I have a friend, her name is Steph. Of all the people graduating from college in 2005, and of all those people that applied and were accepted to Teach For America, and of all the people that were selected to teach in New York, and of all the people assigned to our Institute summer school in Philly, and of all the collaboratives within the summer school - we were chosen to teach together. That's where we met - in a place where we were facing some of the biggest challenges of our young adult life while also being more inspired than maybe we ever had before.
After institute, we both headed to New York to teach ESL in different schools, but saw each other at regularly at our shared grad school classes. And then a few years later, we both started working for the same company - which is still true today. Although I work remotely in Pennsylvania, and she is working with schools in Hawaii we stay in touch through snail mail care packages, and texts, and phone calls .
When I originally pinned this pin, I thought of Steph:
Because spending time with her, is like a candle; or a breath of fresh air. When I am feeling creatively drained, or spiritually uninspired, or drowning in life muck - Steph is always able to inspire and guide me back to a place that I can keep marching on - or usually after her influence - I'm not marching, more like dancing, or twirling, or bending into new yoga poses. She introduces me to new artists and songs, she sends me postcards with beautiful artwork on them, we sit in bookstores for hours reading each other interesting passages from astrology books. She puts magic into life like a fairy godmother who drops fairy dust before my eyes and tells me to follow it where ever it goes.
She is someone that makes me believe that perhaps we have past lives. And perhaps in all of my past lives, somehow Steph and I have found each other and have become friends. Because it seems unlikely that you can meet someone so in sync with you in this life by chance - that it must be someone you've met again and again - like we have this unconscious shared history. And if that's the case, isn't that just the most wonderful thing.
Steph is exactly someone who just read that last paragraph and is nodding her head and smiling. Even though our lives appear so different from each other - she is someone who recognizes the melody to the song in my heart because it sounds similar to the one in her's.
Thank you Steph, for always blowing fresh air and inspiration into my life-
I am so lucky to be able to call you a friend,
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