From Riches to Rags, and the Glory I Found There

  I discovered something about myself recently... I discovered that I'm actually terrified of making new friends.  I've never actually been that great at making new friends, in general, if I'm being honest. It's always been a joke between one of my best friends and myself, she makes the new friends and I just ride the coattails of her bravery.  But, before John died, I had actually started making very intentional efforts towards making and cultivating new friendships. I was doing it, making new friends, talking to strangers at parks, inviting them to play groups. Me! I was doing that. Then John died. And I forgot that I even knew how to make new friends. Because I shut myself up in my own little world and I stopped cultivating anything new. I couldn't bare it, you know, building something new. Because it took all of my efforts to keep my world alive, I couldn't introduce something new to the chaos that was my world for a time.  Sometime after life had settle bac...