Hello fellow joy seekers, I hope you are all having a joyful bank holiday weekend. Sorry for the mini hiatus, I planned to share the joy of our Oslo adventures with you all last weekend but life has been a bit of a whirlwind since returning home. I’ve shared lots of snippets from our Norwegian escapades on my Instagram (please head there if you are interested), so today I thought I’d write about something else.
I’ve just shared two very joyful weekends with my two closest friends and as they’re now joining me in “club forty” it’s really made me reflect on how lucky I am to have these wonderful ladies in my life and to look back on all of the love and adventures we’ve shared together over almost three decades of friendship. And as my friend Claire said yesterday we’re doing well for half way to eighty!
(Photo of my friend Gemma and I at Classic Ibiza last weekend).
I grew up with my mum and her weekly telephone calls to her best friend who no longer lived closed by, our annual trips to the seaside to visit our “Auntie” Linda and lots of wonderful holidays abroad together. I was always in awe of my Mum and Linda’s enduring friendship and how comfortable they were in one another’s presence and how much they would laugh when they were together. How I dreamt that one day I would be fortunate to have such a friendship. (They are still the best of friends almost seventy years later and speak almost daily.)
(Photo of my Mum, My “Auntie” Linda and her husband John.)
Female friendships really can bring so much joy to our lives, there’s nothing like the history of shared experiences of growing up together. To meet people who truly get you and are there no matter what. To have people in your life, who it doesn’t matter how long it been since you last saw each other, the moment you do it’s as though no time has passed.
I don’t think enough is celebrated of the love shared between friends and just how important that love is. They are the ones that teach us about unconditional love, about relationships, about ourselves. They are our closest confidants. They can also be incredibly challenging and hard to find and heartbreaking when they end. It’s safe to say it took me a while to find my “tribe” and I always find it interesting how some people come into our lives only for a short period of time whilst others are here for the duration.
(Claire, Gemma and I together celebrating walking 25 miles together along the Sandstone Trail to raise money for Help for Heroes, they both didn’t hesitate to support me and join the challenge).
My two closest friends Gemma, Claire and I met as nervous eleven year olds on our first day of secondary school, in class 7L. With kilts too big and no idea of what lay ahead.
We grew up with trips to Tammy Girl, jelly sandals (I still remember the exact outfit I wore to Claire’s 12th birthday at the local Lido), mood rings, BFF necklaces, sleepovers, Rimmel heather shimmer lipsticks, way too much black eye liner, impulse body spray (always vanilla!), hair mascara, Smirnoff ice and Tropical Hooch.
Singing into our hairbrushes on a Friday night! With the spice girls, steps, Savage garden and many more pop “classics” as the soundtrack to our early teen years.
We read Judy Blume books, Smash Hits, Just 17 and Sugar, we swooned over Leonardo Dicaprio and chatted endlessly on the telephone. For hours! We wrote notes to one another and letters for our holidays. We laughed our way through maths classes (probably should have listened a little more!). We shared a crush on our English Teacher! We loved nothing more than a Friday night adventure to Tesco in my little purple KA (we were wild even then!)
(Claire and I at my 25th Birthday party).
We went to our first parties together. We fell in love and went through our first heartbreaks together. We’ve shared so many first, memories, adventures and holidays. We’ve had some hilarious moments. We argued, we made up and we dreamed of what our grown up selves would be like and what our lives would be like and here we are thirty years later as those “grown ups”. (Which still at times feels incomprehensible- how are we middle aged when I still feel 20 at times!!)
They have watched me grow into a wife and mother, they’ve been there through my heartbreak of infertility and baby loss and they have supported me every step of the way. They are my greatest cheerleaders.
Gosh it went so quickly, but how incredibly lucky I am to have these extraordinary ladies in my life along with lots of other wonderful ladies I’m lucky to call my friends. I know “lucky” isn’t really enough to express the gratitude of just how fortunate I feel.
So perhaps this is a prompt to call your friend or plan an adventure together and to feel the joy being in their company brings. I feel on such a high from a weekend of giggling like a teenager and dancing like one too!
Until next week.
Ps. Tomorrow I’ll be sending out a special newsletter to share a new adventure I’d love for you to join me on.