Back up Friends

Back up Friends
I have been thinking about the past and when i have heard about people going thru chemo and I never truly realized what they were going thru until now. I do know now that if and when I ever hear of another person that is going thru Chemo what I will be doing. I will always be a better friend. I have a lot of great people in my life and than I have those over the top caring people in my life that I really never realized just what angels they are.

I have been in the hotel business for 19 years. I started way back in the day as a server in the banquet department part time at Disneyland Hotel, just so I could get my little boys into Disneyland free and worked my way up from Catering Coordinator to Director of Sales over the years. I have made a lot of fantasitic business friends. Friends whom I travel all over the country with, for business, do sales blitzes with and have lunch occationally with. They are my competitors of course but, also good business friends. I never had them over my home or vice versa just business friends.

One friend a few years ago was diagnoised with Breast Cancer and I remember just crying when I heard. I emailed occationally to see how she was doing and once she was back at work and going thru radiation I clipped my aloe vera plant made a little plant and brought it to her at her hotel. But that was really all I did. She is fantastic btw and back full force working and traveling again like a crazy hotel person does. She was the first person I called when I heard... "Yes, you have cancer". I knew she had experieced this and I needed her knowledge and I needed her to tell me Oh honey it will be ok you can do this. She was right I can do this. but that isn't my point here.

My point is this woman who I always always liked hanging with when we were on the road weather it was in Memphis, Boston or Florida, she was my ciggerette break friend, my lets go get a drink friend and omg can you believe how big her butt is friend. But once we got back home to our own hotels we didn't hang out. I had never been to her home or she to mine. We didn't even have each other's home numbers. I know her hotel number by heart and she knows mine but other than traveling together for work we really don't see each other unless its at the convention center or some networking event.

She has been a rock for me. She wrote me a great letter saying she knew how much family and so many good friends I have and that I was so blessed to have all of my High School girlfriends still very much in my life, but to rely on her as My Backup Friend. And her analogy of a back up friend was great. She said as much as my friends want to be here they can't always, which is of course very true, She was a transplant to California from NYC and all her lifetime friends were in NY. When she got ill she found a whole slue of back up friends which now she really considers a few of them pretty close to forever friends. I immediately thought Back up Friend? that sounds so demeening. I wrote her back an email saying omg I think you are so much more than a back up friend and she said oh no, that isn't a bad thing its actually a really good thing because you have a whole bunch of back up friends just waiting to show you they exist. It's all those hotel friends that I have known over the years in my business world but, never really hung with outside of work.

She said to me Kath, this does not happen by itself, to get and keep good friends you must already be a good friend, this is a true calling and a blessing as far as i am concerned. I thought that was so nice of her to say!

Back up Friends are so important! I really think after all this my back up friends will be my forever friends and I just appreciate life and friends so much more than I did a few months ago.
It has also taught me how to be a better friend.

Again, I don't know how blessings still filter in but they do. The lesson for me is #1 never again say I really want to lose weight and than pray for it. and Lesson 2 be a better friend, person, mother, wife. Love uncondionally and never lose faith.