On the heels of some very belated and very sad news about our dear sister LP, another dear sister, Grover, has posted a wonderful article on Facebook about distance between friends and loved 
ones. From this opening, maybe you can see that there are two very different but related topics that I will be writing about.
The first is that life is short. Upon reading the obit for Lisa, four months late - and thank you, NU Magazine for keeping us posted on these things - I was brought back about five years, when I found my former roommate, Melissa, had also passed - three years prior. It also brings me back to 2001, when I learned Katie McGarry from SHA was in the towers. All three of these women, women I genuinely cherished as friends, as family, were women I allowed myself to lose touch with. They were women who "should know" I was thinking of them, even if I didn't write letters, send emails, make phone calls. Big mistake. My heart breaks for each and every one. And truly, I hope they know that they really do come to mind, more often than they don't.
The second related topic is about the article posted. The article discussed a request to friends far away, to share their daily lives. I see a lot of complaints on the book from people who don't care to know what others had for lunch, or when their kid took their first step. I see people who detest the mundane. It made me think about them: the people who complain about it. Maybe they don't have friends spread far and wide. Maybe they only have a small little world that exists for them - which is why they don't care, and do complain. I feel for them.
And how is this all related? Well, as I said, life is short. We should make efforts to reach out more, talk more, catch up more. Even those mundane micro-posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, they cast glimpses into the every day that many of us formerly thrived on. We lived together in small communities of women, several apartments each housing one or two or six of us. And we all shared each others lives, every day. We laughed, loved, cried, prayed, and survived together.
Here is my call to action: The next time you feel the urge to complain about the mundane post you see, think about the people that poster is connected to. Maybe they are far away and just want to let people know about their every day, people who used to share their every day and now do not.
And to my Sigma Sisters, I propose a toast. Let's pick a day or ten; the same date every year. Wherever we are, whoever we're with, raise a glass, or a mug, filled with the beverage of your choice, and toast each other; the Sisterhood. For fun, those of us who blog, tweet, Facebook, Instagram...we can post a little anecdote of where we were, who we were with, what memory of Sigma came to mind as we toasted. Or not. If we can't be together, we can toast together, have a moment in time when we know we are thinking of each other; committed to the memories of our founding and of years past.
Who's with me?
ones. From this opening, maybe you can see that there are two very different but related topics that I will be writing about.
The first is that life is short. Upon reading the obit for Lisa, four months late - and thank you, NU Magazine for keeping us posted on these things - I was brought back about five years, when I found my former roommate, Melissa, had also passed - three years prior. It also brings me back to 2001, when I learned Katie McGarry from SHA was in the towers. All three of these women, women I genuinely cherished as friends, as family, were women I allowed myself to lose touch with. They were women who "should know" I was thinking of them, even if I didn't write letters, send emails, make phone calls. Big mistake. My heart breaks for each and every one. And truly, I hope they know that they really do come to mind, more often than they don't.
The second related topic is about the article posted. The article discussed a request to friends far away, to share their daily lives. I see a lot of complaints on the book from people who don't care to know what others had for lunch, or when their kid took their first step. I see people who detest the mundane. It made me think about them: the people who complain about it. Maybe they don't have friends spread far and wide. Maybe they only have a small little world that exists for them - which is why they don't care, and do complain. I feel for them.
And how is this all related? Well, as I said, life is short. We should make efforts to reach out more, talk more, catch up more. Even those mundane micro-posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, they cast glimpses into the every day that many of us formerly thrived on. We lived together in small communities of women, several apartments each housing one or two or six of us. And we all shared each others lives, every day. We laughed, loved, cried, prayed, and survived together.
Here is my call to action: The next time you feel the urge to complain about the mundane post you see, think about the people that poster is connected to. Maybe they are far away and just want to let people know about their every day, people who used to share their every day and now do not.
And to my Sigma Sisters, I propose a toast. Let's pick a day or ten; the same date every year. Wherever we are, whoever we're with, raise a glass, or a mug, filled with the beverage of your choice, and toast each other; the Sisterhood. For fun, those of us who blog, tweet, Facebook, Instagram...we can post a little anecdote of where we were, who we were with, what memory of Sigma came to mind as we toasted. Or not. If we can't be together, we can toast together, have a moment in time when we know we are thinking of each other; committed to the memories of our founding and of years past.
Who's with me?