A Love Song to My Friend
/I woke up one morning to find a text from one of my best friends, Jamie.
I often find texts from her in the morning because she lives on the West Coast. With the time difference, it can feel like our texts are like two ships passing in the night. I send her texts while I'm still awake but she has yet to get off work and she write back after I've fallen asleep.
After reading the text, which was a simple check-in to tell me she was thinking of me, I picked up my guitar. At the time, I only knew a few chords, but I strung a few together and began to sing a few lines that turned into my first guitar song.
A few years prior, Jamie and I had gone on an epic trip together to India.
I was still in the height of my workaholism, running an healing center and an online aromatherapy school, so taking two weeks to explore a foreign country with my bestie was a treat I had never allowed myself.
Upon our return trip, I delighted in how great it was to have an adventurous vacation. I remember sitting in the terminal in Istanbul as we waited for our connecting flight to Miami and proclaiming, "From here on out, I'm going to be Easy Breezy."
Jamie has called me, "Easy Breezy" (or more affectionately, "EB") ever since.
A few months later I was visiting her in San Fransisco and decided she needed a nickname too. Out of no where I said, "How 'bout 'Jelly Bean'"? That name has stuck too.
Jamie is one of those friends that I can't tell enough how much I love her, which is the place in my heart where this song came from. Another fond memory of her appeared in this recent post.
I share the song in this video that I recorded last fall for another, newer friend, SydLive. Syd is an incredibly talented Tampa musician (please listen to her music here) that I feel honored to know.
Both Syd and I suffered incredible losses during the pandemic. For me, I lost my Dad while Syd lost one of her most cherished friends. As we held space for each other in grief through messages, I felt called to offer her this song I wrote for Jamie.
It's so incredibly important that we remember to share with the people we love how much they mean to us. I hope this encourages you to do that same.
So tell me:
Have you told your dear friends lately what they mean to you?
Are there songs, poems, or art that remind you of them? Or, better yet, have you ever created any of your own?
