Guest post: The Meaning of True

Hi everyone! I'm still on vacation, so enjoy today's guest poster!

When I first volunteered to guest blog during Hayley’s vacation, I was excited. I have a blog of my own, of course, but this would be a new adventure for me: a new audience, a new topic, and a new challenge. A challenge, it was. I spent days trying to decide what my post would be about. What began as excitement slowly turned into the ultimate writer’s block—that is, until Hayley handed me my topic, in her own roundabout way:

Finding true friendship is a little like trying to find true love. It happens through trial and error. You meet someone and you spend several months testing the waters: figuring out each other’s interests and trying to decide whether that person is reliable enough to trust. Then, you get in deeper. You go places and do things one-on-one instead of in a group. You exchange phone calls and text messages. You begin to tell that person your deepest, darkest secrets.

But, similar to true love, true friendships can end at a moment’s notice. One person betrays another person’s trust. Another starts spending more time with a different person. Both individuals may change: their interests may evolve and they just have nothing in common anymore.

Those of you who read Hayley’s blog on a regular basis know about the dissolution of true love. What you don’t know is that, in the midst of her own pain and suffering, Hayley was still busy being a true friend. You see, while she coped with the loss of her true love, she showed me the value of true friendship.

Hayley and I have been friends for a long time, since my husband and I have known each other. We worked together and my husband and I were sad when an accident kept her from attending our wedding. It wasn’t until I received some of the most devastating news in my own life, that I was unable to have children, when I truly began to know Hayley and learn what an amazing, selfless person she is.

When I am having a bad day, she is one of the first people to e-mail me and check in. She is the person I text from the waiting room of my doctor’s office (or sometimes from the exam room!) about how my latest ultrasound looked. She is the person who, after both of my surgeries, was one of the first to contact me and ask how I was feeling. On Mother’s Day, she was one of only two people to reach out and say, “I know this day is hard. I’m thinking about you.” Her friendship has helped me through four failed fertility treatments, countless baby events, blood draws, ultrasounds, and hormonal fits. Unlike most people, she never turns away from what is a very awkward subject. She asks, and that is what I love about her. More importantly, where others fall short and say, “It must be so hard for you” she adds, “and Joey, too.”

I don’t know what my future holds or where this battle is headed, but I know one thing: Hayley will be a part of it. She is a true friend, one of my best friends. And for her, I am forever grateful.

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

xoxo
Katie