There was a recent Awakin reading that I loved called "Heart & Soul," bonds written by Michelle.

A dear friend of mine Shan is leaving the bay area after living here for a few years. Her daughter and my daughter went to the same preschool together. She arrived from South Africa via Australia to the bay area, and now it is time for her to travel to a new land for more adventures and learning.

Shan and I have a heart & soul bond and I wanted to write about our friendship here.

Moms support each other a lot and her & I quickly became friends. Shan was so open and friendly and exuberated so much love. I still remember when we shared to each other that we were both pregnant--her with her second and mine with third. We were expecting them around the same time and so I remember squealing with her with excitement. Everyday we would meet at school at 4 PM for pick up of our older children and we would talk nonstop about our pregnancies--what aches and pains we were feeling, the kicking going on, our anticipations for our upcoming family changes, doctor appointments. We even had beautiful spirit animals--mine the elephant and hers the humming bird. Sometimes we were so desperate to see each other that we would just talk and talk talk while our kids played outside, oblivious to the world around us. Our bellies kept getting bigger and bigger and we celebrated each other doing a simple and special joint baby shower for each other where we made flower crowns, read poems, and had high tea. It was such a special pregnancy to have this friendship and to celebrate and honor each other the entire way.

And the story of our friendship just became so amazing because we ended up having our babies not only on the same day but the same time (in different hospitals but very close to each other)!!!! We knew we were in sync but we just didn't know how much!!! It still blows us away that this happened. We refer to our children Nat and Radhika as celestial brothers and sister. They both have the same birth mark and we see each of them in each other. They are both little lions and little leos that we will always celebrate together for the rest of their lives.

As Michelle says in the reading, we are simply very lucky to have a few of these heart and soul bonds in our lifetime and I feel to lucky to have this friendship.

Yes our friendship was special but I also have to say there was sometime special about Shan too.

Every time I saw Shan, she was fully authentic and vulnerable. She did not pretend to have it all together. She shared her struggles openly and honestly, laughed about them, cried about them, and that vulnerability simply gave me permission to share my struggles openly, as well. Sometimes life was hard supporting our very busy partners and taking care of little strong-willed children and ourselves or simply dealing with the pain of what was happening in the world around us. So our conversations went to the core of what was going on in our lives pretty quickly.

Shan would make beautiful things by hand. She made a beautiful mobile for my baby of heart clouds. She gifted me beautiful heart made of nature sticks with lights with the motto "it all starts with heart." She made beautiful cards. Everything done by hand with tremendous love.

Even on a student-budget, I had to fight for her to pay for things. We would have to fight over the bill, just as my parents would do with their friends and family, when I was growing up. That kind of generosity to truly want to give and pay for someone else is slowly dying, but Shan still had that.

Shan celebrated life. So we celebrated countless birthdays. We did egg hunts and water gun fights and so many picnics in the sun. We chased our kids into the street. We would laugh at ourselves. We get very excited talking about implementing peace tables in our house! We even ended up at protests with our children. And we topped it all off with a mom dance party proving to ourselves we still have it!

When there was a happy moment in our lives, we shared that fully and celebrated, but when there was a hard moment we supported each other. I have noticed that this can be rare in life because so many people are going on in thier lives with empty buckets, so they may be fighting to be seen or heard and may crave more attention than they give it. It is a beautiful thing to have someone in your life you can just share so openly with and know that they will give you the space you need. What a beautiful gift of generosity... just to give someone a space for someone to empty their heart.

She always asked how my husband was doing or how Soulforce Leadership was going. Lots of questions where I could share openly and deeply. And she didn't self-reference or say "Oh yeah me too," which would then shift it back to her. She just gave space. She was present, even when she had a hard day. And I hope I gave her that too.

As the reading says, a heart and soul relationship is effortless and consciousness feels aligned, and it certainly felt this way for us. We shared many hopes and dreams about our children. We just want our children to be connected to themselves and the world around them, and we want to do something in this world to fight for the healing of the world. We were helping each other figure out what this was. We wanted meaning and purpose in our lives and to model to our children to never settle.

It is with a deep pain that I feel in my throat that she won't be living 5 minutes away from me anymore and I won't see her every day. Tears well in my eyes and roll down my cheek. But I also feel so grateful that I had this friendship and I know I'll see her again in life.

I also feel so grateful these sort of relationships in my life--one where you are so in sync--a heart and soul bond that literally your bodies become in sync and you have your baby on the same day and same time. There is just something magical about that. When you live a life where you try to go deeper and deeper in your heart, you build beautiful relationships and what a blessed life that is. And you know that these friendships will truly last a lifetime.

In a world that can feel so harsh, this is how we get through it.

One day we'll surprise each other. Our children will be older and it will such a magical feeling to get that hug again. It will be magical to hear about how our children have grown up and who they are as people, and to remember this time in our lives. Our children will forever bring us together and bond us especially on that day!

I love you Shan and I will miss you dearly and I can't wait to hug you again. And one day we'll have that epic dance party bon fire we always dreamed of and I can't wait for that.