Savannah.

The end of an era with my not-so-babyish "baby girl". 13 is almost here and it feels like a weight pressing down on me. Not sure how she feels about it.

This summer, with what I think is the onset of puberty (well, emotions were popping up well before then, but this is when I started to see the stupid, petty behavior of 11-12 yr old girls), a real gem of a friendship was tarnished. It died a slow, painful death.. not sure if it can be resuscitated. The other girl's mom has been crushed, and I think I have been, too. Watching two beautiful kids with years of friendship pull apart, and almost violently so, has been nauseating to say the very least. Part of what makes me sad is that I'm so isolated from people, so socially inept myself, that I can't show my own child how to be a good friend. At least nowhere but online. I have no women that I hang out with. I can talk til I'm blue in the face about how to be a good friend, but being a good example is a challenge. Maybe because I didn't have that example set for me by my own mother. I can count on one hand the number of women she ever hung out with on a regular basis.. and by regular, I mean once in a blue moon.

One thing the later half of this year brought to mind was that we continue the cycle our parents passed down from their own parents, and so on. This could be with parent/child relationships, with friendships, partners, etc. We have to make a point of changing things, or we continue that cycle and pass it down to our own children. Because we tend to be our parents children (funny how that works), it almost happens without any conscious thought.