No Such Luck

Wounds from a friend can be trusted.

—Proverbs 27:6

I e-mailed my friend Kirsten while I was supposed to be writing. I sent her a rambling, complaining email about how hard writing is, how I’m no good at it, and how I’m so not in the right space, mentally. Finishing the book was so not the right thing for me to do; it was stressing me out and making me cranky.

Kirsten is a tender, imaginative soul. She lives in San Francisco, land of karma and wine and hippies, so I thought she would cut me a little slack in the name of not feeling it.

No such luck. Almost immediately she responded with an email two pages long, single-spaced. She said “Get to work” and “It’s not mystical or magical. Just do the writing.” She asked me to consider how I’d feel about myself, walking away from this opportunity.

I wanted to be coddled, babied. I wanted someone to buy my excuses and sanction my desire to quit. But she loved me enough to tell me the truth about myself, about life, and about what matters. One of the best things great friendship does is tell us the truth about ourselves when we need it most.