The Friday Connection: Toni & Cindy

Toni noticed Cindy sitting at a table with one empty chair.

This was March 2020. India. The trip was almost over and the world was starting to fall apart in real time. News about the virus was spreading. Flights were being rerouted. The US was hours away from shutting its borders. Twenty women who had spent days together were now in a chaotic hotel lobby trying to figure out how to get home.

In the middle of all of that, Toni asked if she could sit down.

"That moment felt strangely calm," she says. "Almost like the world narrowed down to just that conversation."

They've talked almost every day since.

It almost didn't happen that way. For most of the trip they'd barely connected, a few conversations here and there, some of the evening wine-down sessions the STS women do so well, but nothing that felt like it was building into something. It took a crisis to slow them down enough to actually find each other.

Cindy's first impression of Toni was that she was quiet. She's still laughing about that. "Nope. That never happened."

What she found instead was a woman who would do just about anything she asked, talk her through anything she was facing, and show up every single time. "I bless this lady," Cindy says. "She has a heart of gold. I can very proudly call her a true friend."

For Toni, what happened in that lobby became one of the most significant relationships of her life. She calls Cindy Yaya. She has traveled with Cindy's son. Cruised with Cindy's mom. Celebrated Cup Match in Bermuda with her whole family. Cindy welcomed her in, no conditions, no expectations, no fine print.

"She is the only person who has allowed me to simply be myself," Toni says. "Fully and unapologetically. Flaws and all."

And then there's this.

Cindy shares a birthday with Toni's mother. Her mother who has passed.

Toni doesn't think that's a coincidence. "In my heart, I know my mother placed Yaya in my life as a divine reminder that even in loss, I would never walk this world alone."

Yaya never tried to change her. Never asked her to be quieter or smaller or different. She just stayed. Through angry moments and heavy days and health scares and celebrations. She stayed.

"Through her I've come to understand what real friendship and family truly mean," Toni says. "Not because life is easy. Because love remains steady in spite of its chaos."

It started with a hotel lobby in India. A world shutting down. An empty chair.

And one woman who decided to sit down anyway.

The Friday Connection runs every Friday on @sisterstravelingsolo. To share your story, email hello@sisterstravelingsolo.com.