This is a transcript of a recent IGTV video I shared on ‘The Why’ behind my upcoming course, How to be a Bad Friend. If you’re interested in joining, click here to sign up for early enrollment. Registration before August 7th includes a live bonus session at the end of the course. Hope to see you there!
My lane in this world is helping people connect with their inner wisdom and understand their stories in ways that allow them to hold complexity, doubt, goodness, and failure with joy and freedom—both in themselves and in the ways they relate to others. When we are empowered in these areas within ourselves and our relationships, we are able to transform our communities with creativity and resilience that comes from a renewable source within us, which is also source that knows (and finds) safe places to ask for help.
Friendship is central to this because it is one of those places where we are meant to discover our renewable self and safely ask for help.
And in a time of nationwide polarity and conflict (the pandemic and revolution)—support for, and support from, our friendships live close to the heart of being able to energize our capacity to bring about needed change, and the sustainability to get there.
Friendships that are fine may find themselves struggling if both people are showing up to the weight of injustice and uncertainty in a pandemic —carrying a heavy load simply because they are well, only to realize in a moment of crisis that their friendship needs care too.
Friendships that were fine may be no longer because our ways of connecting shifted overnight and in losing touch with someone we may have also lost touch with the parts of us that connected to each other, or hidden places of harm may have surfaced in that silence, or through hurtful words.
And Friendships may not even be present because we were already in a space of such loneliness before all this happened and now it seems as though we will never get out.
All of these things are why I’ve hit pause on finding a publisher, and start on offering this course. Our friendships are not isolated from the burdens, stigmas, and narratives that surround us in this world, and I believe that bringing this part of our lives freedom from those burdens, stigmas, and narratives— in a relational way, holds a significant key to freedom for our world as a whole. I share this from the lane of my work that believes in change through caring for our individual stories and connections.
For now, and until I discover otherwise, healing friendships in these ways and in this moment is the deepest calling of my life. And I would be so honored if you would join me.
Click here to register for How to be a Bad Friend, the Course.
“You do not have to be good.” -Mary Oliver