I guess we’ve been meeting for about a year, but I can’t exactly remember when we started getting together for coffee on Tuesday Mornings at the Central House in Salem. First it was Me and Nancy, meeting to talk about our businesses and encourage each other. Then Mandy joined us. In December we pulled together some local artists and Lisa and Scott from the Round House Bakery and had the Collective Arts Winter Gallery. I sold my potholders, Nancy her lampwork bead jewelry and Mandy gift certificates for Massage. Every week we got together and told each other what we did that week, or what we wanted to do in the future or what hadn’t worked. We didn’t keep it just to business, sometimes it got more personal. But what ever we talked about, it was always good to get together.
One of Nancy’s dreams was to move to Maine. To a community close to the ocean where she and her husband could have a studio and gallery in their back yard and her kids could walk to school. And now, it’s happening. Nancy’s still working out the details, but she found a house and is in transition, moving to Maine. So for the past few weeks, Mandy and I have been getting together, no longer at the Central House, but closer to home, usually in Mandy’s kitchen with a cup of ginger tea, or going for a morning walk, keeping each other updated and continuing the encouragement.
Part of what we were doing together was encouraging each other to be fulfilled not just in our businesses, but in all parts of our lives. So I’m going to miss Nancy, but I’m just as happy she’s getting what she wants.
Good luck and congratulations to Nancy! It sounds like a wonderful place to move to.
This is the kind of friendship women were meant to have, and perhaps did on the frontier when all they had was each other. Maybe women are truly connecting again, now that we have adjusted to society’s appliances, gadgets, telecommunications, and understand that nothing replaces face to face with a good friend. Annie