WARRIORS UNITED

As many of you know, yesterday was a big day.  A huge day.  Yesterday was Tea Party with Michelle on Monday day!  And a couple of you are messaging me and saying “Did you do it?  Did you meet with Michelle? Tell us more, Wynette, we want to know everything about your Tea Party with Michelle!” And so I will, I will tell you more, but not everything because Me and my new friend Michelle have our secrets that are only for us.

First, the night before our tea party, I sent Michelle a message so that she would know how to find me at the Tea House.  Or at least I tried, but she never got my message because apparently I am still a Facebook Novice and don’t always get the comments and tagging and messaging parts right. Anyway, here is what I meant to send her: “Hi Michelle, I am so excited for our Tea Party tomorrow! My profile picture is old, but I kind of like it, and plus I’m too lazy to find a newer one that I like, so I keep it there, but it doesn’t really look like me very much anymore. I have long dark hair, no bangs, and I will be wearing a black shirt and jeans. (I’m a planner!) Unless, of course, you really do turn out to be a creepy stalker dude…in that case, I’m the cute little blond in the sundress…  See you tomorrow!” 

The first good news is that Michelle isn’t a creepy stalker dude so that is a huge relief! 

So, anyway I got to our agreed upon meeting place and was sitting at a table outside the tea house waiting.  I knew nothing about Michelle…tall/short, chubby/thin, young/old, Wheel Chair/Walking, Black/White, Male/Female (ok I guessed female, but one never knows for sure based on name alone). So I sat there with my black shirt and my jeans and my no bangs hair and I waited and I watched and I smiled at random strangers to see if they smiled back and some smiled but they kept on walking by…And then a woman walked up to the tea house and I thought that she might be my new friend Michelle because she had that sort of beachy surfer girl vibe. And I looked at her and she looked at me…and then she sat at a different table. But I forged ahead because I knew... I could sense it with my Wonder Woman Warrior Radar I think. And I said "Are you Michelle?"  And she answered “Yes!” and I said "I am Wynette!" And she tilted her head a little and looked at me funny for a second because she didn’t get my message about the black shirt and the no bangs so I said “Old picture…no bangs” And then her radar kicked in, and she knew too.  And then we hugged because we are huggers and then we were Warriors United.  

 We talked nervously for a few minutes, sort of like a first date, and then we said, let’s go get our tea! So we went in to get our tea but there was no tea at the tea store until 11 am and it wasn’t 11 am (apparently, unlike coffee,  tea is more of an afternoon event) so we wandered over to Whole Foods in search of tea for our tea party. We walked and we talked and then Michelle got water and I got Kombucha. Michelle said no Kombucha for her. Apparently, she forgot it was supposed to be a tea and not a water party, but that’s OK, I don’t judge. Maybe she had a little brain fog with all of the excitement of the day. Also, I think maybe Kombucha makes her burpy and she wanted to make a good impression on me, so no Kombucha. I don’t know for sure why she didn’t have Kombucha. I didn’t pry. You will have to ask her yourself.  That’s her story to tell.

And so we sat down with our water and our Kombucha and we shared our stories.  I told her mine and she told me hers…we talked symptoms, and diagnosis, and procedures and doctors. We talked family and friends and work and school. And we talked about our early Warrior days and where we currently are in our journeys. Each of us shared our journey. We shared our journeys and we gave each other a little glimpse of our crazy and we laughed and we laughed and we learned. And it was fun. I think that it turned out just as I had hoped.  I had hoped that she would like me as much as I hoped I would like her.  And I think we did. Like each other.  And before we knew it, our tea party was over.  As much as we both wanted to stay, there was work to be done, appointments to be kept, food to be prepared…life to be lived. So we exchanged numbers and we said our goodbyes, promising to do it all again soon.

I don’t know when our next Tea Party will be, but I hope it really will be soon. And I hope that more and more of our Warrior friends will be able to join us. But if not, if it is just Me and Michelle again next time, or every time, that will be OK too. Because we are connected now. We are friends. We are Wonder Women. We are Wahls Warriors. And Wahls Warriors are real.

We are Warriors United.