TToT: Laborious, Notorious, Glorious – Go THANK Yourself! #10Thankful

“No man ever was glorious, who was not laborious.”
–Benjamin Franklin

10 THINGS OF THANKFUL

Someone asked me how my Labor Day was going and I wanted to answer with a little something different:

“laborious,” I replied.

🙂

A lot went on this week, both in my life and in my mind. School’s back in session, for my niece and my brother, and for me, in a way too.

September 11th was also remembered this week. I can’t believe it’s been fourteen years since 9/11 happened.

“To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”
–Winston Churchill

It is thought that twenty-six Canadians lost their lives that day.

On the eve of 9/11, a rainbow appears in the sky over One World Trade Center in Manhattan.

Ten Things of Thankful:

For my latest travel writing piece to be published on the travel blog of someone I really admire.

Can you travel blind, crossing Ireland’s Carrick-a-rede- rope bridge?

Thank you, Megan, for giving me a second spot on your travel blog.

It has gotten dozens of RT’s on Twitter in the last week.

First it was our interview.

Can blind people travel?

Of course we can!

And now my guest post where I explain what taking a risk, is like, for me.

Night Swimming

It’s a little like swimming at night. I’ve long wanted to do this and I thought of it, again, on Labor Day.

It’s a bit of a frightening thing, the thought of being out there, at night. I guess it’s the way I live most of my life, stepping out, in the darkness of the unknown, but taking the plunge anyway.

For the chance to spend, what was said to be the hottest day of the year, in the water and so I didn’t even notice the heat they spoke of.

We decided to spend our Labor Day at the lake. We are lucky to live so close to all those fresh water sources.

For my flexibility.

In life, sure, I’m improving. However, I mean that literally because I have been told, by doctors on more than one occasion, that I am incredibly flexible. My muscular skeletal system can bend in strange directions.

So, when I decided to jump in the sand, right along with my nephew, I just so happened to land on a log that was sticking out at my feet.

Luckily my ankles are one of those highly flexible parts of my body and although I went down, landing hard in the sand, my ankle did turn over but did not sprain badly. I felt it go over sideways, but I have stretched out those muscles so much over the years, leaving little to no pain as a result.

The opportunity to chase seagulls with my nephew wasn’t to be missed. Just thankful I walked away from that and did not have to crawl back to the car on hands and knees.

🙂

For literacy and education.

International Literacy Day, 2015

I would be lost otherwise.

For the education we’re lucky enough to have in Canada, as my niece begins kindergarten this week.

She is smart and sharp and bright. She learns so much and loves to share it. She surprises us all with the things she’s learning everyday. and I know she will do amazing things as she grows.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=207&v=CQ2noSR1qdY

It’s a good thing John Oliver is not her teacher.

For the premier of the newest in late night television.

Late Show Recap

Stephen Colbert makes me smile and I look forward to his jokes and his unique style of interviews.

One of his first guests, on his very first week, was George Clooney. They discussed and even showed a clip of George’s new film: Decision Strike!

Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Well, don’t go looking for it in theatres in the coming weeks or months, as it is only a fictional movie, as he did not actually have anything real to promote. Sounds impressive anyway.

With all the talk of the heating up of the late night show wars, now that Colbert has thrown his own hat into the ring, Stephen made light of this when he mentioned all the thoughtful first-week gifts the other late night comedians have been sending him. He joked that they could all be expecting the best thank you card ever, with the words: GO THANK YOURSELF, written in them.

TAKE THAT! … Jimmy, Jimmy, Conan, John, and the rest.

🙂

For whatever it was that got me a replacement battery for my iPhone 5 and finally, after talking about doing it for months.

I put it off for too long. Not sure why. I can actually go a whole day and my phone does not die, a beautiful thing. This will be necessary for my trip to Toronto later this month.

I went in one of those crazy Apple stores, so hip and which make me feel very uncool. They have the genius bar. Well, I was informed of some loophole which made it so I did not have to pay the $100 for a new battery. Okay by me.

🙂

It just so happened to be September 9th and the big reveal day for Apple. I did not upgrade to the newly revealed iPhone 6S. My iPhone 5 works just fine, but it’s amazing just how revolutionary the iPhone has been for so many, but for anyone who is visually impaired especially.

For the people, in my life, who have gone through the loss of a loved one to suicide. They teach me things, all the time, about survival and resilience.

World Suicide Prevention Day, 2015

Sometimes prevention isn’t possible, upon looking back, no matter what anyone could have done. That doesn’t mean we stop trying.

I know life is forever altered for them. It isn’t easy and life will never feel happy, truly happy again. I just hope they know someone is thinking about them, always.

Everybody Hurts

The day was such a beautiful one this year, the weather anyway.

“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.”
–Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

For a dream come true – a dream of clarity, reason, and shape.

😉

First I was accepted into an anthology, with my short story: One Last Kiss.

Then it came out, on Amazon, but first only as an ebook.

It wasn’t until this week, finally, that I actually got to hold a print copy of the book in my own hands. I could feel the weight of it, turn the pages, and smell that signature bookish smell, all knowing my words could be found within. It is an indescribable feeling, a dream come true for me, and I will never forget what that felt like.

For a friend, somebody there on the day the book arrived in the mail. Someone to celebrate with.

We got Dairy Queen confetti cake blizzards to celebrate. Her five-month-old daughter sat, in her carrier, staring at me and I wanted to share, but unfortunately she isn’t eating ice cream, not just yet. I loved celebrating with her too, all the same.

🙂

Thanks, Mom, for bringing the book over.

For the best, most loving parents my nephew could ever have. And it all began on that warm day in September, back in 2009 – Happy Anniversary guys!

I will never forget that summer, that day, as long as I live. It was the day my sister had worked so hard for and looked so forward to. I got to be in the wedding party and was happy she allowed me to give a speech at the reception.

Storybook Love

My sister’s favourite movie is The Princess Bride and she wanted my uncle to sing the theme song from the film, at the wedding. It made it special, unique, and all hers. She wanted to get married in our back yard, of the home we grew up in. It was a wedding at home and meant so much to all of us.

Chasing Cars – Snow Patrol

For rainbows, literacy, firsts, celebrations, dreams, and anniversaries.

I am thankful I’ve gotten to share my words, more and more, in recent days and weeks. I guess, for me, the need to share my words with the world goes back to all that stuff I said about night swimming.

It’s scary, certainly, but the idea of being swept up and away, washed out there and with no sign or footprint to show that I was ever here, that is what I am most afraid of.

Sure, the chance for rejection is ever present in the present, but not nearly as great as that there could be no proof that I ever existed in the first place.

“I don’t know how long I kept at it…
I felt reasonably safe, stretched out on the floor, and lay quite still.
It didn’t seem to be summer anymore.”
–Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

RURAL PRIDE, COUNTY WIDE, #SoCS

As summer winds down and autumn approaches, town after town will begin hosting their annual county, agricultural, and local fairs.

Where was I today?

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS SATURDAY

Hmmm. Let’s see.

This week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: “Four-Letter Word”

http://lindaghill.com/2015/08/28/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-2915/

I went to the fair today.

My initial thought, when I heard four-letter word…well, I am sure you could guess and I am also sure I wasn’t the first to think of it.

Then, I went to my county’s fair with a friend, her mother and daughter, and we spent the afternoon with cows, horses, sheep, goats, donkeys.

I was born and live in a rather rural area of south western Ontario, in Canada. My town’s mascot is a cow after all. Agriculture is a very important part of community and sense of pride here.

My mother always thought going to a fair was a rather large waste of money, as kids, and so we went, but sparingly.

I remember, once, when I was about ten years old, I had just made a new friend in my new school. She was visiting and I really wanted to go to the fair with her. So, sneaky and vindictive little girl that I sometimes could be, I told her that we would take her to the fair. I hadn’t run this passed my mom, assuming that once I had made the promise to my friend, my mom wouldn’t be able to say no.

Well, let’s just say my master plan worked.

General admission and the rides and games and food on top of that. It all adds up. They stamp your hand upon entering.

There is something strange and rather unsettling about walking down a path between booths, stalls on all sides, with loud and over-stimulating music and sound, clanking and clanging carnival rides, and people yelling at you, obnoxiously I might add:

“Come! Try this game! Everyone’s got a chance to win!”

Yeah, what a rip off. What do I look like, a sucker?

Well, this time we did not go for the rides. My friend wanted to introduce her baby girl to the barn full of farm animals, to see her face upon spotting a black and white, a brown cow, for the first time.

We had a friend, growing up, who was at the local fair, every August, to show cattle with her family. Now, what did this mean exactly? I realize I didn’t understand that world, but the family loved it.

It took up their time, kept them busy, all with things I didn’t pretend to understand. Walking cows around in a ring, practicing, being awarded first, second, and third place medals.

My mother grew up as a farm girl. My uncles owned farms, dairy herds mostly, all my life. I spent many summer vacations on the farms. I was afraid to walk down the stalls of cows in the barn.

I’m drawing a blank now. What are those openings in the floor for the cows called again? Hmmm.

The smell of the barn was never something I could get used to. I did not have enough vision to allow me to run and play games up in the hay mound, with holes that would suddenly appear at your feet, sometimes disguised by straw, until it was too late. Down to the cement floor below you would drop. One of my cousins did just that.

I preferred to stay and play in the house, rather than get dirty and smelly. I drank milk, ate cheese, and eggs. I saw what it was like to survive of the land and raise animals for these things, but I was not at home, ever, fully there.

Now the fair is all about a certain lifestyle. I look in on it. I smell the fair food. I love cotton candy. I hate candy and caramel apples. I loved rides as a kid.

My friend’s baby girl loved the animals. A cow scared the hell out of me, but the baby’s eyes bulged from the noise the creature made, but did not cry.

At any moment I expected a stinky sniffling nose or tongue to make me jump from behind the fence. I wouldn’t be able to help making a commotion if a cow suddenly decided to say “Hello”.

Pies. Quilts. Crafts. Stalls selling all manner of hand-made items.

Piggy banks shaped like turtles, giraffes, cows, and rocking horses. Obvious hard work put in to each one by dedicated and delicate wood working skill.

My friend and I found the farm family there, showing their cows off with pride. Little changes in twenty years. But our friendships have.

We met her sister and her father, but no sign of the friend we once knew so well, the one we’d hurry to the fair grounds to see, to speak to, even for a little while in between her duties with the cows.

We waited around to speak to her, unsure how awkward it might feel to talk again, after years of no contact. Distance grows between, an ever widening expanse of time and silence.

No sign of her. Do we keep on waiting? Do we move on? The baby is tired and hungry. Our feet are sore.

I can’t stand much more of the music and the noise. Sound coming at me from all sides. I am nervous how well I’ll even be able to hear any conversation with this old friend, if she does indeed turn up to say hi.

We listen, part of a gathering and contented group of interested attendants of this lecture on reptiles. The girl speaking talks with an authoritative tone and sounds like she is highly knowledgeable when it comes to the python she holds and the red-footed tortoise named Flash.

Children ask such smart questions about the animals:

What does it drink?

Can I give it a kiss? (The girl doesn’t seem like she is going to allow that one.)

“No kissing them. Reptiles are dirty,” she advises, but she encourages anyone and everyone to reach out a hand and touch these guys.

“Nope. Not her face. Just touch her shell. She doesn’t like being poked in the eye, just like any of us.”

People actually make bowls, plates, and even guitar picks from the shell. What waste. Simply not necessary. I go online later, only to find that “an imitation tortoise-shell pick” is one of the top hits, for sale.

😦

“Can you let her swim in the water over there?” I hear the little child, a few feet away, ask and point.

“She’s a tortoise, not a turtle. They don’t swim,” the girl explains.

The baby would put the snake to her mouth, as she has approached that age of her infancy. Not advisable.

A nice man directly behind me, waiting to get his turn to see the animals up close, asks me, “Did you want to touch the animals too Love?”

Very nice of him to ask. “No. I’m good,” I say. “I’ve touched a snake before.”

(My brother has one as a pet. I have touched it several times. That should do me for a while.

The girl talks about a snake back at the zoo and animal park she works at, where these animals come from. That snake, which is not here, is called Julius Squeezer.

Hahahaha. Well, I thought that was a good one anyway.

🙂

All the country music and hay aside, I feel strange, with all this baby talk. People stop my friend and me in our tracks, every so often as we make our way through the fair, to comment on what a beautiful baby my friend has. And, of course, they couldn’t be more right, but the sitting target for people’s advice and attention is clearly my friend. People naturally want to know, are curious: What’s her name? How old is she? And my friend simply smiles and answers them politely.

We don’t meet up with our old friend. Must not be meant to be I guess, I tell myself. I am bad with awkward greetings. I stand there, awkward as anything, grasping for things to say.

I feel left out. If we do all speak, the two of them will discuss their children. It’s no fair that I can’t be a part of that shared experience of motherhood that the two of them will most certainly connect to.

I will stand there, ever more awkward, but then we’ve just missed her. She hasn’t left the cows to run into us at the reptile exhibit. She is somewhere, in this crowd, and we never do find her. Missed opportunity, but for what?

Some friendships aren’t meant to be reforged. I can’t answer why that is. I wish I could.

Maybe we have nothing more in common. Perhaps we never did.

But what…I don’t know…is that what friendship comes down to in the end? It obviously meant something to us at the time, will forever be a part of our shared past. What, then, is to stop my friend and me from losing touch too, one of these days? I can’t understand it, how it all works, what friendships are and how to discover if they are meant to withstand anything.

Earlier in the day, I urged my friend to come along with me, to say goodbye to another girl from school. She is moving to the US with her husband. We arrive at her father’s house, in an area of town I am not in often. This friendly girl we’ve come to see answers the door, immediately taking the baby from my friend’s arms. Baby makes a helpful distraction and an ice breaker, to lighten the mood. Makes more of these awkward meetings a little less so.

The day has been mentally and physically exhausting for me, for us, but we agree we’re glad we made the effort, even if it didn’t all work out.

Ever the lousy social butterfly that I am and I have one more day of practice under my belt, but I still can’t shake the feelings of being totally out-of-place and out-of-my-element. Will they ever leave me completely?

I answer questions about my writing and my book and my friend answers more about her baby. We sip from little glasses of juice and listen to all the talk going on around us, mostly from family of the married friend who is on her way to start a new life with her husband.

Others, myself included, well the path looks a lot different than that one. It looks quite pleasant and put together, when compared to whatever the hell I’m doing, but who knows where we will all end up, really. We all have our six month plans, our two year plans to refer to, for just how we think our lives should go.

An old and faded baby book and the earliest of kindergarten friendships made. No matter how long it’s been, where we’ve come from, or how far away life may take any of us. Sometimes, before we know it, we’re right back here in the local county we knew as children, friendships tested and reformed again.

How is life fair? I can answer that: it isn’t “fair” at all. Let’s forget about how unfair life can be by visiting the fair.

To be fair, on such a fair day as this: better quit while I am ahead. I don’t normally mean to make my SoCS posts quite this long.

So that’s my four-letter word for today and I’m sticking with it.

Spotlight Sunday: Single Strides

Welcome to February: first day of a new month, shortest of them all, and just days away from celebrating one year of having this amazing platform for expression and sharing that I’ve discovered.

More on that to come.

Before that, today I am pleased to highlight my first Spotlight of February: Sonya Matejko, more commonly/well-known as:

Single Strides.

Below I question her on all the wisdom I have found at her blog, on writing, and more importantly on life.

There is a second part, a set of travel questions I hope to post on my travel website very soon.

But now I am thrilled to bits that she has agreed to speak to me here. So here she is.

***

She says, first and foremost on her blog, that Single Strides is:

“A blog about falling in love, falling apart, and traveling the world in between.”

This, I read on discovering her, and I was totally hooked. These are the things I write and think about every day.

In this first of her blog posts I wanted to highlight amongst my questions, she speaks on how to deal with the “what if’s and the what not’s”.

You Are So Much More Than Your Mistakes

She says:

“If you were to look up and see the sun you’d realize there are things bigger than your past mistakes.”

Some excellent perspective she offers here.

K: Explain, what is your website all about, what does the name mean to you, and how did you come up with it? What made you start it when you did?

S: Single Strides is a blog about falling in love, falling apart, and traveling the world in between. I started it, truthfully, after a breakup.  Now it survives as a place to share my journey of falling back in love with life and the world around me. Because sometimes, in order for someone to be a muse… they have to be the heartbreak too. 

“There are far too many expectations – don’t meet them. There are far too many rules – go break them. There are far too many risks – take them all.”

6 Things Every 20 Something Should Be Grateful For

The second of her posts I’ve chosen to highlight is one for all the twenty something’s. It is a very popular blog niche out there, as it is a decade for learning and growing in this generation’s youth. I especially loved points 5 and 6 for her unique perspective on the morning commute and on the promise of a new day, every day.

K: Have you always loved writing and why? 

S: Yes. Ever since I can remember I was a writer. Even in Kindergarten we were to all publish a book, and mine made it to the city’s newspaper. From there my love for writing only grew. It’s an escape to a different world. As a writer, you live in your imagination and it brings a different kind of light into your life. And now, I’d have to say my biggest joy from writing comes from messages from people who have been positively effected by my writing. It’s an indescribable blessing to inspire.

“She dreams of better days and of feats achieved. Her imagination runs as wild as the breeze and it joins with the rain while it floods the fields – only so life could grow. She dreams of a bloom but fear is keeping her from planting the seed. So she lives in her past and smiles out of practice. She’s happy with the present as slowly as she lets it come. but she’s stuck on the memories that no longer ring true. And the people that are gone but she still clings to.”

This third of her posts I’ve selected is my favourite, for sure. I had trouble picking just one quote from this one. Do yourself a favour and check out what she had to say. She so perfectly describes the state of me at many times in my life. It’s kind of scary actually, as if she has seen into my mind.

🙂

Sitting With The PAst

She has inspired me with all she says here about how to live with and accept the past, while learning to let go and move forward.

K: Where and how have you learned the most about how to become a writer or how to improve and grow as a writer? 

S: Honestly, I still work on it every day. My grammar is still not where it needs to be, and I could definitely increase my vocabulary. Yet I do think my most valuable lessons on writing have all come from the simple mantra of “write what you know.”

“To my ex thank you for breaking my heart. If it weren’t for the heartbreak, this blog would never exist. This is the home of all the emotions that you spilled out of me that had nowhere to go.”

Thank You For 2014

In this post she thanks people, from her friends and family to her readers and to the one who broke her heart. This is giving credit where credit is due because love, even when it ends, shapes us and it brought her to the point where she had to write this blog. Very glad of that.

K: What do you believe writing can bring to our world or achieve for a better world. if anything? What, for you, is the connection between love and writing? 

S: Writing can change you once you’ve read it – even if for a moment. There have been countless books that have inspired me to live my life a different way. Countless articles that can given me the courage to act, the will to laugh, and the hope that things will get better. Writing has an intense power to sway your heart and your mind. Us writers need to keep sharing our words not for the sake of sharing, but to change just one life.

“Single strides will get me there. They may not always be straight, they may sometimes be clumsy, but they will always be moving forward. So how many decisions did it take me to get to where I am now? I could ask the tide, or I could just let it cool my feet ant just be happy I am simply alive to feel it.”

Ramblings and Reflections

This has been her path and I can’t wait to continue to follow her through her posts.

K: What are your future hopes, plans, and dreams for your writing and for Single Strides? 

S: I really would love to grow my brand. I’d love for people to really resonate with it and look forward to upcoming articles. I’d eventually like to have a big enough fan base to begin (or edit) my novel. My end goal has always been to publish a book, and not just to get on the B&N shelves… but to be the book people tell their friends “you absolutely have to read this.”

“Because you’ll never get to where you’re meant to go by standing still.”

Six Months of Single Strides

And here’s to many many more.

***

I want to thank Sonya for agreeing to answer these questions I had for her and for being her true, authentic self. She, in her early twenties, has discovered things I am just now learning as I enter my thirties. She does it all, by sharing her journey with heartbreak (which is what I first majorly related to in her writing) and by being independent and strong in every single stride forward she is taking in her life.

Sonya has been published in such publications as:

Elite Daily,

and

Thought Catalog

And has written guest posts for:

The Fickle Heartbeat

As Told Over Brunch

and

Young and Twenty

Also, you can keep up with her on the following social media outlets:

Twitter

and on

Facebook

Sonya is making single stride after single stride and little does she know it, but she has helped me work through hard times and difficult transitions. Her story, my own, and many others is:

“PROOF HOPELESS ROMANTICS AREN’T SO HOPELESS AFTER ALL”

10 Reasons Why Hopeless Romantics Aren’t Hopeless After All

Good to know.

🙂

Thank you, Sonya, for all this and much more.>

Sherry Baby

Two songs in particular come to mind with Sherry in the title and written about a girl just like my friend: “Sherry Baby” by Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons and “Oh Sherry” by Steve Perry. There are very few people I’ve known who stick out in my mind like this particular bride. There are a few girls I have known who have seemed free to me, free spirits who were always attracting people to them with their bright sparkling personalities. This bride always seemed like this, almost like a female super hero who could take on the world and did.

This was unlike any other wedding I had ever attended, a good thing for sure. The real thing was done at City Hall, but a small gathering of family and friends were invited to help celebrate the happy couple, a real life love story to my wild imagination and literary mind. I was lucky to be one of these select few.

I grew up just outside of a small subdivision and, as a child, I was constantly looking in on this place, just up the road. I went to school with the kids here and became friends with many of them. I suppose it wasn’t much different for them than it was for my sister and brother. They pretty much grew up with me, having a blind girl in their class from the very beginning, unlike the kids I would meet at the school we would go on to attend later on. These kids knew me and accepted me, almost from the beginning.

I was never lacking in a friend or two for very long, a bit of a rarity for visually impaired kids in their neighbourhood schools. Many had trouble adjusting and socializing, not meeting and making friends easily. I would meet many of these kids and we would go on to become good friends.

This subdivision had a general store, a baseball diamond, a church, and a grammar school – a perfect start to introduce me to school and socializing. Sherry was one of these good friends. We started going to school together in kindergarten, but it was first grade when we started spending any real time together.

I found myself, the other night, sitting at a table and reminiscing with several of these children, all grown up now. There were inside jokes and old stories, lots of laughs and I felt a nostalgia I couldn’t quite put my finger on – a past long gone now and a simpler time. I was lucky enough to sit in on this remembering and, all those years ago now, on the lives of these people. I would go over to one of their houses and inevitably their neighbours would be other kids we went to school with. We would all play together.

The bride grew up with boys all around her. She had no sisters and her next door neighbours were a family of only boys. She always played with the boys and became one of the boys. I and some of the other girls at school were happy to fill that void; I was lucky. I witnessed and was just happy to tag along, to look in on the many adventures rehashed at that table the other night.

We’re all grown up now of course, but some things never really change. Sometimes the more things change the more they remain the same. Sure, there has been years of education, marriages have taken place, and babies are now the order of the day, but these people are all the same friends and classmates I once knew, including Sherry. We are adults and that’s hard to believe when I looked back on all the time spent with these people when we were just children.

I was honoured to receive a personal invite to this particular wedding celebration. I recently reconnected with Sherry over our love of writing. I looked to her, respecting her views and opinions, to read over the novel I started last fall. She provided essential feedback and a boost of inspiration and motivation. I find inspiration through witnessing her unique brand of creativity. Our little gathering, a dinner after Christmas, allowed us to get to know each other again, just a little. So many years passed and she had found her partner in crime. They make beautiful music together and are taking on the world together.

Listening to her speech I heard her say so much, but it was in her personal choice of every song her guests listened or danced to that I learned the most and felt the most about who Sherry was now and what this all meant to her. This was the soundtrack of her life and future with her husband. All the years we lost touch I could feel being filled in by listening to the songs she chose. Every song had personal and private meaning to her and I could relate with this more than anything because I would want to do the exact same thing. Music, memories, and love are so intertwined to someone as creative and artistic as Sherry and to me as well.

She’d hand-picked every guest in attendance and every song to be played over the evening. Rumour has it she spent ten hours making up the song list and proud of it (her new husband thinking her a little crazy and loving her for it I’m sure), choosing carefully each and every song for its meaning and dedicating specific songs for specific people. Even I got a song. I was touched to hear of the Lana Del Ray she dedicated to me. The music was different from that played at the usual wedding reception with its hired DJ (no Macarena to be heard). The music ranged from 50s and 60s rock and roll to 90s rap: The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Elvis, Frankie Valli, David Bowie, Neil Young, and Paul Simon. Then there was some Lauren Hill, and a little Gangster’s Paradise by Coolio thrown in there for good measure and Onto the most famous artists of today such as Lorde. Everywhere around me there was plenty of laughter, talk and dancing and I felt at home.

This was a wedding celebration of uniqueness, just like the bride herself. It was full of personality, just like the bride. It felt intimate and fun, fun like she always was. In inviting me to her celebration she did more than she could possibly realize. Listening and witnessing the love she has found and seeing all those people who love and care about her there to celebrate this love I felt better than I had in months. She gave me hope and showed me that love does exist and that when it’s right you know it.

Sherry Baby, Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons