Reading this thread that comes very close to home in many ways I am thinking of a quote that I hope encourages you to feel you have many Mingle friends to grow with ....

"A friend is a person with whom

I may be sincere, Before him.

I may think aloud."


Ralph Waldo Emerson

Me too

" What you learn from your suffering and grief
you might be able to help someone else
who's now in the phase you may have just completed.
Maybe that's what it's all about after all... "
~ unknown

This sums up how I actually try to live my life.

As an immigrant friend once told me, "When I first came here, I knew nothing. I could not speak the language, the laws....nothing. But somebody helped me, and I learned. One day I ask him, 'Why do you help me?' He said, 'Because I was once like you, and someone helped me. All he asked was that I do the same when someone else need help.' So now I help others to learn....whatever I know, be it cooking or English....whatever. And all I ask is that you pass it on....do the same when someone needs help."

I miss my friend Carlos. He still lives only a few towns away, but life has a way widening the distance. Still, I have his phone number, and I know that someday we will run into each other again. Friends from my past always find their way back into my life even after 20 years. And that alone makes me feel blessed.