I waved good-bye to a treasured friend last week. As she pulled out of my driveway, her car loaded down with the last remnants of her now empty apartment, my tears flowed. Tears of grief over the loss of time together. Tears of gratitude for the beauty of hearts connected. Tears of love for this friend who is forever a part of me. Tears of hope for the new life that awaits her.
And I was overcome by the preciousness of being known, understood, and loved by another human.
I’ve learned a lot about friendship in the past few years. I used to think that it was the result of a shared history—just live enough life in proximity to one another and you have friendship. But now I know that real friendship—the kind of friendship makes you feel safe and known and like your best self—doesn’t just happen as time passes.
Real friendship takes inviting people into your house with a sink full of dishes and not even picking up the kids’ toys. It takes a willingness to tell you there’s something in your teeth—or listening to you so deeply that they don’t even notice it. It takes crying together over the fear of the unknown and not forcing words into a silent moment. It takes time spent on your knees together, for one another.
Real friendship takes work. Intentional investment. Mutual commitment. It takes time–there is no shortcut for time. My closest friendships also have also grown out of shared laughter, walks, coffee, fashion consulting, parenting advice, marriage counseling, meal delivery, prayer, tears, food, and varying amounts of wine. Most of all, real friendship takes a willingness to show up and be seen, just as I am.
Real friendship gives me the courage to stop performing, pleasing, hiding and start embracing my authentic self.
After I shared my last post on failure, I had one of the worst vulnerability hangovers I’ve ever experienced. (Yes, a vulnerability hangover is a thing. Just ask Brené Brown–she’s a vulnerability expert.) I immediately questioned the wisdom of publicly sharing one of the most painful, shame-filled journeys of my life. I felt naked and exposed, vulnerable to potential criticism, judgment, and misunderstanding about who I really am.
But I’ve learned through friendship that we all need to hear about others’ struggles, assuring us we’re not alone and that there is real hope for our story. The beauty of vulnerability is that it invites others to share their stories by having the courage to go first.
My safe, life-giving friendships are where I feel brave enough to tell my whole story, not just the easy-to-share, shiny parts. This type of friendship disarms me and gives me permission to be exactly who I am. Friends in this category believe in me, even when I can’t believe in myself. They see me as I am and encourage me to grow into who I want to be.
I didn’t always know how to be this type of friend. I wanted so desperately to be who people needed me to be that I couldn’t necessarily identify what I really needed in return. I cared too much about how I was perceived to give myself freely to others—I just wanted to be loved, even if the version of myself I revealed was tightly controlled and incomplete.
There have been so many beautiful women at different points of my life who have modeled real friendship. They’ve shown up for me when I had nothing else to offer. They’ve pursued me when I’ve tried to hide out of fear that I wasn’t enough. They’ve let me into their struggles and shown me the beauty of authenticity.
Last year, one of these women gave me a book that has forever changed the way I view friendship, and set a new standard for the way I want to do life with others. As I read Freefall to Fly for the first time, I heard my own unspoken voice in the pages, pieces of my story articulated as Rebekah Lyons shared hers. One of my favorite parts of her story was the description of friends who gathered weekly to encourage one another by speaking out loud the gifts they saw in each other. I want to be a friend who gives life to others with the words I speak, cheering others on to become their best selves, celebrating their uniqueness while resting in the security of my own.
Sometimes hearing how other people see us changes our view of ourselves. I’ve experienced this firsthand. Friends who are willing to speak words of life to me–identifying gifts, casting vision, encouraging dreams–have transformed how I see myself, giving me courage to pursue my purpose and calling.
My friends are the ones who encouraged me to start a blog. They told me that I was good with words, that I was able to express things they felt in ways they couldn’t articulate. “Really?” I asked, incredulously. I’d honestly never thought about that before. And vulnerable as I feel stepping into this blogging world, their words of affirmation are what make me brave enough to keep pressing in.
And as step into what feels like an exhilarating/terrifying/life-giving new undertaking of sharing my heart with the world through the words I write here, I feel more alive in my own skin than I thought I could. Because they saw (and said what they saw) a gift in me that stirred a passion for words I had never explored, I’m embracing a part of myself I didn’t know was there. And I couldn’t have believed in myself without their belief in me.
Friends who know us completely and love us just as we are give us courage to live fully as we were designed. The thing about these friendships, though, is that for people to see us fully in all our giftedness and potential, we have to allow ourselves to be fully seen. It takes a willingness to share struggles, fears, insecurities, and the ugly stuff most people don’t want others to know is in them.
Nothing builds authentic community like transparent hearts. And authentic community transforms us. Being seen and loved frees us to take off our masks and stop pretending to be something we are not. Friendships where we are fully known and fully accepted give us permission to admit we’re not perfect. It sets us free to live in our real story as real people in real life together.
But someone has to go first. Someone has to be courageous and vulnerable, to ask others to join them on their journey. We’re all just waiting to be invited.
I’m so thankful for the friends who have invited me into their stories. It’s an honor to share mine.