Here's a bit of laughter and joy I found this morning in a tweet from Girlfriendology. Enjoy!

http://www.bottleband.org Performance by the St. Luke's Bottle Band, St. Luke's Lutheran Church, Park Ridge, Illinois, May 6, 2007.

Friends are people with different minds, hearts and souls than you. They can introduce new perspectives, opportunities and ways of doing things just by being your friends and sharing their lives with you.

One friend invites you to a movie you never would have seen on your own.  Another takes you to a swap meet that is not part of your shopping world.  Another invites your child to a birthday party where you see children invited to put on shows and break the pinata with a freedom that you never thought you could offer your own children. 

And friends can show you new ways to laugh. 

If you are stuck in an eating disorder your life can be grim and regimented.  Even if you live in chaos with terrible feelings you still reach for the same methods to self soothe, like eating disorder behaviors, or to rescue yourself, like creating dramatic moments that overwhelm your current state (crying jags, arguments, flights of various kinds). 

If you are being your own friend you can keep offering yourself new ways and styles of spending your time and energy.  The plan is to confuse your rigid thinking style with startling options. 

Don't act on your first intention.  Your first intention is your "usual."  Surprise yourself with a friendly invitation to act in a new way.  For example, when you feel pulled toward your eating disorder, pause, put some wild music on your cd player and force yourself to dance. 

Feel the resistance?  It's the same as if you were sitting on the sidelines of a party and a friend pulled you onto the dance floor.  You resist. But after a while, you get into the music, your friend and the fun of moving.  You break up your pattern.  That's what friends do for each other.

So, being your own friend means coming up with new options to keep breaking your old patterns.

In the break you get more than relief. You discover you have more ways to live.  And you discover that, even in your darkest times, you can give yourself a moment of light and even laughter. 

That moment can be the beginning of something unexpected and lovely for your life.  The more moments you have of light, the less you need your eating disorder.

Girlfriendology certainly gave me a lift, a surprise and a laugh of delight with this video.  I hope it makes you smile too.  Does it?