Another Saturday in Cape Town…another teary goodbye.

It feels like yesterday that she flopped on the bean bag chair sandwiched between our bunk beds. A leggy Canadian, she nervously tucked her hair behind her ear as she asked my roommate and I how long we planned to stay in Cape Town and what we did back home. I couldn’t help it. I instantly saw a younger version of myself in her (minus the long lean legs). Her deliberate questions, her controlled responses about her future career plans; a careful mask to cover the hesitance underneath.

As we continued the idle, getting to know each other, conversation of three jet lagged strangers, I couldn’t help but tell her how alike I thought we were. Skepticism flashed through her lime green eyes and she squinted as she sized me up. How could she, a 21 year old student, have anything in common with a 32 year old breast cancer survivor?

A few days later, eight of us piled into a van for our Easter Road Trip to the Garden Route of South Africa. She and my other twenty-something fellow volunteers taught me lingo like “FML” and “DTF” and then called me a “ballerrr” when I pulled out my 100 Rand note to pay the taxi driver (check out Urban Dictionary if you are as naive as I was). When we went out for drinks and met a young local guy, they started talking about “The Situation”. When I asked what situation they were talking about, they burst out laughing and dubbed me the Terri-atric of the group because I still have not seen an episode of Jersey Shore.

“You sound just like my Mom,” became her constant refrain when I talked about everything from missing my yoga classes back home, to the book I am currently reading, to how I believe everything challenging in life has something to teach us.

But one cloudy Sunday when we sat sipping tea on my bunk bed, we shared life stories and I saw the exact moment when the walls behind her eyes came down. The precise second that she stopped acting like a perfectly put-together 21 year old and finally began to realize that maybe who she is today (instead of who she thinks other people expect her to be) is perfect. That none of us have all of the answers. That she is already learning life lessons that it took me getting cancer to realize.

Today, I wrapped my arms around her as her shoulders shook in sadness. In the short span of four weeks, she, like the young women who left last week, have become family to me. As I watched her walk through the doors of the airport, tears streamed down my face. I don’t think she knows the impact that her metamorphosis had on me. Watching her transform from a shy and guarded young girl to an open and confident woman has reminded me of the friendships we can build when we allow people to really see us, imperfections and all.

So, my dear friend. When you arrive home after 32 hours of travel and feel like the whole experience in Cape Town was simply a dream, know that even if you don’t have all the answers to what lies ahead, you are in the exact right spot in your life.

In the words of Rainer Rilke, “You are so young. I want to beg of you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”