Power and Grace – Letters from Judge Susan Washington – A timely column featuring letters written by a sister judge who’s just about seen it all unfold in her urban courtroom. Yet she’s the first to admit she still doesn’t know it all. Drawing from her own life experiences and the daily drama which unfolds before her bench, her letters are packed with advice and fuel much needed dialogue between today’s generations. ADW invites its readers to write her back as they consider Judge Susan’s powerful lessons powerfully penned with her signature grace.

Dear Young Sister,

Just had to stop and pen you this thought. Us women spend too much time fussin’ with and about the women in our lives we call friends. You know what I’m sayin’. Per chance you actually don’t know what I am sayin’, let me try to break this down; because I think it’s important. No, scratch that, I know this is important! Guys have it much easier than we do. Not everything, now. We have the jobs and we’re the ones graduating with college degrees, while they’re the ones being detained and locked up. Another topic for another day

One thing guys clearly have going for them is the friendship thing. For the most part, they make friends easily and they don’t fall out with their friends, or try to outdo, or do their friends in. Their friendships last a life time.

I’m still living so I’m still learning. Having lived my life for the past fifty years, here are my very few friendship rules:

1. Only a handful of friends will do. A woman doesn’t need five hundred friends. You may know five hundred people, but you can’t have more than a few close friends. I’ve never even attempted to carry on a friendship with more than a dozen women at any time in my life. But the best friends I had as a child are still part of my crew. Alma and Linda Gayle, I love you both dearly. Friends like Lyle and Jan, women I met while in school (high school and college),  are women I could phone today and pick up from wherever we last left off. Not even one precious day on this earth have we ever wasted feuding or not speaking. Finally, there are the friends I made as I was evolving as an adult, a mother, and a professional woman. The friends I have acquired along this journey have always been available for me and I for them. My young sisters -- this is important!  I do my very best to be the friend they need me to be.

2. Being a good friend is all about the friend, not me. Being a good friend has lots in common with being a good judge. You gotta listen and then act, not the other way around. He or she may need your advice, your support, your shoulder – whatever they need should be your focus. Not what you want to do for the friend or what you think the friend may need.

3. Know your friend. Don’t tell a friend something you don’t want anyone else to know if the friend has proven in the past to be unable to keep secrets. Don’t expect your friend to celebrate in your success if she is prone to jealously. Don’t agree to let your friend wear your brand-new-tags-still-on new outfit or jewelry, if her closet looks like a war zone; or despite her current diet her body is still three times the size of yours. Lycra was meant to stretch only so far, ladies. While you probably get my point, just to be perfectly clear, I’m not advocating not trusting your friends or dumping any of them. Just know them.

4. Accept your friend. Be honest and communicate, because your friend needs to know how you feel about their words and deeds. Your friendship must grow as the two stakeholders: you and your friend individually grow. Give up on ever changing your friend. This doesn’t work with significant others and won’t work with friends either.

5. Respect and love your friend unconditionally. Surely, no further comment is needed.  

Whether you’ve been blessed with one or more friends, cherish all you will you will do, or have done together.

Until next time,

Judge Susan