a day for catching up . . .

i attended boarding school from september of 1963 through june of 1967, after my mother died.  it always felt to me as if we raised each other. but that was just the supposition of a fourteen year old.  i also wondered exactly why we were all there.  what were our stories.

a month or so ago i started hunting the other boarders down and managed to find quite a few.  we now have a private group on facebook.  today, i finally asked for their take on my supposition,  i did not ask for the stories per se.  the responses were heart breaking in their honesty and the depth of emotion still simmering fifty years later . . . the stories were released, one by one, driven by loneliness, pain and rejection.  the words that struck home with the sharpest of arrows was that it was, " . . . a version of foster placement".  

but then the conversation turned a corner and the general consensus was that the strength born out of that chaos created a group of fierce warrior women who found strength and courage from those ashes and became who they were meant to be . . . .

i found this and cleaned it up as much as possible.  i love the girls we were: