Friends, anyone?

1989 was one of those years when everything went wrong. The man I'd been dating for eight months suddenly moved to Oklahoma. My oldest daughter Jeanne was caught smack dab in the middle of one of California's most devastating earthquakes. Shortly after that my ex-husband died of leukemia, a devastating loss for our nine-year-old son Andrew. Then a woman named Sonny, whom I'd only met once in my life, moved to Milwaukee from Georgia and decided I was going to be her best friend since I was the only person she knew in the whole state of Wisconsin. Only I didn't have the energy to be anybody's best anything that year.

That's when I formed a group of women called The Swill Gang. SWILL stands for Southeastern Wisconsin Interesting Ladies League. I had to find a few good friends for Sonny.

In addition to finding friends for Sonny, all of us in the Swill Gang took each other under each other’s wing. We women laughed, cried, consoled, prodded, jabbered and generally uplifted each other out of whatever struggles any of us were experiencing at the moment. We found so much healing in our laughter and conversation that we continued to meet six to eight times a year for over seventeen years until I moved to Florida in 2004.

Perhaps today is the day we start flying easier by getting into formation with others who can provide social and spiritual uplift. I learned years ago not to be afraid to make that first phone call to get the formation started.