Are you the kind of friend who supports and encourages others? Are you a friend who builds up or one who is negative and tears people down? The definition of a friend I read which appealed to me is this – ‘A friend is one who believes in you before you believe in yourself.’ I wonder if you’ve had experienced that. I have.
Years ago when as a mature age student I started a university course, the Australian government had a policy that anyone could go to university with no fees to pay. This originally started as an initiative of the Whitlam government in 1973. Without this initiative, which continued after he was dismissed from office, I would never have contemplated a university course as our finances would not have allowed it. We battled just to make ends meet.
Then in 1989, I was three quarters of the way through my course when the policy changed and HECS fees were introduced. I saw the dream of a lifetime disappearing down the drain.
What I hadn’t counted on, were friends that believed in me. At the time I wrote biblical puppet plays for our Zoer puppet group formed by husband, several members of our church and other friends from the Uniting Church across the road from our church, Blacktown Anglican Church. The puppet group decided that money, which had been donated to the group for performances be given to me to help pay my HECS fees. Added to this another woman, who I’d met year before at a BSF class and who had become a close friend, chipped in with the remaining amount that paid my fees.
At the time, all I’d written was a few poems but these friends believed in me and believed this course would be useful for me in my writing.
It certainly was. Much of what I studied as part of my Australian Studies course about the Depression went into my first children’s novel ‘Chasing After the Wind’.
Without that university course I doubt I would have even considered writing about the Depression. My course sparked a great interest. Something I’d like to go back and write more about one day. And of course the Literary Studies gave me a lot of background knowledge of great writers from different eras and techniques as well as practical creative writing experience. Many of the poems and stories I wrote then, have been since published. But none of it would ever have come about if I had not had friends who believed in me.
Do you have friends who believe in you? More importantly are you a friend who believes in and encourages others?
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