Hello friends,
I hope that this finds you so well, wherever you are.
This month is considered by some cultures and traditions to be the true start of the new year, when spring is around the corner, baby animals start to be born, buds ever so slowly begin to sprout. There’s a sense of newness and rebirth. It’s also the time I start to come out of my social hibernation, which, naturally, has me thinking these days about friendships both near and far.
As I’ve written about here, I find that the time after December right up until this month is so important to go inward, to hibernate like the animals and the trees and the plants, and to take time to be quiet. For me, this means also taking a big break from having much of a social life. This idea actually came to me from a good friend of mine who unabashedly has taken to hibernating come January for as long as I’ve known her. When she explained to me over ten years ago when we met that after Christmas I wouldn’t be hearing from her until the spring, I found it so admirable and so liberating. She just knew she needed to do that for herself and didn’t care about asking permission or forgiveness.
Each passing year as I’ve leaned more and more into adopting this practice of withdrawing and finding ways of turning into my home and sanctuary, it’s an occasion that often brings up the idea of friendship for many reasons, one being that it doesn’t always sit well with others. Some people are okay with how I roll. They get that I need this time—as well as other times—to be a bit of a hermit. Others, I’ve learned over the years, find this to be disconcerting or frustrating. I know from having lived enough life now that this is more about them bumping up against the setting of boundaries rather than anything personal. But as I’ve started over the last week to open myself back up to making more plans and coming out of this hibernation, I find that the idea of friendship—how it has been a through line in my life, has sometimes been a source of great stress and sadness, and at other times has made the very difference between my emotional survival in times of great personal turmoil—has very much been on my mind.
I found myself reflecting on all of this the other day as I was walking to meet up with a friend that I haven’t been able to get together with for a few years now. I was thinking about how there are so many different types of friends and friend relationships. This particular friendship is one that I made as an adult, first as a networking connection that then blossomed into a true, like-minded and like-hearted connected on a deep spiritual level that I hadn’t yet experienced until then in my life.
There are those friendships where your relationship is predicated on seeing each other more frequently, out of habit or circumstance or desire—or all three. There are those that you only see once every few months, which is the majority of my friend relationships right now, due to the demands of life and work and family. There are those you might only see once a year or less, such as my best friend Andrea who has lived in England for over 20 years now, but whom remains my true soul friend despite the distance. Ours is the kind of friendship I cherish so much because we can go months and months without speaking much, but when we do, it always feels like not even one day was missed.
I’m very lucky that, aside from a few heart wrenching friend breakups along the way (which, I think, can actually be more devastating than a romantic breakup) I’ve been in the majority of my friendships since I was 11 years old. They each have their own origin story that I cherish for the innocence and the very real, divinely planned sense of it all.
One friendship was sparked after a few laughs over Smelly Markers and a love of roller coasters at Canada’s Wonderland, and was solidified when, as with most grade 7 girls, I became the subject of a bullying campaign that left me a bit of a pariah for a time. My Smelly Marker friend refused to co-sign that treatment of me, an act of courage and integrity that I don’t know many adults would have the guts to do, let alone a young girl in that pressure cooker time of life. She demonstrated to me that standing up for another who is vulnerable is perhaps the single most important thing you can experience that sets apart a person of great character.
Another of these core friendships sprang out of a moment that is emblazoned in my mind as if it just happened. It was my first year at a new school, and she came into class late. As I turned around to see who was coming in, I was struck by how beautiful and cool I found her to be, with her one blond streak at the front of her hair, high top white Chucks and green overalls. Looking back, what I know to be true is that it wasn’t just her outward appearance that struck me, but rather, it was a deeper, soul recognition that this person was going to be a very important part of my life.
And then there is my dear friend who I saw for the first time in the fifth grade performing a rendition of Rubber Duckie on stage for the talent show. I still remember thinking that she was definitely the bravest and funniest person I had ever seen, to be able to get up there and pull that off with such aplomb, not even a hint of nerves. We didn’t become fast friends right away, as our paths of school and life weaved in and out. But when they did connect, it was an immediate sense of “Right, yes, this is my person.” And that first thought—that she was the bravest and funniest person I had ever seen—still holds true, despite, or maybe because of, all of the growth and change we have gone through together and apart.
So as I’ve entered this month with the idea of friendship so much on my heart and my mind, I thought I would share this with you in the practices I’m working on this week.
Prompt Of The Month
I would love to offer up this month a multi-pronged prompt on the idea of friendship—friendship with another, as well as the one that you have with yourself—as they are both so vital to our whole experience.
As always, set yourself up with a pen and paper, light a candle, or if you prefer you can use these as walking meditation prompts. And then, just write…
1) How can I be a better friend to myself?
2) What friendships light me up (without a sense of obligation or pressure)?
3) How can I nurture the friendships in my life more deeply even though my days and weeks are busy?
4) How can I lovingly recognize and let go of the friendships that are perhaps no longer serving my life?
If this idea and theme is resonating with you, I also wanted to share a lovely (and brief) meditation from Mindful In Minutes on the idea of friendship, connection, and loneliness here.
Pose of the Month:
Rather than share a pose of the month, I’m sharing one of my favourite online practices from my go-to yoga teacher at this time of my life, Yoga With Kassandra, called Yin Yoga & Affirmations for JOY & OPTIMISM. This is a full 45 minute class, so definitely earmark it for when you have the time to devote to yourself. This one is all about feeling good and cultivating joy and optimism—that feeling that you get when you’ve just had a really good laugh or a really good chat with a friend—using the supportive practice of yin coupled with affirmations.
I hope you will give it a try if you’re feeling lonely, if you’re in need of a friend or missing a friend, as this kind of self care is the ultimate way to be a friend—to yourself—by opening up to yourself with the calm and ease from a wonderful practice like this one.
Final Thoughts
The thing that I have found to be true amongst all the different iterations of friendship I’ve been fortunate enough to experience is that the more tightly you hold on to the way things “should be”—in terms of frequency of time spent, prioritizing quantity over quality—or the more tightly you hold on to the way things “used to be”, as opposed to the way things naturally are as you evolve as people—then the more likely it is that that friendship will not sustain, or will carry with it a sense of tension beneath the surface. Resentment and unspoken emotion is a poison greater than almost any other.
I have often said that a long term friendship is like a marriage: You need to weather the ups and downs, to hold space for another’s journey, to understand that it won’t necessarily look the way that it used to, but that if you can find a way to grow together and move through the peaks and valleys with grace and, above all, a sense of humour, the reward on the other side will be a huge, unsayable, unconditional love that can only exist between friends who choose each other for no other reason than the sake of the friendship. There’s no financial security, there’s no status (well, unless you’re friends with, like, Taylor Swift, in which case you might get some status), no physical component beyond hugs and belly laughs. It’s just based on the pure love and joy of sharing your time—however long or short, infrequent or not—it might be.
Our friendships are the family that we choose, they are the physical embodiment of our connection to happiness and love mirrored back to us in another person. Our greatest friendship is, of course, the one that we have with ourself. But the ones that we have with others—whether that be a friendship found in our family of origin, at work, at school, or the ones that we meet in unexpected ways, true friendships are the relationships that are the foundation you can rely on when all else goes tits up. They have nothing to do with how often or not you see each other, and everything to do with the quality of love, the steadiness of support you offer, and—for real—the depth of the belly laughs you give one another.
The other day I saw a spiritual teacher, Cory Muscara, post this spiritual anecdote, that for me truly sums it all up:
The Buddha's cousin, Ananda, once said to the Buddha, "I think spiritual friendship is half the spiritual path. It's so important."
The Buddha replied, "Ananda, friendship is not half of the path; it's the whole thing."
Until next time…
All good things your way,
Allison
P.S. In case you missed it and are hankering for more reading from me, check out the last installment of my Self-Care Sunday series with Today’s Parent about The Spirit .