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Friends and family! \u00a0What good are they!!!!!<\/strong><\/p>\n This\u00a0discussion over breakfast \u00a0started out\u00a0with a guest in great emotional distress trying to keep the differences she was having with her mother out of sight, but her mother was at the table and had no interest in keeping anything out of sight. \u00a0It was a scene that I am sure is played out many times by many different people, cultures, races.<\/p>\n Her mother’s comment really struck me. \u00a0“My daughter doesn’t understand, but one day she will. \u00a0By that time I will be dead. — Steel sharpens steel.”<\/p>\n No one at the table understood her comment. \u00a0If they did, they certainly didn’t let on to anyone.<\/p>\n After looking at our blank and confused faces she went on and we appreciated her taking the time because it was a point of view and a look at friendship and family relationships we hadn’t considered, hadn’t\u00a0dissected, hand’t even discussed. \u00a0That usually leads to a great breakfast conversation and this one did not disappoint.<\/p>\n “Steel sharpens steel.” \u00a0The mother – who I will call Mary – talked about how a child’s future is strongly set by their parental environment growing up. \u00a0Once grown, that environment becomes set by friends. \u00a0“Mary’ said she realized this when her daughter was about 3 years old. \u00a0She wanted her daughter to be a very independent woman. \u00a0She knew that somehow that was set during childhood, but she worried she would be one of those leading her daughter into the traditional female stereotype becoming\u00a0the\u00a0kind of person she had been – fulfilling every female stereotype – weak, overly emotional, a victim in all things.<\/p>\n Mary knew how hard it had been for her to overcome such home training and she did not want her daughter to have to go through the same heartbreaking rejection of her childhood and upbringing that she had been through. \u00a0Mary said she has since recaptured some of her early life and now value much that she initially rejected, but it was such a painful ordeal she just wanted to spare her daughter that grief.<\/p>\n Mary’s daughter was very uncomfortable at the table at this point because she knew her mother was about to reveal family secrets that she wanted kept that way. \u00a0And don’t we all!<\/p>\n Ed Note: \u00a0The rest of the blog as sent to us has been redacted. \u00a0Sorry folks, we know the good gossipy parts are what we all live to hear, but not this time!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The end of the conversation was quite moving. \u00a0I realized my own relationship with my family was not what it could have been because I wanted a relationship which wrapped me up all warm and cozy, comforted me, worked out all of my most difficult problems for me and in actuality, kept me in chains. \u00a0Instead,\u00a0I had a relationship with my parents, as Mary had with her daughter, which strengthened all of us. \u00a0The problem is,\u00a0Mary’s daughter does not understand the gift her mother has given her by being the steel which has strengthened and sharpened. \u00a0They are both now free to live as independent women because they had each other and maintained that most difficult relationship of all – one that was true, honest, full of mutual respect and which expected the other to be strong enough to withstand their back and forth as steel sharpened steel.<\/p>\n I saw that as an amazing breakfast because I didn’t recognize that gift from my parents either until that breakfast conversation.<\/p>\n ________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n