Category: Creativity

I got a text really early yesterday morning from a dear friend of mine in LA, she said ‘Today you need to go rent a funny movie or hang out with funny people’. It was a little prophetic statement of a day that had been planned weeks before. Yesterday the warmth of forever friendship and a day trip to a little piece of yesteryear was the water my soul desperately craved.

Sometimes all we need is a little warmth.

Sometimes we just need to hang around with some friends that we don’t have to look after or please.

I laugh when I read people’s facebook status’ over sharing sometimes and I quietly whisper to myself, seriously phone a friend.

Whether you are a married or single, there are days that the effort required to plan a day away with your friends is worth every moment of its planning.

To leave town, turn up your favourite music, to drive through any countryside, to laugh, sing, to have coffee and look at buildings you would never notice on your own or to just wander.

Yesterday that is what we did. We wandered, talked, breathed a little slower, took time to just unpack the tangles of our hearts and believe in the potential of a new day together.

That is what our network Kinwomen is all about.

Women supporting women, friends helping each other.

I didn’t speak at all yesterday about the heart breaking places in my life at the moment, I didn’t have to, my friends didn’t pry or prod. I hardly talked about the book I released this week and how exciting this new chapter is my new season of motherhood.

We just laughed, listened and just took time to just be.

Who can you just be with?

You know a friend that you are able to wander down the beach with, that person who doesn’t make the conversation completely about their confused patches, but asks about yours also?

That friend who is totally fine with silence, but has the capacity to say the hard things also.

Are you the type of friend that you would want to hang with?

I bought the drawing above in Thailand when I was there recently with one of these kind of friends. She offered to buy them for me when they caught my eye. That day I bought a set of three, two of them are now in New Zealand with my closest girlfriends sitting in their special places encouraging them.

My little drawing sits above my computer and every time I see it, it reminds me to pray for one of my lifelong friends.

Little momento’s of memories and opportunities captured.

There is a warmth in friendship.

There is a moment to be captured that will never exist again.

The photo of the window below was taken in a house that we had a cup of tea with the most amazing couple yesterday. They bought the Old York Hospital ten years ago and have spend the last decade renovating it to its former glory. They invited us to just come and explore their heritage.

This window is an antique in their staircase. A hand designed window that was made in the late 1800’s.

The lovely owner of the house it presides in now, was overwhelmed that they were able to look out at this window often and he said ‘the only reason we still have this is because it is too high in the house to be stolen’

This piece of history that we wandered through was a moment that will never be experienced again. It was a special place of privilege that we were invited to enjoy. At some moments in the last week, I seriously  considered cancelling my attendance because it had just been such a huge week. The memory of this tour would never have happened if we didn’t just take the time to explore.

Take time to bask in the warmth of lifelong friends sometime soon and if you don’t have anyone that you feel this comfortable with, then take time to be the kind of friend that you desire.

Till we meet again.

Amanda

Life is often crazy beautiful. It can be wonderful at the same time as devastating.

Our disney-ified expectations and dreamy hazed projections, make us believe that living the life that we want and hope for, is a life that is free from struggle.

We think we want a stress free, oasis kind of nirvana, but I don’t think that place exists on this earth.

Yesterday I launched this book and I sold many copies and was so excited. At the same time, the diagnosis of one of my best friends came through with devastating reality.

My Grandmother turned 90 yesterday and as her  family gathered around the table, there was a plethora of dysfunction, mixed in with a crazy amounts of pure joy.

People were frustrated with each other, family members who hadn’t sat at the same table for 20 years, rehashed old painful scenarios, yet as my Grandma spoke quietly about the milestone, she cried softly for the beauty, for the regrets, for the unresolved conflict, for the sheer miracle of lasting that long.

Ninety years on this earth, hasn’t provided her with a peaceful place of bliss, it has given her a quiet disposition of satisfaction for the simple things.

The sparkle in her great grandchild’s eyes, the taste of her favourite Tiramisu cake, the feeling of friends gathering who have known her for 50 years or more and at the same time the loss of those who didn’t make it through.

The heartache of children who were so grateful for her ninety years, but heartbroken at the water under bridges that can never be caught again.

In the midst of this family celebration I sat there quietened because one of my closest friends is facing a battle in her 30’s that is very unfair.

She is bravely facing the fight but the juxtaposition of crazy beautiful is as tangible as a windy, rocky beach in the midst of summer. I walk the beach expecting it to be calm because of its smell, its taste and its beauty, yet the wind blows, the spray from the oceans bites. A perfect contrast of beauty and beastliness. The raw reality of life in its fullness.

Life will never ever be perfect.

Your days will never ever be perfect.

Circumstances will never ever be perfect.

Your dreams will never looked the way you imagined.

Our world is full of light and darkness and sometimes the hue of its inconsistency results in grey.

Sometimes that grey is sharp and moody and fabulous, other days the grey just takes over and finding your way out of it’s gloom is difficult.

The only revelation I found from yesterdays sharp inconcistencies was to love and grasp the moments of beauty when they present themselves.

Let go of your pain.

Let go of your fears.

Let go of those family disappointments, do you realise that everyone is just as broken as you are?

You don’t get to live 90 years on this planet and not walk away with some regret, some secrets, some bad decisions and some terrible seasons.

Love the crazy beautiful and let go of that image of perfection and nirvana that haunts.

Breathe.

Love

Me

(a very fragile, but very happy, but vulnerable me.)