“A good friend is hard to find, hard to lose, and impossible to forget…”

Having to deal with time missed with loved ones of family and friends over the last six months has been the hardest part of my Atlas Corps experience. Whilst I have been fortunate enough to be blessed with the love and sisterhood of new forged friendships and acquaintances to counteract those moments of loneliness, sometimes even that is not enough.

Over the weekend I needed to speak to my friends who have known me so long that they often have insight into the things I say and do without the need for explanations that new friends require. Thanks to modern technology I was able to speak to two friends on Skype, one in Kent, England and the other in Lagos, Nigeria in a group chat. This one hour conversation did more to sooth my emotional well being than my current default love of Turkey Hill Double Dunker ice cream tub has ever done. It gave me a renewed and re energised outlook and enabled me to find an inner strength to continue to look ahead to the goals and objectives that bought me along this journey.

Nonetheless I cannot also stress enough the need to have those new friends who are equally insightful enough to understand that tweet or the ambiguous Facebook status is actually a SOS or cry for help and thus seek you out through a call, visit or simply drag you out for a night of food, laughter and dancing.

Friends for me are like the family I get to chose and so far I am blessed to have found family in the friendships I have forged through my atlas corps network and beyond. This is the necessary ingredients in ensuring my emotional well-being is maintained on those days when all I want to do is run back to the comforts of home!