CuppaTea

We all deal with pain differently, and we all respond differently to the pain of other people. I remember once sharing with a close friend about some of the things I was struggling with at work, and she responded to my pain with attempts to fix the problems. As a testament to how good our friendship is, I stopped her, and told her all I needed was for her to listen, to let me tell how I felt about the situation, because she couldn't help me 'fix' anything. As further proof of how good our friendship is, she did. Because I wonder how often I have had someone respond unhelpfully to my pain, and never said anything. I wonder how often I have deliberately chosen not to share my pain because I expect that the person's response will be unhelpful, perhaps even hurtful, even when they actually really want to help.

As you may have seen already, I have taken up a reading challenge for 2017 (if you haven't seen this, you can read the first post , second post , and third post about it), and I am thoroughly enjoying approaching reading in a different, more deliberate way. This has affected how I think about other things in life, which led to discussing with a friend recently the idea of setting a recipe challenge. And so, over the course of walking to, ordering, and eating at a wonderful Italian restaurant, we outlined a recipe challenge.