BFL

Today is BFL’s Birthday.

Let me explain.

I’m very lucky in the best friend department. I’ve got a handful of close friends who I would elevate to the level of “best”. But today I want to talk to you about the Amy Poehler to my Tina Fey: best friend LeAnne. She’s the one that stars in or at least makes an appearance in most of my stories from the past 10 years. In fact, some of my friends nick named her BFL because so many of my stories start with “I was with my best friend LeAnne–“. Finally one day one of them said “hey, is LeAnne your best friend?” Accompanied with an eye roll which made it clear they had gotten the point.

Why do I have to qualify our friendship to other people? It seems childish, doesn’t it? But I can’t help it because to omit that information feels like a lie. We’ve talked about it and she feels the same way. We’ve gone through a lot together: college, moving across the country, our first apartment, our first grown-up jobs, grad school, light depression, the Twilight movies–the list goes on and on. We were even stuck in a Payless parking lot in a hurricane once.

LeAnne is possibly the most caring person that I know. She’s the kind of friend who remembers what brand of eyeliner I use and texts me when when she finds out it’s going to be on sale at Ulta. Conversely, I am the kind of friend who body checks her off a chair when we are playing The Floor is Lava (for the win, I should add). I think it’s clear that I’m getting the good end of the deal.

Thinking of other people’s needs, remembering things that are important to them, feeling joy or pain with those she cares about–she doesn’t even have to try, it’s just who she is. So it was not surprising to me when I got a call from her and she told me that she was having a 5 and 6 year-old brother and sister in foster care stay with her and her family over Christmas. Even then, knowing her and knowing her family, I had a hunch it was going to end up being a more permanent situation. This is a family who adopts stray cats regularly in spite of multiple allergies in the house.

This past weekend I had the joy of meeting the now 6 and 7-year-old that BFL is planning on adopting. They are fantastically wild, funnier than most kids I’ve met, and healing. Seeing my friend go from childless to mother of two in the space of a few months has been disorienting in the best possible way. I teared up a little bit every time they called her “mom”. It’s hard, exhausting, emotional work, but BFL is up for it. She has been preparing for this her whole life.

There are a lot of problem spotters in the world. Just scroll half an inch on Facebook and it’s clear that most people have turned this into a full time occupation. And don’t get me wrong, awareness is important and understanding a problem is the first step towards meaningful change. But this should not be confused with taking action. We need problem solvers too, or we are just going to be a world with an infinite number of well understood problems.

Problem spotting is not BFL’s jam. She’s a dive in head first, meet you in the dirt, love you where you’re at kind of woman. In her own words: “you can’t yell at the gap unless you are willing to step into it.”

So on this, the 10th of March, I invite you to celebrate that, not only is it FAFSA due day, but also BFL’s birthday. A wonderful, kind, hilarious, loyal, beautiful, and smart friend who once said to me, “I’ll make a scene so big that all the other scenes will be jealous” when I told her to calm down in the target Black Friday line.

🥳