Best Friends Forever

One of my favorite sayings is friends are the family we choose for ourselves. That’s never been more true for me than with my best friend of 20+ years, Lisa.

Lisa and I first connected as pen pals back in 1987, bonding over our shared affection for the witty NBC soap opera “Santa Barbara.”

We clicked even more when we met in person several months later. And so began a friendship that has defied geographical odds (Lisa lives in Kansas City) to become the sisterhood closest to my heart.

Lisa and I during a girls getaway to L.A., Summer 1997

Lisa and I speak 3-4 times a week, and email and text each other daily. Over the years, we’ve shared everything -- celebrity gossip, love life highs and lows, job-related trials and triumphs and the seminal loss in each of our lives, that of our respective parents.

Though I wish with all of my heart we didn’t have this in common, there’s no denying that having each lost both of our parents has deepened the bond between us -- because we’re the only ones we know who’ve lived through this double tragedy as young, single women.

Though no two experiences of grief are the same, ours have both been filtered through the prism of having had parents we genuinely adored and respected. I cherish that I was able to know Lisa’s Mom and Dad and I know she feels the same way about mine.

Lisa is everything a best friend should be and more -- a trusted advisor, sympathetic ear and the person I think of first whenever something really great (or really terrible) happens.

I’m looking forward to many, many more decades of friendship with Lisa. And many more conversations about how much we still love watching our old VHS tapes of “Santa Barbara.”