My friendship with Kim began fifteen years ago, through our church. Our rapport grew quickly: we mutually enjoyed recreations: nature walks, visits to the ocean, sidewalk dining, birthday and holiday celebrations; and, most importantly, sharing our inner turmoils and work frustrations on an ongoing basis. I now see her as a sister, instead of a friend.

Better than most, Kim has understood clearly and deeply my own struggle for stability and life satisfaction, and joy in intimate relationships. Kim has earned this deep understanding because of her own relentless and courageous pursuit of healing of her person, from a traumatic childhood, parts of which she has described to me over the years.

Kim has that rare ambition for wholeness, emerging from her twenty years of recovery from various addictions. Indeed, she has embraced this ambition with zeal: years-long psychotherapy and related modalities at considerable monetary expense; consistently sacrificing immediate, tangible pleasures such as new apparel, furnishings or concerts. Kim's investment in reclaiming her personhood from indescribable childhood violations is unconditional.

In the course of our friendship, I have observed how Kim has overcome Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, migraines, depression and panic attacks. She was debilitated to the point of unemployment and bed rest for days at a time. With the help of supportive physicians and her continuous psychotherapy, including fearless self-examination leading to recovered childhood memories, Kim slowly regained her emotional and bodily strength, and re-created a normal and productive lifestyle.

As Kim let go of each addiction, I observed her attain a deeper level of awareness and healing of her childhood memories. Often she would call me in the midst of a memory or triggered feelings from childhood, and I would try to be present to her emotionally and spiritually, which is all she really needed.

Over the course of our friendship, Kim first looked to me as her friend. As her trust in me grew, I became the brother she never had. Often, Kim has said my friendship has been instrumental in her learning to trust and be vulnerable with a man for the very first time in her life. I have tried to be nonjudgmental in my support, which has contributed to Kim's trust and love for herself, and then for others.

Another of Kim's inner strengths I have come to admire and copy is her insistence to address inner turmoil arising from interpersonal conflicts or disappointments, as soon as she becomes aware of them. She strives to identify that part of her nature which feels shunned or not heard or manipulated to please. All of these aspects are expressions of slavish roles Kim was terrorized into acting out in childhood. She acquiesced so that she could survive another day. Now Kim not only survives another day, but is fully present to life, and has a new life, one of love and compassion not only for herself, but for others as well.

Kim's path to wholeness and joyful living requires continuous self-examination, honesty, and sensitive confrontation with her friends, including me.