We talked for hours that day. About grief. About growing older and wiser. About the ways we stumble and try again. By the time we stood to leave, something in our friendship had shifted. The uncertainty that once hovered between us had been replaced with a calm, steady respect. We weren’t the same people we had been before she left, but perhaps that was the very reason we could begin anew.
As I look back on those years now, I understand something I couldn’t have grasped at the time: friendships, much like marriages, move through seasons. Some seasons are filled with togetherness; others require distance and reflection. And when a friendship survives both, it often returns with a depth that can’t be found any other way.
What Mia gave me that day wasn’t just an explanation. She gave me the reminder that people grow at different paces, and that stepping away is sometimes an act of courage, not abandonment. She showed me that healing can bring us back to one another in ways we never expected.
And for that, I’m grateful.
