I spent the last few days away with a dear old friend that I have known for 20 years or more.  We walked on the beach, celebrated a wedding, meditated and talked about relationships:  their gifts and sorrows.  We laughed until we cried a couple of times. Our sorrows are different as we each journey through life but the places in us that need and resist remain matched in their growth.

My friend is a lover of poetry and her collections by Mary Oliver move me to seeing life experience with clearer eyes. Embodying our sorrow as a small love that is yours to tend and care for is a gentle and effective way to hold onto our sorrow lovingly without being it. Ms. Oliver is a master of using the fewest words to contain and transform the deepest universal experiences of life.

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“Surrounded by people who love life, you love it too; surrounded by people who don’t, you don’t.” ~Mignon McLaughlin

I began the day at the local grange’s very berry pancake breakfast. The pancakes were homemade and the entertainment was the fiddlers playing old time songs.  We sat with neighbors we had never met and the whole scene felt like I was an extra in a quaint movie scene. It was so basic and pure to eat berry-coated pancakes with strangers that I couldn’t believe I didn’t do it more.

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“A good friend is a connection to life – a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.” ~Lois Wyse

Lunch today with my friend Lucy was a great gift. Our friendship started through the friendship of our sons and has grown well past theirs. She is one of the most optimistic realists I have ever known. Ever the voice of thoughtful reason, her positive spin on the facts have directed large-scale local political campaigns, tamed wild spirited teenage insanity and put her dear husband to rest way before his time.

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“I celebrate myself, and sing myself.” -Walt Whitman

I have been reflecting on half a year of positivity questing this week. Trying to organize what I have learned in this time and trying to marshal it to step up when, even now I can forget how to be positive. Happily because I talk about it so much, when I can’t quite get there, I have many reliable reflectors in my family to remind me where to look

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“Everybody likes the underdog, because everybody feels like the underdog. No matter how successful you are, you always think, No one’s being nice enough to me!” -Kate Beckinsale

This year’s Soccer World Cup has been riveting as the upsets between highly seeded countries and the lower ranked has continued to surprise everyone in almost every bracket. Perhaps none has been so discussed as the recent tie between the US and Slovenija. Certainly the outrageous call in the last minutes of the game, eliminating the possibility of a win for the US has kept the name of the least populous country playing at the competition on everyone’s mind. I am sure when the US and England first looked at the group they felt lucky, neither one of the other countries seemed much of a threat.

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“Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.” -Unknown

Today I received a card that said “It’s not you, it’s me.” This is the perfect break-up line, assuring that even if you are walking away from something that is worth fighting for and about, you can go guilt free. After all you took responsibility and legitimately tried to make the person you are leaving behind feel somehow better about being left, because at least it is not about them.

Sadly of course it is about them, because it is always about both people. Relationships and both their positive and negative outcomes are always a product of two people’s capacity, intention and willingness to do the work of loving. I have been struggling for the last month trying to find a breakthrough with one of my closest confidantes.

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“Your boundaries are the measure of your friendship with yourself.”

An old friend once told me that your boundaries are the truest measure of how you love yourself. I thought I understood the meaning at the time. Raising four children should have bestowed on me a mastery of setting limits and protecting my personal space over the last two decades. It hasn’t. I realized that the places where my relationships are weakest are where I can’t let go of the outcome, once I have set a limit.

In fact, the difference between a boundary and some form of manipulation is that by setting a boundary we let go of the outcome. It has taken me half my life to realize that I am a better friend, mother and partner to others when I am a friend to myself first. Drawing the line in relationships that are dysfunctional and unhealthy is the only positive response you can generate.

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“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson

This is a very quick quest as night time is brief. I leave in the middle of the night to go see my oldest and dearest friend in the city where I spent the first decade of my adulthood. Leaving home is increasingly challenging for me as I have come to treasure the comforts of my cozy home in the woods above the idea of adventure. Yet when I think of a reunion with this friend who stood by my side on the day I was married and helped me laugh through the first weeks of each of my children’s lives, I know that the effort of the trip will be rewarded in the first moments together.

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“Life: a cycle. A series of events, meetings, and departures. Friends discovered, others lost, Precious time, wastes away. Big droplet tears are shed for yesterday, but are dried in time for tomorrow, until all that remain are foggy, broken memories of a happy yesteryear.” -Daniela Gallo

Today I am reliving the past in the present and releasing it into the future. My doula and nanny from over a decade ago is here in my bed as I write tonight’s Positivity Quest. The sweetest thing about visiting with our oldest intimates is how they bring up the funniest, saddest, most poignant moments. Nicole saved me after my fourth baby; she was the light and balance in our family in all the months that it took me to find my center.

As she remembers with each of my children their earliest years, all the while chasing around her two little toddler boys, the life cycle turns another click on the wheel. Her babies, drunk with curiosity and joy, needing the constant vigilance that newness demands, and our relationship is the same, still sneaking in deep conversations between preparing tiny bits of food, earnest conversation about the smallest details of life, which is the whole of life for a toddler.

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The Anniversary Edition: Listen this week to Wendy and her oldest friend Sarah talk about Making Love Sustainable in her 26- year old- marriage. Share in the sweet lessons of spilled milk and the many memories of what it takes to keep saying yes to love. Our closest friends are our most gentle and generous teachers when it comes to learning to love. Listen to these two old friends share their wisdom on making love sustainable.

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