My best friend, Denise, and I had gotten in a stupid fight our senior year of high school, but at that time it was enough to have us go our separate ways for our freshman year of college without exchanging addresses or phone numbers to stay in touch.

After about a month and a half, I realized that what we had been fighting about meant absolutely nothing anymore - but our friendship meant everything to me.  I decided that I wanted to do something about it.  Only I had no idea how to get in touch with Denise.

But I knew one way that I could try to find out.  I was very nervous when I picked up the phone and called Gabriele - I really had no idea what she was going to say or if she would even want to talk to me.

Gabriele and I had a really nice conversation, and she made me feel really comfortable and let me say what I had called to say - that I wanted to get in touch with Denise to apologize but I didn’t know how to reach her.

Gabriele gave me Denise’s address at college...and said, “Denise is going to be furious with me for doing this...but let her be mad at me - she’ll get over that.  You two just need to patch things up.”

I have been so grateful to Gabriele ever since that day back in 1997 - it is because of her that I was given the chance to apologize to my best friend and tell her how I felt...and then because of Denise’s amazing ability to forgive (much like Gabriele ) that we have never looked back since then.❤️