Friendship is one of the best gifts to give or receive.

Like so many words, the word friend has suffered diminution from its usage in social media.  What once referred to a person with whom one shares a bond of mutual affection and devotion is now used to refer to someone who happened to click a button.  Whereas I grew up considering myself fortunate if I had a handful of true friends, now people speak of their hundreds, even thousands of cyber friends as though the two instances are comparable. 

In this section, unless otherwise indicated, the word friend designates someone with whom there is an actual human connection, not merely a virtual one.  Friendship is one of the greatest gifts to receive and one of the finest gifts to give.  Friendship is as much of a gift to the giver as to the receiver.  Friends enrich and impact our lives in ways that we are only just now beginning to completely understand and fully appreciate. Here we will address what it means to both be a friend and have a friend.  We will explore how friends come to seem as much a part of our families as blood relatives, sometimes even more so, and consider their incomparable contributions to creating A HeARTful Home.