Brave Enough To Be Bliss

and safe. And warmth when I say it never has anything to do with the temperature. To me warm is welcoming, accepting, gentle, soft.

Tami had an older brother and sister, and both her mom and dad were kind, caring and giving p eople. I’m sure they would all say they’re not a perfect family, but they sure seemed like it to me. When I saw her parents for the first time since we’ve reconnected, when her oldest son graduated from high school and I stopped by his party at their house, it was as though no time had passed. The last time I saw them was at the eighth grade graduation, so that would have more than 30 years earlier. Everything about them seemed the same in all the ways you never want anyone to change. They had that much good stuff inside them. And likewise, they passed that on to Tami and her siblings. To me, the quality of a friendship isn’t how often I see a person, but rather how deep the love is when I do. This photo is from my birthday party you’ll read about soon, but it made me happy to have a photo of us now where I look as happy as she is, and my arm is around her as tight as hers is around me.

“Friends are angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly. ” Unknown

This quote couldn’t be more perfect both literally and figuratively for this next story and the funny thing is through the years I have saved quotes on my phone and then I type some of them into a document . Sometimes I remember one is there that’s perfect, and other times I just see one and then know immediately where it belongs. I met Norvel when I worked at a health system. She worked in an area where we contracted with a third-party service provider and we were having issues with them. I was the executive put in charge of overseeing the front end of those operations. I quickly learned she was going to be my go-to when I needed information, explanation and the real scoop on what was happening. She’s excellent at what she does, and I was impressed with her from the start. She works hard, is very honest and funny, and can always make me smile. One day she came into my office and I noticed something was wrong with her finger. She told me she had a spider bite and while I’m not clinical at all, I’ve been around hospitals enough that I knew it didn’t look OK. I encouraged her to go to the emergency department or her doctor’s office and have it checked out. She didn’t commit to doing it, but I hoped that she would. Later that day, I found out she had been admitted to the hospital. It felt good because she saved me lots of time with big issues, so I was glad to feel like maybe my encouraging her would count as doing a little something to help her too.

When I started working at the surgical practice, we needed help in her area of expertise, so I contacted her, we met and were able to lure her away . While I didn’t work directly with her in my role there, we would chat occasionally and stay updated on each other’s li ves. She told me I inspired her to be brave, so I asked her to write something I could share about her experience if she had time and to send me a photo I could put with her story. I wonder about all of the things I have missed out on staying in my comfort zone due to a bad flight 27 years ago, and when I just didn’t want people to know certain aspects about my life story.

I didn’t ever dream or even think about taking another flight until I started reading your posts on Facebook about your life story. How BRAVE you were to do things by

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