“you got to have friends”

A song that got me through many transitions in my life; times of letting go and moving on; times of beginning again. 

As a child, a preteen actually, before Bette came into my life, somehow I innately understood that I “got to have friends”. 

My first dramatic change in circumstances at age 12 showed me that my life wasn’t meant to be lived alone in the woods meditating on its mystery.  I couldn’t just sit alone in my bedroom and cry to Seals and Crofts’ Hummigbird. I was meant to be with people who opened the door for me to walk through and share my humor, my interests, my beliefs, but also people who had very different ones. 

Each friend gave me a gift of learning about myself, sorting out my own perspectives, needs, desires, dreams, passions, whether we always agreed or just sometimes. 

Then, when new changes and challenges arose and, by then, I had Bette’s words of “standing at the end of a real long road, waiting for my new friends to come…I gotta get me some of them”, I knew I had to put in that time of waiting and, once again, step out into the unfamiliar or just vaguely familiar arenas in my new surroundings and do just that.  And, thank God, I could and I did because…

“you got to have friends”.

Shared by Susan Ceely Phillips