Today is my beautiful friend Cyndi's 50th birthday...
Dear CR (AKA Badass):
Happy 50th Birthday my sweet friend!
I hope you have a day that is filled with love, light and laughter. A day that makes you feel as special as you are!
I want to tell you on this most special day what a gift you have been in my life. How much knowing you has changed my life for the better. Your insights, humor and wit such a force for change in my life.
Thank you for letting me walk this path with you. Thank you for loving me even when I am hard to love. Thank you for caring and always telling me I look pretty.
On this day, know you are beautiful, hot, smart, funny as fuck, loving, insightful, blessed, caring, amazing and do not look a day over 39! I swear! No bullshit.
I am so happy to share this birthday month with you as we both dive into 50. I couldn’t pick a better person to begin this new decade with...you are a light, a friend, a teacher and a soul sister. Never stop being you. I love every single part of you!
Have the happiest fucking birthday! I love you with all my heart!
XOXOXO
E
Some further reflections on my girlfriends and CR...
I have struggled in all relationships throughout my life. None of them easy. All complicated by my issues with intimacy. I have had a very hard time with women. I didn't get them and found it very hard to be in relationship with them. When I became single at 45, one of the first people I met was CR. She was in the same place - having left her husband too. We hit it off instantly and became fast friends. We saw each other through our own difficult post divorce new relationships that almost took us out on more than one occasion. We laughed together. We cried together. We brought each other chips and guac. We found a friend in similar circumstances when we desperately needed one. She was my life raft for a long time. I hope that I was the same for her.
She also brought me into the tribe as it was forming and gave me something that I have never, ever had: a group of girlfriends that has each other's backs all the time, no matter what. For life.
She has taught me how to be a friend. She has taught me how to stay friends even when you piss each other off. She has taught me about love. She has taught me to see my own wounds and how those wounds hurt others, not just me. She has taught me that there will always be a place in my life for Scorpio energy, intensity and love. She has taught me that no matter how down I feel, a phone call to her can always lift my spirits.
So on this 50th year since she was born, I want to tell her and all the rest of The Tribe, thank you for being my people. Thank you for being there for me as I try to grow up and mature. Thank you for holding my hand as I walk through the difficult middle aged terrain of dating, not dating, single parenting, working a fuck ton and trying to find my way back to my center. Thank you for the unconditional acceptance of me. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for being you which allows me to be me.
Also, CR, thank you for going first. Lighting my path for me. Thank you for being my amazing, talented, smart, beautiful, loving friend. Happy, Happy Birthday!
