Here's our content for the May kit, Friendship. Enjoy! If you're inspired - please share your LOs with us! We'd love to get to know you.
And tomorrow? The release of our new kit, Optimism!
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Journaling Prompts
Old friends vs. new friends: Is there a difference between the friends you’ve had for years and the ones that you’ve met more recently? Does time make a difference in the way you feel about them? Are there things you’d tell an old friend that you wouldn’t tell a new friend, or vice versa? Have you met new friends who immediately touched your heart and soul and matched or eclipsed old friends’ place in your life?
Trust: What is trust? How can you tell whether someone in your life is someone you can trust in, confide in and believe in? Can any friendship survive without trust? With whom do you trust your most sensitive secrets and private thoughts? Is anyone totally trustworthy? Have you been betrayed by a friend, and how did that impact you?
BFF: As an adult, is there such a thing as a best friend? Did you have BFFs as a child that stood the test of time? Did you or your friends compete for ‘ranking’ or position in each other’s life? Does any of that stay with you today? Do you ever worry about your relative position in the life of your loved ones?
In Common: Do you need to have specific things in common with your friends to make your relationship work? Do the things you don’t have in common help you grow and learn about yourself? Does the way you communicate under conflict make a difference? How do you agree to disagree when you can? Do you really make peace in those moments or just put them aside?
Men and Women: Can men and women be friends in the same way that women and women can be? Who are the male friends in your life that have made a difference? Does sexual tension ever play a role in enhancing or making more difficult the relationship? What differences do men have that change the nature of the relationship? What conflicts arise from the male energy in your life, and what gifts are brought your way?
Family and Friends: I see my friends as my chosen family. Are your family your friends, are your friends your family or are both true for you? Are you closer with your immediate family or with your extended family? If you could choose your family, are they the ones you would pick, or are there other friends that you wish were family? Is there ever conflict between your family and friends in how they see your choices, your life? How do you play the intermediary in those situations and how do you feel knowing that their opinions are different?
Music
Quotes
Gratitude preserves old friendships, and procures new. Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing. Elie Wiesel
There is an important difference between love and friendship. While the former delights in extremes and opposites, the latter demands equality. The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this? Henry David Thoreau
Friendship that flows from the heart cannot be frozen by adversity, as the water that flows from the spring cannot congeal in winter. Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity. Kahlil Gibran
Friendships are fragile things, and require as much handling as any other fragile and precious thing. The best relationships--friendship and otherwise--tend to be those where you *can* say anything to the other person but you don't say *everything*. Audrey Beth Stein
True friendship multiplies the good in life and divides its evils. Strive to have friends, for life without friends is like life on a desert island…to find one real friend in a lifetime is good fortune; to keep him is a blessing. Baltasar Gracian
Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable. Bruce Lee
Friendship with oneself is all important because without it one cannot be friends with anybody else in the world. Eleanor Roosevelt
Friendships are what our dreams are made of. We hold onto each other with its binding love. We stand close to each other, hand in hand, showing each other we understand. Some friends may come and go, but you are the truest friend I know. Of all the things which wisdom acquires to produce the blessedness of the complete life far the greatest is the possession of Friendship. Epicurus
It takes a lot of understanding, time, and trust to gain a close friendship with someone. As I approach a time of my life of complete uncertainty, my friends are my most precious asset. Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead. F. Scott Fitzgerald
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it's the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friend. Ralph Waldo Emerson
People who have a lot of money and no time we call 'rich'. People who have time but no money we call 'poor'. Yet the most precious gifts--love, friendship, time with loved ones--grow only in the sweet soil of "unproductive" time. The essence of true friendship is to make allowances for another's little lapses. David Storey
Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy. Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation. George Washington
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship. Henry Ward Beecher
Friendship is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. Aristotle
When friendships are real, they are not glass threads, or frostwork, but the solidest things we know. A friend is the first person who come in when the whole world has gone out. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival. C.S. Lewis
A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be. Douglas Pagels
Friendship isn't a big thing - it's a million little things. A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world. Leo Buscaglia
Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty. Sicilian Proverb
The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend. Aristotle
In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. Albert Schweitzer
A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they're not so good, and sympathizes with your problems when they're not so bad. Arnold H. Glasgow
The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you. Elbert Hubbard
If a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it. Edgar Watson Howe
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend. Henry David Thoreau
A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down. Arnold Glasow
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restored and sorrows end. William Shakespeare
The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart. Elisabeth Foley
It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. William Blake
One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human. George Santayana
A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails. Donna Roberts
If I had to sum up Friendship in one word, it would be Comfort. Terri Guillemets
If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair. Samuel Johnson
True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable. Dave Tyson Gentry
You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job. Laurence J. Peter
Friends are those rare people who ask how you are and then wait for the answer. Unknown
A friend is the one who comes in when the whole world has gone out. Grace Pulpit
One doesn't know, till one is a bit at odds with the world, how much one's friends who believe in one rather generously, mean to one. D.H. Lawrence
Constant use will not wear ragged the fabric of friendship. Dorothy Parker
Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends. Virginia Woolf
The language of friendship is not words but meanings. Henry David Thoreau
It's important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to the friendship that we are not. Mignon McLaughlin
It is the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter. Marlene Dietrich
She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind. Toni Morrison
Cherish the friend who tells you a harsh truth, wanting ten times more to tell you a loving lie. Robert Brault
Friends can be said to "fall in like" with as profound a thud as romantic partners fall in love. Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend. Plautus
If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give. George MacDonald
Our most difficult task as a friend is to offer understanding when we don't understand. Robert Brault
Yes we are [friends] and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn't mind washing up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you read the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you and think of you very often. I don't want to lose this happy space where I have found someone who is smart and easy and doesn't bother to check her diary when we arrange to meet. Jeanette Winterson
It takes a long time to grow an old friend. John Leonard
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere. Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as the confidence of their help. Epicurus
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. Henri Nouwen
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship. William Blake
The tender friendships one gives up, on parting, leave their bite on the heart, but also a curious feeling of a treasure somewhere buried. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Friendship is a sheltering tree. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends. Shirley Maclaine
What do we ask of friendship except to be taken for what we pretend to be - and without having to pretend. Robert Brault
But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. Dinah Craik
A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably. William Penn
But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine. Thomas Jefferson
A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world. Lois Wyse
The best time to make friends is before you need them. Ethel Barrymore
I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing. Katherine Mansfield
A friend can tell you things you don't want to tell yourself. Frances Ward Weller
There is magic in long-distance friendships. They let you relate to other human beings in a way that goes beyond being physically together and is often more profound. Diana Cortes
A friend accepts us as we are yet helps us to be what we should. Unknown
The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away. Barbara Kingsolver
There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul. Edith Wharton
'Tis a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults; greater to tell him his. Benjamin Franklin The best rule of friendship is to keep your heart a little softer than your head. Unknown
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive. Anäis Nin
Friends are relatives you make for yourself. Eustache Deschamps
Many a person has held close, throughout their entire lives, two friends that always remained strange to one another, because one of them attracted by virtue of similarity, the other by difference. Emil Ludwig
Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Hold a true friend with both your hands. Nigerian Proverb
Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of. Sarah Orne Jewett
The best way to mend a broken heart is time and girlfriends. Gwyneth Paltrow
Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness. Dag Hammarskjold
I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better. Plutarch
The essence of true friendship is to make allowance for another's little lapses. David Storey
In my friend, I find a second self. Isabel Norton
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another. Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is nothing we like to see so much as the gleam of pleasure in a person's eye when he feels that we have sympathized with him, understood him. At these moments something fine and spiritual passes between two friends. These are the moments worth living. Don Marquis
The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship. Francis Bacon
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Karl Menninger
Friendship is something that creates equality and mutuality, not a reward for finding equality or a way of intensifying existing mutuality. Rowan D. Williams
We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection. Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night. Margaret Mead
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other? George Eliot
There is an energy field between humans. And, when we reach out in passion, it is met with an answering passion and changes the relationship forever. Rollo May
Friendship is a sheltering tree. Samuel Coleridge
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. Marcel Proust
[W]e all need friends with whom we can speak of our deepest concerns, and who do not fear to speak the truth in love to us. Margaret Guenther
Friendship is the finest balm for the pangs of despised love. Jane Austen
But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. Thomas Jefferson
Love is like the wild-rose briar; Friendship is like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose briar blooms, But which will bloom most constantly? Emily Brontë
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