The Gift of Enduring Friendship by Sara Wright

After I experienced a sudden shattering break in a friendship with a woman writer/editor that I loved (that I believed would endure any personal difficulty) I was unable to process the event. I wrote a short poem to express my disbelief in which I likened this betrayal to the cutting down of this woman’s tree and left it at that. Silence is a killer of soul. There is no place to go.

The profound rupture of this woman thread felt catastrophic (I have never had a woman friend like her), and in retrospect I still see and experience our friendship in this light. At the time my life was in crisis. I had other consuming worries. Because I had learned at my mother’s knee that silence is literally the end of the road the bottomless chasm that separated us did not lessen in intensity, but I lived on.

Six years later that rupture has been healed. How did this happen? My friend, who happens to be something of a genius, intellectual, professional editor writer/poet wrote a book that she offered to anyone who wanted to read it for free. This act of great generosity was so typical of this woman’s behavior that it galvanized me into action. I took the risk and contacted her directly asking for a copy. I don’t recall just what I said except that I wished we could be friends again, never believing the impossible would happen but it did.

A few months down the road we are still filling in the gaps of what happened in our lives during the intervening six years, but the intimacy between us was immediately restored on a level impossible to describe. She doesn’t remember exactly what happened to precipitate the break, but she remembers that my poem ripped through her like a knife. She told me she never got over it.

I dared to believe that we could re-weave the threads because the love between us had such deep roots and I no longer cared what the trigger was for the years of silence. All I felt was relief. I immediately apologized for the revengeful poem. When she told me how sorry she was for whatever she had done to separate us I was deeply moved.

Accountability when you can’t even remember what constellated the break indicates a profound sense of self responsibility, the kind of honest depth and willingness to repair wounding that I longed for.

Our ongoing daily communication is weaving a multitude of numinous new threads. Our situations have changed, hers drastically and mine almost as much. As we share frustrations and fears of what the future will bring, we also make plans for her to visit me in the spring. My house is perched on the edge of  a brook and nature makes most of the decisions around here, so ‘wildness’ dominates this little patch of forest, field, fen, springs and stream. In season wildflowers pepper wild overgrown grasses, and the sound of flowing waters can instill a sense of peace. This woman wrote her first poetry after living in the woods, and I am convinced that she will write more poems after she visits me here.

We have fallen into a pattern we once shared. It’s almost as if the configuration was a basket just waiting to be filled by the two of us. This year has been a hard one for both of us and for the planet I love so well. The naturalist labors to keep her head above dark waters. If it were not for my little sanctuary, the love of my dogs, the enduring friendship of my Vet and the joy of having this woman friend back in my life, I would be bereft. What is happening to humanity defies my understanding. The best I can do is to move parallel with hell. But amid it all, my friend’s face shines like a precious white pearl on the darkest night. I rejoice in my heart, for despite mis-understanding our enduring friendship demonstrates that LOVE can survive if the roots run deep.

Between the love I feel from this woman and the love pouring in from my beloved Animal Healer, my belief in Love as an active force, one capable of healing the wounded earth and humanity has been restored.

Even if it’s only in possibility.

___________________________________________

My friend’s response to what I wrote:

“Sara, this is so beautiful, and I am so moved! You expressed the fuller meaning of our reconciliation. For both of us. It has restored my faith in love too, when the roots go deep…(my italics) It’s hard to believe that in the midst of darkness, a friendship that lasts can be a beacon of hope, but it’s true. Renewed belief in the power of love … that’s one of the gifts you bring to me”.

My response:

“This isn’t just our story – it’s a story of hope that demonstrates the powers of love to change who we are – this kind of story helps us all grow into the best we can be. And it offers genuine hope, not the kind of hope that is generated by lack of grounding in ‘what is’. And this at a time of such darkness…”

My friend qualifies healing wounds with one phrase ‘when the roots run deep’, a perspective that I believe might be critical to healing some or perhaps all relationships.

I want to digress for a moment to examine the roots that lie beneath our feet. These roots are called mycorrhizae. They emanate pulsing light,  regenerate themselves from their own fragments, and each root tip communicates with every other everywhere. The fungal mycelial network stretches across the earth. Every Indigenous tribe has had a name for these roots for millennia although they have only been recently discovered in western science. I speculate that aligning oneself with these earth roots might help us develop roots to ourselves, to others, to the earth where  none existed before.

Back to my tale. Contrast the above joyful story with my recent attempt to establish a bridge with a woman in Abiquiu that I once believed was a friend. She drifted away without explanation during the last year I spent there like the dry winds that ruffle desert sands on calm days. No argument, disagreement – nothing. I was baffled but let go (I have had plenty of practice). A few days ago, buoyed up this recent reconciliation I sent an email to Abiquiu woman in the spirit of kindness and hope. The response I received was cold and distant, frozen in ice. She had ‘ good memories and pain.’ No explanation. Not one crack in the armor.  Her unwillingness to entertain the thought of re-opening conversation left me grateful that I did not love her. One point worth mentioning here is that this woman does not do the dark and refuses to entertain negativity on any level. She is obsessed with hearts and draws them on virtually everything including sand and rock. Love? It seems to me that lack of self-reflection leaves her shadow on the move. Her cosmic perspective has no roots.  

The point of recounting this episode is to demonstrate how so many people DON’T attempt reconciliation. If people who are supposed to be friends can’t or won’t take the trouble to mend fences how can we expect those with huge emotional and political differences to talk across the isles? I don’t know the answer to this question but believe it has become more urgent.

I want to end by repeating my belief/experience that love can make a difference if both parties are willing to do the work (I have the strongest gut feeling that reconciliation creates even deeper roots).

‘The personal is political’. If two women can re-weave a tapestry of friendship, then the possibility of re-weaving the world also becomes a possibility. Perhaps if each of us took that one step to reach out to someone we left behind we could also help heal the greater whole.

 I end this story with a challenge to each of you. Re-think your stories! Take the risk, reach out. One Caveat. Be realistic please. Some like my former acquaintance will reject, but you may be as joyfully surprised as I was if those with underground roots are already re- weaving that web!