Friendship!
Our Book group read My Friends by Fredrick Backman ( I highly recommend the writing is celestial ) The book inspired us to write about friendship in this part of our lives
Friendship feels like wool slipping through knitting needles, magically weaving a cozy blanket. Having lived in many different places, I now have friends scattered all around the world. We keep in touch annually or sometimes monthly for quick updates on our lives, and when we gather again the wool simply reshapes itself, as if a stitch was never dropped.
I can smell the different wool, see the colors and textures of the memories we’ve shared breathing these friendships back into my life.
Now living in Baja, the demands of work and children have mostly slipped away. Much of my time is spent with friends. Friends to bike with, friends to read books with, friends to make art with, friends to write with and friends willing to follow me into adventures. The friendship blanket feels especially warm and protective here.
But the friendship that has shifted the most over the last decade is the friendship with myself.
It has taken many versions of me to finally become my own friend.
Much of my life I entertained this internal friend. She was super judgy of me, sitting on my shoulder whispering, “You are not enough.” She constantly pushed me to do more, be more. She was never satisfied.
In some ways she made me more successful and driven in life, but she was exhausting.
It felt a lot like the wooden spoon spankings I got as a kid. Eventually my mother only had to wave the spoon and I would immediately fall into line.
Somewhere in my fifties things started to unravel. The identities this friendship held together began to shift. My career was winding down. My kids had flown off. My body was starting to cry out from all the punishing things I did trying to escape her voice.
For the first time, I had enough quiet to really listen to the friend inhabiting my body.
And I decided I was done with her.
Slowly space opened for another inner friend to emerge. This friend talks to me the way a loving mother would. Encouraging instead of berating. She is not critical but accepting. She supports me, listens to me, and knows when to wrap me gently back under the blanket.
Changing my inner friendship changed how I show up in my friendships.
More as myself.
This tapestry of friendships my life has woven together feels much bigger now.
It’s a cocoon
.