Waking Up Me!

Growing up, I can remember having one very good friend at any given time. I am not quite sure why. Did I only have the capacity to fit one person in? Did I like that one person so much, that others were just okay? Did only one person like me during that given time--that's very possible, too. There were other people we played with in the neighbor hood or at school, but I seem to have always had one special person to share my life with. Usually it was a girl, but I also had a good number of boys who became "my person" for seasons and a couple have remained my go-to person as I needed to ask questions that men w ould have a better insig ht into or when I needed a ma n's view or perspective. Yet, t here were other times where I was absolutely lonely and seemed to have no one . No one to call. No one to share t he burden . No one. A fter high sc hool, I seemed to find myself with groups of fr iends. Tribes. People with common interest s or a common place at a given

Maybe you are familiar with "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" and maybe you're saying to yourself, "What the what?!" Either way, I will give you the high points. The Ya-Ya Sisterhood is a group of young girls who grew up in a Louisiana Parish together and forged a bond, a sisterhood in the midst of their diverse home lives and personalities. There were four of them: Vivi, Caro, Teensy and Necie. Their friendship lasted through marriages, children, divorces, loses, heartache, heartbreak, alcoholism, war and so much more. In their youth, they marked their sisterhood in a blood oath by the fireside in the woods one night and chose their Indian names based on their personalities. I had a group of girlfriends with whom I forged a similar friendship during our adult lives that has been through similar turmoils and we, too, called ourselves the Ya-Ya's. My Ya-Ya's were MW, LM, AL and TMK. We all worked at an insurance company downtown together. We