Latest / Black Girls Heal / #306: 7 Tips to Recover after a Friendship Breakup

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#306: 7 Tips to Recover after a Friendship Breakup · Black Girls Heal

• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: My job is to somehow make them curious enough.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll persuade them by hook or crow to get more aware of themselves and where they came from and what they are into and what is already there is just to bring it out.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is what compels me to compel them and I will do it by whatever means necessary.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll talk to the Black Girls Hill podcast where we talk about healer, intimacy disorders, and resolve trauma, and building a healthy relationship with first ourselves, and then others.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Every episode, we will talk about advice you can apply today to break unhealthy patterns, and grow in your self-worth.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Sheenella Shea, a love addition coach and trauma specialist.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's begin.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hello, hello.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the latest episode of Black Girls Hill.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm overjoyed to be with you again this week.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Today, we are talking about seven things you can do to grieve a friendship breakup.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was reviewing our archives and I'm very surprised that I've not yet done this specific episode talking about how to cope through a breakup of a friendship.
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've talked about how to ask for what you need, about how there may be signs that a friendship is over.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: about how to identify healthy friends up and leave that's in there somewhere, but leaving a friendship breakup is not here and friendship breakups are the most devastating breakups in my opinion.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think romantic relationships are obviously very hard, but there's still kind of an understanding one that romantic breakups may happen even when you're not planning for them to
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a precedent that, you know, sometimes things don't work out.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there are resources for breakups with romantic partners and divorces and support groups and people talk about it very often.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when it comes to friendship breakups, it's just at the most that people say, oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then there's a quick moving on.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's an expectation that you're supposed to move on.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: But friendships are children family.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Friendships are sisters.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Friendships a lot of ways because of the intentionality we put in there because of the vulnerability that we have because they are chosen.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: They are many in many ways and many times, deeper than our family relationships.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so when we lose those friendships, it's like losing not only a piece of a heart, a piece of our soul.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you have gone through a friendship breakup, you understand exactly what I mean.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I actually went through a friendship breakup last year that completely took me
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: by surprise, I was on the receiving end of it, and it devastated me.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's literally devastated me.
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And even now, I'm still grieving the loss of that friendship.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, today's episode, we are going to be talking about some steps for you to take if you have had this experience of losing a friendship or relationship that was very important to you.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to focus more on if you are the receiving end of it.
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not if you were the person who felt that you needed to break ties or set boundaries and let go.
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: To be honest, a lot of times when you were in that position, you've had a lot more time to think about it, to process it, to talk about it with other people.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this decision may still be very hard for you.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm very impactful for you, but you're kind of more in a position of power.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so the way that you're grief and your hurt may land may look a little bit different, because you're the one who's in charge of creating that distance versus the person that's only receiving.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I found that if you're on the receiving end, especially if it's a situation where you feel like it's coming out of nowhere and it's called coaching off guard, you really hit with a lot of shock, the devastation like I said before, a felt sense of helplessness, especially if it's a situation where they're refusing to contact you, to talk to you, to communicate with you, to work it out,
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you're willing to work things out and move through it and they are very obstinate and just feeling just all the different levels of that and all the things that you both invested into the relationship and feeling as if and even if being communicating it being communicated that it was is not worth that effort to work through it to fix it.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those are feelings that you're not supposed to feel in a friendship or they said we don't
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: think we ever would want to feel.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so today's episode, we're going to be digging into some ways to work through that type of heartbreak.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I hope that you find it helpful.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's go ahead and get on in.
• 4:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So as always, these seven items may be things that may have some overlaps in them, but I'm going to give you seven ways for you to work through this.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so by the way, if you're listening to this because this has happened to you, whether or not it happened to you,
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Years ago or has happened to you recently, I wanted to start off by saying, I'm so, so sorry.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I was saying in the intro, I don't think enough people when we're going through this given up pause to how completely.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Life changing this is and how completely upside down world turning it is.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And how very and very and empty you feel even if you are someone who's blessed to have lots of friendships and lots of relationships.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are certain relationships that if or when they dissipate or don't know longer with us, they leave a giant gaping hole.
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that is real in that matters.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in case no one has validated that for you, I want to just say that allowed for you.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I also want to say that there's really no expiration date to that.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And me kind of getting ready for this episode.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did like a quick little Google just to see what folks were talking about that.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, I've had people that I've worked with, again, my own personal experience.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And just other things that I know about grieving relationships and working through things as a therapist and as a healer.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I was just looking to see what are some other people saying about their loss of friendships and how it's impacted them.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the stories are just so devastating, best friend relationships of eighteen years, of seven years, being dropped over just to text, refusing to talk with them about it.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're being a misunderstanding that the person was willing to work through and understand.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Though they're not being a misunderstanding and they're not knowing why they just suddenly got ghosted.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, there's so much variation, but the point is this was the person who had my heart.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was like my heart.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: walking outside of my body and they're no longer here.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so the the gap that that puts there's not only you're missing a person that was someone you hung out with and they used to talk with and share your day with.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: But this is a person that you were co-creating like with.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was a person that you allowed to see a lot of times the most deepest darkest parts of you.
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe even more than a spouse or a partner if you have one or more than again your family.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, this is your most your most
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Outside of a romantic partnership of that is something that you want to build, or that that you have, this is the relationship where they will see you flaws and all, if you get to the place of being best friends and in our circles and all that.
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so for that to no longer be there, it's hard.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then, like I've been also saying in this introduction, when the friendship breakups happen, that it's not what seemingly is out of nowhere for you.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: and without any conversation because sometimes friendship breakups happen in the midst of a conversation.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's been a breach of trust.
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: One or both people have come to tell the other person what's going on.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've tried to talk it out and there is no resolution or you found that you've grown apart and so you either make a joint decision that young probably needs some space or needs to truly not be friends anymore or a mixture say you need space within you just slowly ghost each other.
• 8:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: In those situations, again, it's still heartbreaking and devastating, but at least, y'all were able to connect about it, at least you don't have a reason why.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even if you don't agree with it, you have a reason why.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when the person just completely severed the relationship, the surprise of it is just extra crushing to the experience as a whole.
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And especially because you don't really have any powers, you try to remedy it and fix it and make it better.
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it leaves my giant wound that doesn't have that doesn't get to have any closure.
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, the interesting part about it sometimes is when you first are going through it, you can almost want anything, you would give anything to fix it, right?
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: You would give anything for it to get better.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then the longer you go,
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is this mixture of this is a person that I truly love and miss, but the fact that they could just completely drop me like this makes me not even want to try again.
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the opportunity even presented itself because of the loss of trust there.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's this big mixture is big confusing ball of emotions and what am I supposed to believe or what am I supposed to feel or what makes sense for me?
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do I actually move on from this?
• 9:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do I actually get some closure from it?
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So hopefully the things that I share here will help either label some things that you've already been doing and just kind of celebrate you and encourage you in that fact or give you some ideas and things for you to do if you haven't been doing them already.
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And by doing these things, my hope is that you'll start to get clarity, whether or not it's clarity to fully work through the grief of this loss and come to a place of acceptance and more peace about it.
• 10:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: and be able to move on or to move through and come through some acceptance and grief and then decide where you would want to be if a chance for reconciliation were to occur.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Reconciliation does happen in friendship breakups and it's not always equal to what happens when people break up romantically.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's kind of a general belief that
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: When romantic relationships break up, you going back to your ex is people have a whole lot of skepticism of why you're doing that.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, if you're broke up for a reason, you'll need to stay there.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I found especially in some examples that I gave when it is a situation where one person's avoidance and trauma causes them to run and to flee because they don't know how to engage in conflict because they are used to pushing people away instead of working through things.
• 11:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: because of their own fear of rejection and abandonment.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they pushed that on someone else before they can get them and their own projection.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: If or when someone goes to their own healing process and realizes what they've done and they've gone through a place of self accountability and they're trying to make them men and they're trying to either rebuild relationships that they maybe have caused damage then or even build new ones and your friendship comes to mind.
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: You will have a decision on whether or not you want to move forward.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I have seen people who have gone through that place where they have, especially my clients that I've worked with who are avoided.
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't remember one woman very specifically.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was the fresh of that she was the one who had the other friend off and she still to that day had a whole lot of pain and sadness around it.
• 11:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we talked about where it came from, got it to a place where she was making better decisions with her friendships and in her other relationships, a romantic relationships.
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And for her, it made sense for her to reach back out to this person to apologize and make a man.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not even to specifically rekindle the friendship, but just to take ownership for the pain that she caused this person, this woman that she loved very dearly.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in that instance, it did rekindle a very beautiful friendship for them.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: where they were able to make repairs and start to grow trust over the years.
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's their situation.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Again, that might not be what everybody wants, but I just want you to know that that is possible.
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So let's go ahead and jump on in the first thing that I will suggest for you to do, or that I will want you to know as you're grieving the loss of this friendship, is that it is okay for you to be angry about the lack of closure.
• 12:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: If that is your situation, it is okay to be angry sad.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've said devastated like ten times, but that is that is the most encompassing all-encompassing feeling that I can think of when I think about the impact of a friendship breakup, a best friendship breakup is just just so, so crushing devastation.
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's okay for you to have those feelings and also to label it that way for you to define it in that way.
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: That it is that big of a deal.
• 13:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is that significant of a loss.
• 13:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: that it is, that big of a life event, even if other people don't match that energy and don't match that level validation.
• 13:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm here to let you know that it's okay for you to feel those big feelings and it's okay for you to have all the feelings around it that you need to have.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that includes the confusion.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I just listed a lot of negative ones, you know, devastation, anger, sadness.
• 13:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can also have a lot of yearning around this relationship, a lot of craving and missing them.
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can have a lot of joy and fondness when you remember your times together and your your secret jokes and the memories that were very precious between you.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can feel any of it and all of it and it doesn't have to make sense to anyone.
• 14:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And because of yours, your feelings and your experience and their legitimate.
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So allow yourself, no matter what the time period is, again, if this was something that happened five or six years ago,
• 14:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: hour ten years ago and you're listening to this and you're like me and I had kind of put that out of my out of my head but listening to this is still just as painful or as just as impactful.
• 14:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I didn't really allow myself to work through these feelings before it's okay for you to do that.
• 14:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what does that look like to work through those feelings?
• 14:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: What does that mean?
• 14:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to talk about one thing later, but I'll say for right now, journaling is big.
• 14:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I know journaling can kind of depending on your background and your experience with journaling.
• 14:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: It can feel kind of like a flat suggestion.
• 14:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm going to write it out, especially for not really a writer.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you don't really really see a benefit from it.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would really encourage you to free write, which means that you don't need to write the right thing.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes we will try to over-correct when we're journaling.
• 15:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So as I'm journaling and writing, I really miss my friends, Melissa and
• 15:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: what we used to have, but I know that I'll be okay and you don't let yourself, but all the nasty yucky things there.
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't let yourself put down to the spare and like, you know, I feel like I never want to trust anyone again.
• 15:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like this was so hard for me.
• 15:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's been hard for me to let other people in since then.
• 15:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love my other friends, but I keep comparing them to her and I feel like nothing's going to be.
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: enough.
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I hate that I feel this way.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hate that I let one person bring me to this place and it's not even that big of a deal.
• 15:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you can put in some of the bias that I've said it out loud that you may have about friendships because of the stories that we're told.
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's interesting in the world.
• 15:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: We are told how precious and how much of a treasure friendships are.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when there's any type of breach or any type of loss around it, again, there's no resources.
• 16:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's no support around it.
• 16:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of like, well,
• 16:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You need to get up and move.
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you didn't lose this.
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: You didn't lose that is just a person.
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't need anyone who doesn't love you back who doesn't want you back.
• 16:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, so just pick yourself up by your bootstraps and move on.
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's not a lot of respect and honoring that's given to sisters are soul mates.
• 16:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so again, allow yourself to journal all of those thoughts and getting out all of the word play and the narratives and things that are in your head.
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: getting them out on paper helps release that from you.
• 16:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: You just thinking about it, if I were to tell you to journal and I gave you like a little paper in front of you and you're thinking, oh, it's easier for me to kind of think about it than write my brain can't keep up, which is something that I experienced as someone who's neurodivergent a lot of times is that makes sense to me why you would say that.
• 17:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: However, there is real brain science and probably your own experience too, if you're allowed yourself to do this, that happens when you write these things out.
• 17:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: and that your brain, your mind is actually freed from it.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: If it is an incident where writing just feels very laborious to you or that by writing, it feels like your brain is working faster than how you can get it out.
• 17:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've seen other people and let me actually pause this recording in Google.
• 17:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I believe it's called scribble journaling and if that's not what it's called, then when you Google it, you will see a better term.
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: But basically the idea is instead of you needing to write out every single letter across every teed, dot every eye and write everything out with commas and grammar and everything else.
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: On the piece of paper, your journal lines, whatever it is, that you're just writing out scribbles in the direction of a line as if you were writing forward and sentences.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: But while you're writing the scribbles, you're thinking out what it is that you are wanting to write.
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the scribbles are matching the pace of your thoughts.
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: and somehow it still does the exact same effect as if you're writing out exactly what you're saying verbatim in your head.
• 18:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Your brain still makes that connection to writing it out on paper.
• 18:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you're someone who likes to reread your journals and go back and see what happened on a certain date and a certain time, this may be very opposite to what you usually do.
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: However, if you're just trying to process your trauma and get it out,
• 18:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: and be free and be rid of it, then maybe doing it for this purpose will serve the need of this task, and then you can resume back to what you just do before.
• 18:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you can google scribble journaling as that's helpful.
• 18:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: The second thing for you to do, which I'll go ahead and connect them, so it's not out of order.
• 18:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is to talk to a therapist.
• 19:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: So again, this is a real trauma.
• 19:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a real real life trauma, the dissipation, this relationship, the deconstruction of it, the loss of it.
• 19:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is a real loss.
• 19:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so talking about it with your therapist as long as you need to.
• 19:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you're at therapist, then something to the fact that or makes you feel as if they, you'll be pushed through your grief a little bit quicker than you want to.
• 19:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now that you've had someone say this out loud,
• 19:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: been knowing that it's okay for you to say, I don't feel like I'm ready to act as if this relationship never existed.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was a person that was very important to my life in your therapist.
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a treatment plan that there have to help you work through things.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully your therapist recognizes the impact of what you're saying and provides some validation for you.
• 19:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: to actually work through all the emotions that need to come through so that you can be free so that you can't get on the other side so that you can make new meaning from it when you are ready to.
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: When when everything that needs to be exposed is now available or now seen so that you can start to reconstruct the narrative and make a different story from it.
• 20:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: You already know I'm a big fan of EMDR as well.
• 20:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've movement, do sensitization, reprocessing therapy.
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if you have an EMDR therapist, especially if it's a situation where the, let me any situation, but especially if it's one where
• 20:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: You feel like the relationship breakup happened out of nowhere.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: You cut off guard, or you didn't know what was going on, but just the law is just very devastating and you're feeling some symptoms of PTSD.
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: The anxiety around it, the avoidance of triggers, difficulty sleep being the extreme sadness and mood swings, functioning and being impacted, meaning that is hard for you to engage in new friendships and new relationships and trust people.
• 20:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: EMDR therapy might be very helpful for you to also
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: kind of move quickly through that healing process.
• 21:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: The third thing that you can do if you are grieving at friendship break up is that if you are, if this is a situation where you did make a mistake, where you did cause or influence the breakup to happen, then it's important for you to learn from this mistake and apply it.
• 21:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: to the future.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it is and you may agree if this is a case where you know that what has happened has been a breach of trust and something that you did that did not show that you were honoring the friendship.
• 21:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if you're practicing self accountability, you might already know that even though you didn't want it to happen, you may understand while your why your friend cut ties with you.
• 21:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, there could be a want to go back and repair and fix it and be given another chance, but also knowing that well, if she doesn't want to do that, then I'll also understand why.
• 21:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, what you can do instead of beating yourself up and saying that you're the most horrible person and you don't deserve friendships and staying in this place of stuckness is take this lesson.
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Pat yourself in a back, even though it may feel very contradictory or counterintuitive to do so when you're feeling like crap.
• 22:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: but you're self on the back for being self accountable.
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because of this is a pattern of behaviors and actions that you've had in the past, it's made it really hard for you to see other people's points of view.
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Pudos to you, you're growing.
• 22:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is amazing, right?
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's actually pretty important to be able to celebrate and acknowledge your growth as you go along.
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's like this lesson and apply to future friendships and relationships so that with the next folks that you are building with,
• 22:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: that you are more aware and you're more careful and you're able to some more preserve this friendship and this relationship.
• 22:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have, I'm going to give a little bit of encouragement here because, you know, we're all adults here.
• 22:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the majority of the folks who listen to this podcast are either millennials and older or if you are Gen Z, like you're right on the cluster, right on the edge of when you could be a millennial butcher, like right in between.
• 23:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so you is very easy to kind of be at a little bit of an older age depending on who you talk to.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some folks may feel like that age is still very young.
• 23:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: But to be at a certain age and feel as if you've missed your window to have a best friend that you've missed your window to create friendships that are lifelong in life and in long lasting.
• 23:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: You see people who've been friends with folks since
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: High school through, since college, since grad school, even since elementary school, and you may even feel very left behind.
• 23:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I love when I meet women who are older, who have only met themselves as adult women, ten or twelve years ago.
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they are having their weekly branches.
• 23:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they are doing each other birthday parties.
• 24:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they are doing each other business opening parties or retirement parties.
• 24:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they met their best friends, the best friends of their lives in their late thirties, forties, and maybe even early fifties.
• 24:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've seen examples of all of these.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so as long as you have said this before, and so hard to believe,
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: As long as you have life, as long as you have breath in your lungs, there is space to create and make a change.
• 24:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the things that have happened have already happened and is up to you to take this moment to see what's in front of you and decide you want something different and to go and create it.
• 24:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the longer you stay stuck and illuminating what could have been what should have been.
• 24:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's not helping your past come back and it's also not helping you move forward.
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you've got to make a choice.
• 24:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have two choices.
• 24:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're either going to stay where you are, which is also staying miserable or you're going to make a decision to move forward and make a change.
• 25:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I encourage you to do the ladder.
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I hope that the things that I'm sharing today and any other healing or processing work that you're doing helps you do the second one because it's not as easy as.
• 25:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: What I was saying before, other people who don't give you the space to validate the grief of this experience, to just say, well, just move on and just find another friend.
• 25:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: We all know that as adults, it takes time to find friendships, it takes time to build trust, it takes time to build routines, to figure out what your pattern is, what your style of communication is, what your availability patterns are.
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, so we all know that that takes time, but that is not the same as saying that it is impossible.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I just want to put that little bit of hope there and a little bit of, you know, there for anyone who's needing the push to get off of the bitch and get back out there and to respond back to that girl who said that she really like talking to you at the party who says she really enjoy getting to know you and that party that may have some imposser syndrome.
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those I go she was just being nice.
• 26:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Take her up on her offer.
• 26:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hang that with her.
• 26:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: move past commenting on her post and on her in-sustory to actually asking her to hang out, even if because you're a new friend and because we're all adults, it takes a month or so for y'all to schedule a date, or you have to schedule a month to six weeks out, schedule a month to six weeks out, and then at least you have a friend date that's coming up, right?
• 26:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we all know that it takes time.
• 26:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think Danielle Ballard Jackson was on the podcast and she said it takes
• 26:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Up to fifty hours to make someone a close friend and eighty hours to make someone a best friend.
• 26:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's what she said.
• 26:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: But either way, that's an investment.
• 26:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, so that's going to be a lot of coffee dates and park dates and shopping and movie nights and stuff, but it's worth it in the end.
• 26:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's worth the investment.
• 26:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that is this wait.
• 26:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, that was the third thing.
• 27:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: The fourth thing for you to do if you are working through the grief of a friendship breakup is to understand that their ability, this is if you were caught off guard and they were unwilling to talk through this, work through this with you, communicate what happens, you know, if you were really close to someone and
• 27:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: This happens, their ability to walk away from this friendship and this relationship does not determine your worth or that you were a bad friend.
• 27:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's say that again.
• 27:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Their ability to walk away from your friendship without putting in the effort to communicate or allow a youth opportunity to reconcile, make it better, communicate, express what was going on does not mean that you as a person do not matter.
• 27:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: You as a person, you matter a lot.
• 27:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have so much value.
• 27:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you're probably most likely friends because of all the value and everything you that you brought to the relationship and to their life.
• 28:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And their win the ability to communicate and work through conflict or to share what was happening with them without being attacking or discarding you.
• 28:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: As more to do with their own trauma and in history patterns than whether or not you mattered or not.
• 28:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like this one, even if it makes sense to you.
• 28:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think this is probably out of all six of them or all seven of them.
• 28:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be the one that's probably the most important, but might still fall really flat or even be like it's is even hard to believe.
• 28:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because if I was really that precious, if I was really that important, if I was really that meaningful for them, all could they just leave me like that?
• 28:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: How could they just abandon me?
• 28:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: How could they just treat me like a stranger?
• 29:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And some cases, not even as if someone they even knew before, just as if a scorched earth when they have completely moved on, when they have replaced me.
• 29:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's real.
• 29:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, those are real thoughts and real emotions that I'm not going to act as if
• 29:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: don't happen and don't exist.
• 29:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is one of those instances you all were just going to have to say it and hopefully with time and space that it may land in a different way.
• 29:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is hard for you to believe, but this is one of those times that two things could be true at the same time.
• 29:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: All of the things that you felt makes sense in their valid and there's legitimacy to how and why you could feel that way.
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it
• 29:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: If someone is at the place where they have this deeply, deeply into my relationship with someone, and there's a deep sense of felt trust in the only way that they can work through their own discomfort is to completely abandon and flee.
• 30:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: That has more to do with them, more than about whether or not you are important and whether or not you mattered.
• 30:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: That has something to do with, and it could be a million things.
• 30:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It could be their fear of conflict.
• 30:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're the fact that they may be learned from other places to hold grudges and to have more conversations than they're had and to make assumptions about what people are thinking of feeling and and go from there and make up stories about people's intentions.
• 30:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And these are all lifelong patterns that they probably have, not that they're probably that they've had before you, right?
• 30:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so they're acting the stuff out and they're going to have to figure out how to work through that because they're going to have other relationships that trigger them.
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're going to have other relationships that there are misunderstandings.
• 30:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're going to have other relationships where there's different levels of communication and things that they think is normal.
• 30:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's not normal or common sense to the other person.
• 30:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they're going to have to figure that out.
• 31:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's going to have to be some relationship or some time where they have to learn how to be in the hard place with folks without going cold and turning off their their heart towards them.
• 31:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: and putting up a wall with them.
• 31:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, those are all things that are learned.
• 31:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And until they do that, they may have a whole list of friendships and relationships that are start off really well.
• 31:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then they end up leaving.
• 31:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they're going to have to figure out what that means.
• 31:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's not me wishing harm on them.
• 31:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in fact, that's probably half of the people listening to this podcast too.
• 31:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, many of us are working simultaneously through
• 31:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: love addictive symptoms and also love avoidance symptoms.
• 31:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Many of us especially me, you know, that's one of the things that I've had to learn how to do, which is how to work through previous friendships that I know that I've created walls and barriers with because I made up in my mind what their intentions were, what I thought they were feeling, what I thought they were thinking.
• 32:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I made up that they were not willing and I already knew that they weren't going to be willing to work through it.
• 32:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I cut off, I know for sure that there are several really, really great relationships that I cut off prematurely and maybe maybe there were some things that were things that we needed to work through, but they could have been worth through, but my need to be in power, my need to avoid
• 32:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: on being hurt or being embarrassed, my need to avoid feeling rejected, my need to avoid looking mean for whenever I was feeling in my very people pleaser, face, and some of these friendships and relationships too.
• 32:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And my ability, the very good ability that I've always had to stay very busy as a defense mechanism and to find other friendships and relationships to spread myself between.
• 32:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: So these people and relationships that all left behind
• 32:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had other replacements for them.
• 32:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I can tell you, someone who's done this and you may also be this person too.
• 33:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I still think about those friendships with growth and time and maturity.
• 33:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I look back and I'm sorry for the things that I've said and done.
• 33:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there have been some people that I have reached back out to and apologize to.
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, they, in those instances, they weren't repairable because of the breach of trust.
• 33:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's okay because that is, that is, those are lessons from me to learn.
• 33:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm saying this to you as the personal receiving end of this that just feels as if you're the only one who's going through this and you never mattered and as if you were just so easily disposable.
• 33:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just want you to know as someone who's been on the other side of what you're experiencing that that's not the case that that person knows and that person remembers and bad willing.
• 33:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: that they will get to a place where they're able to look at themselves in the mirror and make a change and make a change for the future friendships and relationships that they have.
• 34:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you deserve to be in healthy friendships and relationships instead of focusing again on the past and what has been available to you.
• 34:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: You deserve to be in friendships and in relationships with people who are going to work for you.
• 34:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And who will communicate with you and who will be honest with you and have their own therapists and their own folks that they talk about things with so that they're not projecting their own stuff on to you that also know how to say I'm sorry, then know how to to move towards you instead of away when things are hard, you know, those types of friendships and people exist.
• 34:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes it takes some time and some learning to figure out what that looks like.
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: It sometimes it takes us becoming those people ourselves.
• 34:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you're someone who tends to avoid conflict and doesn't really know how to communicate things and kind of stays in your head a lot or you overcompensate and overgive to kind of find your needs in a friendship and relationship, which is another way of being avoided.
• 35:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can be very codependent and also be very avoidant as well because the whole focus is on who this person wants you to be instead of who you actually are.
• 35:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you start to work through that it may be easier for you to match people who are on that energy level, but they'll more you heal and the more you grow, the more you can be more attracted to different types of relationships and you can also
• 35:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: creates form those relationships.
• 35:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: So right now, and this is actually something that happens with every single cohort in women that I support in my recovery school coaching program.
• 35:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: People come in to talk about relationships, but we end up hitting everything.
• 35:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: We end up hitting their family relationships or friendships.
• 35:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a sense of self-worth and self-esteem because everything is connected.
• 35:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they give like a full transformation, right?
• 35:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And one of my students very recently said something that a lot of my students say,
• 35:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's evaluating her current friendships, and because it's a part of our curriculum that talks about actually the name of the lesson is sisters are our soulmates, and it talks about going deeper in friendships and in relationship.
• 36:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she's reviewing them and she's talking about how she has some really great friends around her, but they're all kind of superficial.
• 36:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: They hang out all the time, they talk often, they might even go on trips and things together, but she holds back
• 36:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: a lot of what she's feeling what she's thinking and she doesn't really let them in and she's kind of the person that's to go to in the relationships and in the friendship.
• 36:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she talks about how it's been kind of tiring, you know, cycle, yeah, that's by design.
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: You you help create the situation where you don't share and they don't ask you and if they do ask you, you probably divert it and make it more about them or you tell them just a little bit of us going on and so
• 36:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of the situation that you build, but how do you feel about these friendships?
• 36:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think they're wonderful.
• 36:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I trust them.
• 36:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think they're really great.
• 36:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, awesome.
• 36:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you're lucky to where you have a great group of women to practice this with.
• 37:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: You get to, instead of you having to feel like you have to go out and start all over and find new people, you have amazing people around you that you can practice initiating, sharing your heart, sharing yourself, being more vulnerable with.
• 37:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: People that you already have this history and trust with, that's amazing what it gives.
• 37:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so on one hand, it is a gift going on the other hand.
• 37:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now I don't have a reason to not let myself out there.
• 37:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't get to say, well, I'm too busy.
• 37:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Where do I find friends at and how do you even start?
• 37:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now I got people who have known for years.
• 37:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I just write this all about when I just talk to them about my feelings.
• 37:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yes, you do.
• 37:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And of course, you know, we break it.
• 37:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: We break it down more, but
• 37:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it is possible to transform already existing relationships.
• 37:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you, as you're working through the grief of losing one friendship, you're starting to reevaluate how you want all of your friendships to look, you can create changes in the ones that you have now by changing yourself.
• 38:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone is you pushed out.
• 38:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: All of your relationships are a mirror of how you feel about yourself, how you see yourself.
• 38:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Someone's bad behavior is not your fault, but what you look at is, okay, what is it in me?
• 38:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: that's allowing this type of person to continue to have access to me.
• 38:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: So let me go ahead instead of trying to change them.
• 38:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me go ahead and change my sense of self-worth and see if I still want to stay around this person.
• 38:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: See if by me changing me, I actually show up differently when I'm trying to express boundaries with them or if I move around and change my dynamics with them.
• 38:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: If I have friendships that are really exhausting because I feel like I'm doing a whole lot of
• 38:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ace worker work and I'm mothering them and everything.
• 38:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 38:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, then I need to learn how to pull back.
• 38:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not about me being resentful of them that they keep taking for me.
• 38:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm the one that keeps giving.
• 38:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So how about I stop overgiving?
• 38:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I say how about I start pouring into myself.
• 38:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to stop overgiving because I'm like, y'all've gotten enough for me because I still a lot of anger.
• 39:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's still a lot of bitterness.
• 39:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I still energy that I don't think they you're wanting to cultivate in your life.
• 39:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're wanting to cultivate more fullness or peace or calm who's in charge of that.
• 39:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: You
• 39:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: not your friends, not your partner, not your kids.
• 39:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you don't put barriers and limits around that yourself, I was anyone else going to know how to follow that, right?
• 39:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're following the leader, you're the leader in your life.
• 39:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so you are fully empowered to make these changes.
• 39:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this leads into the next one, number six, which is putting yourself into new friendships.
• 39:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So whether or not this is a friendship that is
• 39:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rejuvenated by your own growth and changing yourself or whether or not it is finding new friendships and relationships and that is for you.
• 39:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really encourage you.
• 39:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I push a lot.
• 39:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: As you all know, I push a lot here.
• 39:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Our transformation via romantic relationships by seeing our romantic relationships as a mirror.
• 39:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so anytime I talk about availability, I really talk about availability and unavailable.
• 40:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: actions to in the realm of romantic partners.
• 40:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So is this person showing up for you?
• 40:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or are they being consistent?
• 40:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or are they communicating?
• 40:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we can also look for these same factors in our friendships as well.
• 40:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so making sure that I am finding people who are showing up and paying attention to red flags.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: So when I think about the friendship break-up that I had last year and how things just kind of caught me out of nowhere.
• 40:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this for me was a situation where
• 40:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: They were like, they had made up their mind what I was doing and why.
• 40:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then told me that they were not open to communicate with me about it.
• 40:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I had no idea what's happening.
• 40:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's to this day I still don't know.
• 40:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And but one of the things that this person that happened at the very beginning is they were very open about their avoidance using the word that they can be avoided.
• 40:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: and talking about how it's really hard for them to let people in and how they were kind of avoiding us getting closer in our friendship.
• 41:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, things changed in our friendships after they were self accountable in that and we built a really great thing together.
• 41:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I really didn't think anything of it, you know, and I also, you know, even though I'm explaining this point, I also don't really
• 41:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: will leave at this stage of my life.
• 41:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are so many things that I have lived and feared and anxiety about that I'm trying to unlearn when it comes to my friendships and the people that I'll let in when it comes to friends.
• 41:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you are giving me signs of availability and that you are moving forward towards me and you're showing up in a good way, I'm going to continue to trust it and I don't really have any regret about that.
• 41:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: However, when I look back of
• 41:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: While quickly this person let things go, this admission from her at the beginning made sense to me of why this would happen so quickly and so swiftly as the other things that aren't really important to talk about.
• 42:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it made sense to me how could be so easily discarded without working through things.
• 42:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that helped me.
• 42:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It didn't make anything better.
• 42:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It didn't make it any less painful.
• 42:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: It didn't make me hurt any less, but it helped me make sense of okay this happened even if there was some type of hurt that I did knowingly or unknowingly that she felt the reason why I got to this extreme is because whatever happened or or didn't happen.
• 42:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: felt very close to things that she's deeply afraid of.
• 42:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so is easier to just things off with me versus work through it.
• 42:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's her experience and that's her truth.
• 42:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it didn't mean that I wasn't a good friend.
• 43:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's what I had to take with me.
• 43:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: So when it comes all this to say, this point about putting yourself in new friendships is just listen, listen to what they're saying.
• 43:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Listen to how they talk about other friendships and other relationships.
• 43:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Listen to how they treat other people, what's their fears, what are their triggers, what are things that make them happy, what are the things they need in a relationship or in a friendship and what are the things that they don't.
• 43:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And treat it as a real, a real partnership.
• 43:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And from there, I think you'll put in more effort to when it comes to friendships.
• 43:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because sometimes this friends
• 43:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: friends don't always some people do but don't friends don't always have tough conversations with each other because they may be afraid of hurting each other because is more you can't see my air quotes is more normal to have these deep conversations about what you need from the other person and a romantic partnership there's precedent for that this precedent for talking to your partner saying hey so how am I doing
• 44:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: How are you getting what you're needing this romantic partnership?
• 44:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Are you getting your love languages meant?
• 44:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is there anything that's happened this week that I can do better?
• 44:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is there anything that you want me to keep doing?
• 44:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those types of weekly monthly check-ins and relationships, these are things that we've heard people do before.
• 44:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we don't hear about that when it comes to friendships.
• 44:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so as you grow and as you mature and as you are working through building these tri-played relationships that you want to always stay present
• 44:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: If this opportunity arises for you to be very intentional about that, knowing that that is okay for you to do that.
• 44:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's okay for you to go there.
• 44:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's okay for you to pause and do a repair.
• 44:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is okay that if a friend, by the way, if you're on the receiving end of this and you have a friend that's coming to you, saying some things that she needs that that is not the same as her calling you a bad friend.
• 44:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's not the same as her attacking you.
• 45:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: If anything, she's coming to your communicating this because she wants to maintain the friendship because you mean so much to her because she doesn't want to live in her head about this.
• 45:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: She wants to know, okay, am I making this up because my own experiences in trauma or is there something here?
• 45:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if there is something here, can we talk about it?
• 45:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can we work through it?
• 45:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can we make it?
• 45:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can we do something different about it?
• 45:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's up to both sides to be available for that conversation.
• 45:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, so just wanted to say that because I know sometimes especially for those of us who can be very sensitive.
• 45:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it was offensive or maybe even have come from a past a people who when they did come to us, it was not in good faith.
• 45:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was in them being critical and them trying to get us to back down from our own needs and our own boundaries.
• 45:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've never been in relationships where people have made honest requests.
• 45:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: in a place where they weren't trying to take from us, but actually still trying to co-create with us.
• 45:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, just wanted to put that out there that does happen in friendships.
• 46:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the last thing I'll say, if you are grieving from a friendship breakup, it's something that I've actually already said in today's episode up until now, which is just to understand that relationships can't be forced.
• 46:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if the other person feels that this is not worth working on, or they don't want to work on it, right?
• 46:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the abbreviation of that is that it is not worth working on for them.
• 46:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then you have to let it go.
• 46:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have to let it go.
• 46:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because you are worth working on a friendship and a relationship with you is worth working on just like you probably feel a friendship and a relationship with them is worth working on.
• 46:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I do say this at the beginning.
• 46:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, say this here.
• 46:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if I want to edit it in at the beginning, I'll do that.
• 46:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you may hear this twice depending on what I decide.
• 46:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm talking in this instance in this episode, I'm talking about friendships that are going very well and then the breakup happens.
• 47:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you are both communicating your both close, your both doing all the things that you would need and want in a friendship and a relationship and then the breakup happens and it's really devastating.
• 47:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is still devastating when you are in a friendship with someone that when you look back.
• 47:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: that that person was very jealous of you and they were pretty toxic and they were very competitive with you and they may have betrayed you or cheated on you or taken things from your youth, right?
• 47:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Being in those relationships are just as hurtful.
• 47:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when this is a friendship that you aren't expecting to ever leave as this shows their family and things have been so good for y'all are together, which is part of the shock and dismay.
• 47:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then it can really make it really hard for you to want to move on and to trust that you can find something as good or something better.
• 47:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I want you to know again.
• 47:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: You were part of the co-creature of this experience.
• 48:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: The reason why this friendship in this relationship was so good was because of you because of the magic that you brought as well.
• 48:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it was the magic that they brought, but you were a part of this.
• 48:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was not only in their hands.
• 48:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so with the magic that you have, you can bring that magic into new relationships and to new partnerships with people who are healthy, with people who are available, with people who are willing, with people who have more life experience and more therapy.
• 48:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: With women who are at the stage or beyond where you want to be and so now you're going to be growing and co-creating together.
• 48:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, every closed store does not mean that it is a missed opportunity and that the chapter is over.
• 48:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: It could mean that there is a window open right next to it or you turn around and there's a big long hallway that is full of doors for you to choose from and you get to choose your next adventure.
• 48:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is again, and not me trying to take away from the pain of losing the experience you've just had, but I would encourage you to maybe look at this experience with gratitude.
• 49:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, one of the things when I was doing my group goals and looking at with some other people were saying, when there are a few articles that I talked about doing one sentence letters, right?
• 49:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so writing to the person, some of the things that you want to say to them and, you know, recounting the hurts and but not sending a but just to write it out.
• 49:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think when you get to this place where you're either ready to move on or considering to move on, writing a letter of gratitude and thanking her for everything that she gave to you.
• 49:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everything that she poured into you, all of the memories, all the belief, all the encouragement, all of the help, all the laughter, all the support, because that's part of what made you who you are, because of what she helps create in you, you are better for it, and that's something no one could ever take away.
• 50:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And because that magic is yours, you get to plant it and make something even bigger and brighter and better.
• 50:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: When I hope that for you, I hope that for everyone who listens to this that may have lost someone who met the world to them to let them know that they still have the world in their hands and that they can make whatever it is that they want with people that get to be with them for the rest of their journey.
• 50:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So.
• 50:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you all so much love.
• 50:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was a new all so many big hugs for anyone who's gone through this this heartbreak.
• 50:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this want you to know that it gets better.
• 50:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I pray that you find the friendships and love that makes you feel and let you know that it's every trial with every setback.
• 50:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everything is happening for me and this all worth it in the end.
• 50:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you all love.
• 50:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll see you in the next episode.
• 50:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Take care of yourselves.