Friendships that Inspire Me

I met Joanna the second day of my college career. She lived in the dorm room next to mine and struck up a conversation. From the very start it felt like talking to someone I'd known forever. She was wise beyond her years, understated, funny as can be, brilliant, considerate, caring, sensitive and conscientious. I always thought of her as an "old soul". We bonded over class schedules, music, crazy and brilliant professors, ballet class, Beverly Hills 90210 nights, dorm food, broken hearts, road trips, and more. She has always been someone of great integrity who never felt like she had to change who she was just to fit in. We became roommates, shared weekly trips to Farrell's for ice cream, stayed up all night talking, tried to build our life plans. We both spent part of our junior year abroad. I headed to London and she to Jerusalem. I studied art history and she was fascinated with archaeology. We met up during our spring break together. She flew to London and we took an incredible trip to Scotland and the Netherlands. After we graduated from college, we both moved to separate cities and stayed in touch not nearly as often as I would have liked. But she's always been one of those friends where it doesn't matter if I just saw her yesterday or if it has been 10 years...there's no awkwardness or anything. Just familiarity. Over the years between college and now I'd get an occassional email from her from all over the world. Thailand. Zimbabwe. Darfur. Boston. She was in the Peace Corps and has worked in some of the world's most devastated areas doing humanitarian work. My life has taken a much different route. But whenever I hear from her, she is a huge inspiration to me. I only wish I could make the impact on the world that she has and will in her lifetime.

I recently saw her at her wedding this summer. It had been so long since we'd really talked, and weddings are always the hardest events to try and catch up at. It was a beautiful wedding. But bittersweet, as during the reception her stepfather had a heart attack and she (being a newly graduated nurse practioner) had to give him CPR until the paramedics came. A grueling amount of time went by in that period of waiting. It was surreal. At one of the most joyous events of one's life, how did it happen that something so tragic occurred? Why did it have to be the bride who was the only one there who could respond? But of course it was her. She saved his life, my amazing friend. And now I just received a letter from her that she and her husband are off to help save lives in Sudan. I anxiously await to hear more of her life story, as it always inspires me to do more with my own.