who push you into the uncomfortable, knowing you can thrive.

Friday night I drove two hours up I89 to celebrate my friend Heidi’s birthday in Vermont. The drive, although filled with highway miles, was beautiful. When you drive north in New Hampshire, you reach the land of peaks and valleys. It is stunning in winter, and in all seasons. Winter may be the landscape of dusted gray, but it is also the season of exposure. The frozen elements call the eyes to look deeply. To peer into the stasis and see what is being revealed. Here in northern New England, it is the geography of the land’s stories that grab ahold of you in wonder.

The drive took me back to my Goddard days, to sixteen years ago when I traveled this highway to study writing along with ghosts and friendships. This is where I met Heidi. She is the wood and metal to my water and earth. We are opposites on the spectrum of elements, which is probably one of the reasons our friendship formed quickly and endured. We see those places inside of each other that need to be revealed. We see what needs to flourish and grow and what needs to be tempered and tamed.

It was during this celebratory weekend that Heidi told me I should start writing a business plan. Naturally she would find this exciting. It is a total task of joy for woods and metals. Action-packed order. I resisted, naturally, because I am predominately a mixture of water and earth. I relish in the dreamy world of visions, but I also like to manifest them into reality. Heidi knows this, and as all good friends are, she was patient and nonjudgmental as she listened to my tired excuses. “Well,” said. “Do I really need it if I’m going to live there. I know it’s going to be a work in progress.”

“It will be fun,” she told me. “Trust me. It will allow you to begin forming it into manifestation more clearly.” She has seen my visionary template. This working document that has the semblance of structure, but keeps adding on more watery wishes.

Imagine her surprise, and mine, when I returned home the following day, found a business plan template, and began filling it in. “I guess I don’t need to send you mine,” she replied to my text. I hesitated to mention that I was, in fact, having fun in the process. It felt like a capitulation to metal. I didn’t want to sacrifice my water for fear of losing fluidity.

But, I could not deny this watery world of dreams eager for structure and definition. That swirling sea of seeds eager root into growth were waiting for my permission to take form. And as I began filling in the lines and white blocks with words, imagine my surprise and delight with how natural and joyful it felt. Yes, perhaps I was actually having fun with a task that I had told myself would be tedious and dull.

Although I may be mostly water and earth, like all who seek balance, joy arrives when we feed what needs equal nourishment. It is here that we find our hidden strengths, flourish, and spread our winged forms. So in the moment of pause from working on the rather lengthy document that contains the structures of the elements of my vision to create a nature-based sanctuary of connection, I am celebrating the joy of a balancing friendship and the gift of kindness that pushes us into the uncomfortable phase of growth.