Exploring one of life's most valuable gifts
A year well lived. Those words graced the front of the 2023 holiday card that my mom sent to dozens of friends and family members late last year. My mom, Wilma, always loved sending and receiving holiday cards and embraced the trend of cards filled with family photos and an update on the family milestones.... Continue Reading →
Photos of the New Year's Eve party at Oprah Winfrey's house have been showing up all over the Internet in the past few weeks, and of course Gayle King appeared in many of them. The well-documented friendship between these two world-famous women has thrived over the decades. In one of our earliest LOF posts, I... Continue Reading →
Last weekend I flew from Chicago to Washington, DC, for a 36-hour visit with family. Some might find quick trips like this one to be stressful, but it felt restorative for me. I spent time with my mom and younger siblings, and I returned to a place that still feels like home. Although my family... Continue Reading →
While November signals the start of the holiday season for most people, here at Language of Friendship, we tend to think of November as birthday season. Sara shared last year that our LOF editorial team, and even her dog Winnie, all have birthdays within the same week! And despite how busy life gets, birthdays provide... Continue Reading →
When Sara and I launched this blog in early 2021, pandemic-disrupted friendships and everyday connections fueled our desire to write about the importance of friendship. Nearly three years later, life has mostly returned to ‘normal.’ While normal enables us to gather in person and hop on airplanes to celebrate milestones, normal can also be very... Continue Reading →
Fall’s arrival in Chicago is accompanied by many traditions. It’s a time to buy fresh apples from Michigan and watch the Chicago Cubs struggle to make the playoffs. One of my favorite fall traditions is cheering on the thousands of runners at the Chicago Marathon. This October marks the 46th running of the Chicago... Continue Reading →
June has always been a month of celebrations in my family. My dad and two older sisters were born in June, my parents were married in June, and of course, there’s Father’s Day. Mixed in with an already busy month, my dad generally preferred if no fuss was made over him. In his mind, he... Continue Reading →
By all accounts Monday, February 6th was shaping up to be a pretty good day. The temperature had warmed a bit over the weekend and most of the snow and ice had melted. By then, I was several months into a new routine, regularly commuting by train to Chicago for an interim university job. On... Continue Reading →
Lately I’ve been experiencing an emotion I was introduced to early last year when I read about it in famed vulnerability researcher Brene Brown’s helpful book, Atlas of the Heart, which Julia and I both wrote about in separate posts. The emotion is called Freudenfreude, and it’s a mouthful, but really it’s just the feeling... Continue Reading →
I am a cat person. I like dogs too, but it was a cat who kept me company during my years of teen angst in the 1980s, another cat who was my steadfast companion during my divorce when I only had my boys 50% of the time, and three small cats who turned my house... Continue Reading →
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