“I’m happy you’re here with me.”

I know we have a lot of new people here. I looked at the site traffic and seen a spike of new readers/listeners. Welcome! I hope that whatever reason brought you here and whatever reason you continued to come back that I am giving you something either entertaining, valuable, or both. Contrary to what it may seem, I am traditionally a private person. When I share things about myself or my life, I don’t share distinct details. I share just enough to let you know where I’m at in life, what my focus is, and the types of people I interact with. But the main purpose is to share GROWTH. Because as we go through different stages, ages, experiences, and come across different people, we learn a little more about ourselves and how our minds and ideas can shift. And I’ve had a lot of shifting lately, and I love it, because that confirms to me that I can triumph over anything even if it means doing something or making decisions that I thought I’d never make. And one of the main reasons I am the person that I am at this moment is the people I have around me, my family who are dysfunctionally amazing, and my friends who are just as dysfunctional amazing. That’s what I want to talk about today….the people you choose to be in your life, the people who end up becoming linked to your heart.

I want to share how much I appreciate the people who keep loving me no matter anyone else's opinions or experiences with me. For the most part, they respect that I don't share all my business with people and they continue to show their love and support for me even from a distance. I have friends all around the world and have kept friends for over 20 years. It’s sad when I hear people can’t even keep friendships for mote than a few years. My friends make up pieces of my heart, they are my extended family and they feel the same about me, just like in a previous topic, a friend said to me, “Raya, you’re not going anywhere and we’re not letting you go” when I was telling him about my dating life and that there was someone who is shining brightly in my life right now. My friend said that to let me know that no matter whoever I chose to have around, I’ll always be accepted by them even if the person I have around doesn’t fit in our circle of people. And do have different circles of friends, I believe that’s normal. I have my friends who I have lunch or dinner with every now and then. I also have friends who I party with. I have friends who I grab drinks with and I have friends who I only speak to or see once or twice a year. They all have seen various parts of me or my life. I love them all differently and they all love me the same.

And how I know they truly love me is when I may do something or make a decision that doesn’t highlight me in the best way, they'll call me or pull me to the side and tell me about it. They don’t criticize me or talk down on me, but this also attests to their maturity. If you slander me because you’re upset about something what does that say about you? Especially if you slander me to people who can’t even keep up with me, again what does that say about you? When I’m upset with someone, I say nothing against them. If they want to go off and call me out of my name or say the worst things about me, it only makes me want to say quiet even more. Sometimes you’ve got to let people show their demons. Also people who slander you when they barely know you speak volumes about their thought process as well. We now live in a world where being snippy, catty, and vindictive to someone is praised. How I grew up, we left that kind of behavior in high school and college.

Now, I’m not saying all my friends are perfect, of course they have their vices and unfavorable attributes about them, but how they understand and handle me is perfect. And even if we have disagreements, we still know that the friendship isn’t over, we just need time to come back and be good again. The same friend I mentioned earlier, I told him that all of them are blessings to me, this includes the friends I grew up with and the friends that our outside of the group he’s in, because all of them have imprinted onto my psyche in a way that I look at community, companionship, friendship and love a little differently now. Do you have people in your life like this? I hope you do, because even though you master your goals and success on your own, it’s the people you have in your life that help you master growth through all of that, whether they impact you directly or indirectly.

I don’t know if I have personal friends that come on here, but if there are some of you here…

Thank you for loving me and supporting me however you can and however you do.

Be safe everyone.