{"id":173,"date":"2011-07-13T12:02:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-13T16:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/insweetcompany\/?p=173"},"modified":"2011-07-13T12:02:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-13T16:02:00","slug":"finding-becky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/07\/finding-becky.html","title":{"rendered":"Finding Becky"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201c God makes a way out of no way.\u201d<\/em> — Sister Helen Prejean,\u00a0 IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE<\/p>\n

When I was about 15 my friends Carol and Becky and I went to a Big Boy Drive-in one warm summer evening fully pretending Becky was a foreign exchange student from Denmark or Norway or Sweden and I was her summer host and translator. We were coming of age, full of mischief and bravado. Having done all Detroit had to offer for Northwest girls, we were bored out of our minds. We wanted to have fun, to exercise our creativity and our prowess, so we pushed the edge of our envelopes with this rather imaginative daring do. When a car full of boys pulled up next to us in the drive in, I fed them our story. Becky pretended to ask me questions in Danish or Norwegian or Swedish, and I pretended to answer her. The boys believed us. We had pulled it off. At some point, she and I danced on top of Carol\u2019s car, no doubt to some Motown medley designed for a Detroit summer evening. We were beside ourselves with joy.<\/p>\n

Though I know I saw Becky after that, this was the last times I remember actually spending time with her. She went off to private school, then to college in Missouri; I went to college in Michigan and eventually moved to California. We lost touch.<\/p>\n

A month or so ago, completely out of the blue, I got an email from Becky. She had read something I wrote, even visited this blog a number of times not knowing it was me. To our surprise and delight we have discovered we have a lot in common. This pleases us both immensely.<\/p>\n

My teen years are not a time in my life I recall with much fondness. I was small, a year ahead of myself in school, growing up middle class in an upper class neighborhood, always trying to catch up and fit in. Becky had a difficult go of it then, too. But you never know what\u2019s out there waiting for you. Decades pass, lives are lived in separation, and when you least expect it, they intersect again in meaningful ways that shapeshift and shed light on the past and the present. Becky says she remembers me as fun and sweet. I remember her as beautiful and smart and Danish or Norwegian or Swedish. Despite what we were or what thought we were, despite the unaccounted for years, as it was then, it is now: we are both still dancing. This means a lot to both of us.<\/p>\n

Your thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201c God makes a way out of no way.\u201d — Sister Helen Prejean,\u00a0 IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE When I was about 15 my friends Carol and Becky and I went to a Big Boy Drive-in one warm summer evening fully pretending Becky was a foreign exchange student…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":231,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,4],"tags":[66,65,38],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gratitude","category-personal-transformation","tag-detroit","tag-friendship","tag-sr-helen-prejean"],"yoast_head":"\nFinding Becky - In Sweet Company<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/07\/finding-becky.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Finding Becky - In Sweet Company\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201c God makes a way out of no way.\u201d — Sister Helen Prejean,\u00a0 IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE When I was about 15 my friends Carol and Becky and I went to a Big Boy Drive-in one warm summer evening fully pretending Becky was a foreign exchange student…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/07\/finding-becky.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"In Sweet Company\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-07-13T16:02:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Margaret Wolff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Finding Becky - In Sweet Company","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/07\/finding-becky.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Finding Becky - In Sweet Company","og_description":"\u201c God makes a way out of no way.\u201d — Sister Helen Prejean,\u00a0 IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE When I was about 15 my friends Carol and Becky and I went to a Big Boy Drive-in one warm summer evening fully pretending Becky was a foreign exchange student…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/07\/finding-becky.html","og_site_name":"In Sweet Company","article_published_time":"2011-07-13T16:02:00+00:00","author":"Margaret Wolff","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/07\/finding-becky.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/07\/finding-becky.html","name":"Finding Becky - In Sweet Company","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-07-13T16:02:00+00:00","dateModified":"2011-07-13T16:02:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/#\/schema\/person\/9e1d77d12de19dd0d4fbc84d1f7fc52a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/07\/finding-becky.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/07\/finding-becky.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/07\/finding-becky.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Finding Becky"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/","name":"In Sweet Company","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Margaret Wolff","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/#\/schema\/person\/9e1d77d12de19dd0d4fbc84d1f7fc52a","name":"Margaret Wolff","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/673\/67331f0571f27a0987e8cbfde3e832b4x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/673\/67331f0571f27a0987e8cbfde3e832b4x96.jpg","caption":"Margaret Wolff"},"description":"Margaret Wolff has a gift of luring people into becoming who they really are. She speaks and writes about things women care about: how to make our lives and our work be about what we value most; how to navigate challenge and change; how to live with integrity and grace, to look at error in ourselves and others in a forgiving way and view life as an invitation to transform ourselves into instruments for the Greater Good. \"I laughed, I cried, I was silent, I cheered. Most of all, I loved.\" Spoken by a woman at In Sweet Company Retreat, these words express what women experience when Margaret engages them in dynamic, soul-searching conversations about their lives. Margaret holds degrees in art therapy, psychosynthesis, and leadership and human behavior. Her work takes her to universities, to conferences and retreat settings, to living rooms and board rooms -- wherever women gather. Her articles, essays, and stories are featured in numerous magazines; her women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spirituality retreats are held throughout the U.S. Margaret\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last book, In \"Sweet Company: Conversations With Extraordinary Women About Living a Spiritual Life\" (Jossey Bass), is a collection of intimate conversations she had with 14 famous women of various ages, faiths, and backgrounds about how their spirituality nourishes them and serves as a steady compass for their decision-making. Olympia Dukakis, Riane Eisler, Zainab Salbi, Margaret Wheatley, Sri Daya Mata, Lauren Artress, and other women artists, activists, religious leaders, and visionary thinkers shared their lives with her. You can too!","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/author\/mwolff"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/231"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions\/174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}