?

Your greatest friend and guide at times like this is your soul. Many people don’t realise they are in contact with their soul. I spoke to mine for years not realising who he was.

Your soul contacts you through your intuition. Intuition is that feeling inside which helps you to know what is right for you. Or gives you ideas on how you might move forwards, particularly at times of difficulty. It is not that critical voice inside. Your soul is calm, balanced and speaks with great compassion. It is well worth listening to that feeling. It comes with the wisdom from all of the lives you have lived so far. That wisdom has been hard earnt in previous lives where you have experienced what has worked and what has failed. This wisdom is yours to use and help your current life circumstances.

Do you listen to your own wisdom?

You are never really alone. Sometimes it is hard to connect with others and you feel separate and lonely.

Even when someone passes and there feels a great distance between you on Earth and your loved one in spirit, communication is possible. Loving one another and having a desire to connect increases the clarity.

When I speak to bereaved people, it never ceases to surprise me just how hard our passed loved-ones try to make contact with us. Craig Klugman PhD in his report of 2006 found that 62.6% of the participants in his study say they have been in contact with the dead. Most commonly, subjects reported Post Death Contacts that included dreams, sounds, feeling a presence, and having conversations.

Our passed loved-ones send messages of love and support at times of great change.

If you are not sure how to pro-actively try to make contact? Try this;

  • Reflect or meditate on the person you wish to connect with
  • Ask a simple question
  • Wait for the response.

In addition it helps to do the following.

Be alert to receive the message in whatever way it choses to arrive – the words of a song on the radio, a bill board, a knowing, a feeling…..

You will be amazed at the results.

Whatever your situation is and no matter how dire it may seem, remember – you are never really alone.

Emotions

Is kindness worth the effort?

When I was growing up, I used to play with a small group of girls who lived nearby. Generally, we all got on and we played happily together. After the long summer holidays together, perhaps we had spent too much time together and one of us would say or do something unkind.

When I used to go running to my mum upset, she did not say – oh you poor thing. Instead, she used to ask me to imagine how that person must feel inside to be so unkind. I should feel grateful that I didn’t feel like that.

A little kindness can go a long way.

The pain from unkindness can be intense. It doesn’t remain in childhood with friendship upsets. Unkindness can appear in adult life, often when you least expect it and sometimes from those closest to you such as a partner. The pain can go straight to your heart and make you feel wretched. When you feel like that, it is really hard to step back and not give some unkind response aimed to hurt. But in doing this, the only person you really hurt is yourself. If you are trying to live by strong life values, being unkind is not one of them.

When someone is unkind to you, being unkind to them back is not the right response.

The best way to counter unkindness is to show kindness. It may not be a big thing but a thoughtful, gentle kindness. In being kind to the other person, you are honouring yourself and being kind to yourself too.

We have all been unkind sometime, often through thoughtlessness rather than malicious intent. It takes consideration to use kind words, kind words can be healing, loving and inspiring.

Kindness is such a good contribution to make to this world of ours.

Kindness brings harmony and love to human relationships and living. When kindness is abundant in a relationship, that relationship is often joyful. Living a life surrounded by kindness is a good life.

 

 

This post is dedicated to those who try to practice kind words and acts of kindness.