My Monday blog post was about the importance of connecting with yourself as part of healthy healing from loss.  One very important way to do this is to engage in activities that you enjoy. My week in Peoria ended with a reunion with four incredible women who I lived with over 40 years ago on the 12th floor of Hewett Hall at Illinois State University.  Yes, you can see it was the seventies!

A few weeks ago Denise VeZain Kitchen, myself, Cathy Williams Rogers, Cindy Rappe Carlson Rice, and Linda Snowden Carrow got together for a wild and wonderful 24 hours of laughter and reminiscing.

We took a tour of the campus and the Hewett/Manchester dorm complex, complements of two very attentive ISU students, Maren from the ISU alumni office and Madison from Manchester Hall (thanks to both of you)!  We visited 12th floor Hewett and knocked on the doors of some of our old dorm rooms to see if the rooms still felt small.  What a surprise for some of the current residents;)

That evening, I felt that time had stood still as we gathered around Denise’s dinning table sharing life stories, sipping wine (I must say our taste in wine has improved), eating, and laughing hysterically while trying to answer Cindy’s (you will always be Rappe to me:) ISU days trivia questions.  I so wish that I could share a few of our videos, but alas they are much too personal;)

An important thing I learned since graduating from college is you never stop learning or stop growing. Get together and reconnect with those special friends you lived, studied, and partied with. It was such a reminder that the college years are about getting a “broad” education; those independent living experiences prepared me for life!