This is my beautiful friend Vivian. She lives in China. I live in Cincinnati, yet somehow we’ve bonded so that I feel like she’s one of my closest friends. She calls me her Sister.
We are colleagues, but as you can imagine, since we’re half a world apart, we rarely see each other. She came to Cincinnati for a week and I got to know what a lovely person she is. Then we met up again in Singapore, which is where this picture is taken.
We finished our week-long training class and she said she wanted to go to the beach. It’s not something I associate with Singapore, but was certainly willing to go there to decompress after a long work week. So we went and climbed up this small rock wall. (How’d she sucker me into going first?)
Then we sat there and looked out at all the ships and marveled at how incredible the universe is. How fortunate we were to have met and found ourselves sitting together on a rock wall in Singapore. We wondered how our journeys had lead us here.
We talked about our dreams and aspirations. We talked about life and faith and energy. She showed me a picture of her vision board and said she knew she’d get to America one day because she’d put it on her vision board. She convinced me to try my hand at making one and offered to help me. She said that 2015 would be a special year for me because I am a Sheep and it is my Chinese zodiac year. We talked for hours and it was one of the most peaceful afternoons of my life.
Then I flew back to Cincinnati and she flew back to China. She sent me a red gift for good luck in my Chinese New Year and sent me a copy of her vision board. I look at it every morning. Sadly, I never could figure out how to start one of my own, but Vivian generously shares hers with me and that’s enough.
I think about this afternoon quite often. It’s one of those moments of life that makes me pinch myself. How incredibly lucky I am to have met Vivian and to have the life I have.
I hope you all have encountered moments like this and special people like Vivian. I hope I helped you think of those special people today.
Browsing The Atlas 
Dear Juliann,
What a precious gift it is to find someone like that. I met my friend Meg, a storyteller from Australia, almost thirty years ago when she came on a Winston Churchill grant to interview storytellers all over America. She came to Seattle and interviewed me, and that was the jumpstart of a lifelong friendship. It’s so unusual to find someone who I click with that way, but she is still one of my best friends. We visited her in Australia, she comes over and stays with me every few years, we planned to meet at a storytelling festival in Wales and did some traveling over there. I usually take a long time to feel comfortable and settle into a friendship, so when a golden one happens like this, to me it feels like magic. I am so happy for you and your friend Vivian!
That sounds so much like my friendship with Vivian. Rare, indeed. Aren’t we lucky? 🙂
It is rare and precious indeed. We DO be a couple of lucky ducks!
SO fortunate! 🙂
That is a really lovely personal story about friendship. Thanks for sharing.
Wish you could meet her!
Yes, I do. What a lovely post. Thanks for telling us about this special friendship. I love blog posts like this!
Thanks, Lee. I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Beautiful. It’s wonderful that you have someone special in your life like that. There’s something so lovely about having a friend you can part from then pick everything right back up again with the moment you’re together. It’s rare, so we must cherish these people.
I love the idea of a vision board. I should try that some time.
Thanks, Britt. My “vision board” at this point is something I visualize in my mind. It’s made me realize I’m much more about words than pictures.
LOL! I guess our blogs can be vision boards too.
I think that each of us has a potential soul mate, possibly several, who we may not have met. Not necessarily a partner or lover but someone with whom we connect immediately and not for any reason we can explain. Lucky are those of us who manage to meet them.
What a beautiful idea.