A few years ago I was at a multiple day conference with a couple hundred women. I found myself in a space where I felt extremely uncomfortable in my own skin. Nothing had happened in that space to cause me to feel uncomfortable; the feelings were rising up from inside of me. Familiar lies rose to the surface in my mind and with them tears threatened to spill out from under my eye lids. 

When I think of her, I hear little girl laughter, hers and mine. I see the darkness of corners where we hide together from our moms because we don’t want to be parted. I see the yellow Belle dress, its gauzy layers twirling with her as she leaps across the room. I taste buttery cornbread—the last meal I shared with her.

My first inclination is to tell you that that when I got the call telling me my childhood friend had died, “time stopped,” or “I felt great pain,” or “I felt empty.”