But what I didn’t do, it turned out, was something that my daughter really wanted, and far more important (as is often the case) than everything I did do. This one missing piece symbolized how much I valued her efforts. And not only that, it turned out to be the gauge for how selfish or loving I am—how willing to inconvenience myself for her or anyone.

Nonetheless, despite the arsenal of guilt coming at me, I didn’t feel guilty. I felt very sad and very angry—but not guilty. The absence of guilt, which has been such a constant in my life as a mom, surprised me and led me to ask myself what was different this time. What had allowed me to hold onto my own worth and good mom status in the face of what could have been a very different and far more complicated experience.

What was different was how I responded to her blame. As soon as I felt it coming at me and the bad mom narrative taking form, I asked myself, “Do I feel genuinely guilty for this choice? Or is this learned guilt—guilt I’m supposed to feel, that’s been assigned to me by my culture and now my family? Have I violated my own values? Have I done something truly unkind?” The answer was “no” on all fronts. This was guilt I’d been conditioned to feel.

I then reminded myself of everything I had done over the last seven months to celebrate and support my child. I acknowledged my own efforts and bowed to myself for being such a good mom. I’d been pausing throughout the months to honor myself, so it was easy to call up. But in navigating this situation, I chose to focus on all the good stuff, what was present, rather than joining my daughter in what was lacking. I refused to be her accomplice in discounting and invisibilizing my goodness and hard work. In the past, I too would have focused on what I didn’t do, but I chose not to do that to myself this time, which was a fundamental shift.

At the same time, I asked myself to name exactly what my crime was. Guilt thrives in vagueness and generality—it’s allergic to specificity and light. Guilt sticks when it’s a wallpaper experience, a background sense that we’ve done something “wrong,” even if we don’t know exactly what it is or why it’s so bad. Guilt then morphs into its more dangerous cousin: shame, the sense that we haven’t just done something bad but that we are bad. But guilt and shame are de-fanged when we name their specific source and hold it up to the light. Guilt and shame can’t survive under the lantern of the truth.

In this case, my crime was departing the event a few minutes early—not sticking it out to the bitter end, but leaving her to come home “alone” with just her sister and best friend. But this was just a top layer, what was my real crime underneath that—what was the meaning attached to that reality? Boiled down, my departure meant that I’d chosen to take care of my own needs—over hers. I’d chosen myself, which, in the storyline, “made” me a selfish and bad mother.

The grand cultural narrative I’d challenged with my choice is this: A good mom never takes care of her own needs over her child’s needs. A good mom has no needs other than making her child happy. A good mom is responsible for her children’s happiness and never disappoints.

At the same time, I went against our culture’s story that a mother should be able to bear any physical or psychological conditions for the sake of her child. She should have no limitations and be super-human when it comes to energy, stamina, and capacity. She should also have no unwanted feelings about sacrificing her needs, and no need for appreciation for her efforts. I had both honored my own needs and demonstrated my limitations and boundaries, both physically and psychologically. Even knowing that my daughter wanted me to be able to stay, I didn’t want to stay, couldn’t stay, and chose not to stay.

After getting clear on the narrative I’d challenged, I flipped the script. I told myself (out loud) that I’m allowed to have my own needs—it doesn’t make me bad or selfish. Secondly, I named the truth, that I’m unable and unwilling to stand out in the cold anymore. I won’t put myself through it; it’s not fair to me. Furthermore, I can’t meet every physical task that’s asked of me. And that’s okay because it’s the truth. Finally, I acknowledged to myself that it’s okay if my child doesn’t get exactly what she wants from me in every way at every moment. It’s okay if she’s disappointed. She and I will both survive her disappointment; she can be disappointed, and I can still be a good mom.

In doing so, I owned my imperfect-ness—or as I would describe it, my perfectly imperfect humanness. So too, I own that I am a mother who is entirely devoted to her child, and will do anything I can for her that doesn’t involve harming or abandoning myself.

I also acknowledged that I’m willing to hold space for my daughter’s sadness and anger, to understand the feelings that my limitations create. I’m willing to make room for her disappointment and empathize with her experience of having a mother with needs that are different from her needs. My heart is open because her disappointment no longer has to mean that I am to blame. I can thus listen and give her the loving attention she needs, which previously had been attached, exclusively, to my willingness to stay on and suffer to the end of her event.

Even if she still buys into the cultural narrative, I don’t have to. I don’t have to and am no longer willing to link my having needs and boundaries—or her disappointment, to my being a bad mom.

This is the shift that we need to make as women and mothers, to remove the story that we’ve learned to assign to our choices. Guilt is the price we’ve paid to get to be a “good mom” in a storyline that’s not only fictional, but false. Questioning the narrative itself, rather than abiding by it and playing by broken rules, is how we remove our Velcro suit and become Teflon to guilt. Furthermore, it’s how we free ourselves and ultimately, change the cultural narratives that keep us imprisoned.

I am limited—and—I am a good mom. This is reality—without any story attached.

The post The Radical Choice: Saying ‘No’ to the Bad Mom Narrative (Part 2) appeared first on Nancy Colier.

I recently had an experience that was shocking—because I didn’t feel guilty. Guilt was absent in a situation that in the past would have left me ruminating over my “crimes” for days. Even though everyone around me played their usual parts in the bad mom movie, I didn’t accept the role of the guilty character. I didn’t play that part in everyone else’s drama.

The situation centered around a multi-location sporting event that my daughter was participating in. The event demanded tremendous effort from her, and also from me. As her emotional support system, president of her fan club, and of course, biggest funder and fundraiser, she and I had both been working for months to make her endeavor a success. On a practical level, I’d attended parties to celebrate the event, bought her inspirational gifts, champagne, and cards that spoke of how proud I was, We’d gone out to her favorite restaurants to celebrate her commitment and I’d even surprised her with customized t-shirts for all of her friends and our dog. I thought I’d made a really big deal out of her accomplishment.

The day of the event was cold and windy. Together with her sister and best friend, we shuttled around the city to multiple locations to cheer her on, all the way to the end.

I gave her everything I had, physically and emotionally.

But…

After she completed the event, which went beautifully, she still had to take care of a number of tasks, which included picking up her medal. It was entirely unclear how long that process would take or, amidst the sea of people, where we would even meet to reunite. Making it even more challenging, everyone’s phone was dead. For the time being, she was still inside the venue and we were waiting in the cold.

Freezing and exhausted, having run around the city all day, and also with my own work due the next day, I decided to take off. I told her friend, who stayed to carry the celebratory baton, that I would see her at home within the hour or whenever they got there, and I couldn’t wait to give her the biggest, most well-deserved, proud mama-bear hug.

It was a Sunday evening with no taxis to be found. I waited for public transportation for a very long time. When I finally walked into my home, bedraggled and exhausted, my daughter and her friend were already there. Somehow, they’d managed to find a cab. My husband, who interestingly had shown up at just one location, the closest to our house (and felt not a shred of guilt) seemed upset—with me. “What happened to you?” he asked. I explained that I’d left after the whole day because I was frozen, depleted, and had had enough waiting around. “Oh, I heard that you just disappeared,” he said. Without responding, I went upstairs to give my daughter her well-deserved hug.

My daughter was in the shower. Neither my daughter nor her friend looked at me. I was, however, asked to leave the bath area. Clearly, I was persona non grata. There might as well have been a flashing neon banner with “bad mother” written over my head. I had failed as a mother and failed her at an epic level. After several minutes waiting for her to emerge from the shower, I left… again.

And so I went downstairs, feeling terrible and bewildered. Later, she managed to tell me that she couldn’t believe she’d had to accept her medal without me or either of her parents there to see it (even if the actual medal pick-up happened inside the venue where only participants were allowed). Nonetheless, the fact that I’d not been there physically to greet her when she left the event area, was a crime for which I deserved to feel guilty. My 11th-hour departure indicated to the whole family what kind of mom I really was. (Always interesting too, how it didn’t indicate anything about what kind of father my husband was.) Alas… a mother’s journey.

“Are you f-ing kidding me?” was what I felt like screaming. But I didn’t say a word. I felt devastated, for so many reasons, but not one of which was because I felt guilty. Maybe for the first time ever, I did not feel like a bad mom, like I’d done something terrible to my child. The absence of guilt to contend with on top of all the other hard feelings profoundly changed the experience, for me. There was still a bumpy and painful road ahead, to make this right with my child and ease her sadness about my not being the mom she wanted me to be in that moment. But without the burden of guilt, it was a far easier road to navigate.

As women, and definitely as moms, we’re trained to feel guilty; we’re “supposed” to feel guilty. And we’re really good at it. Just in the last 24 hours, the list of my failings for which I’ve already felt guilty is long and winding.

To name a few… I’m guilty for not making the yams soft enough the way my daughters like them, guilty for not making “real” meals like their friends’ moms, and for not wanting to order in every night. I’m guilty for mistaking the date of the class photo and for the order from Amazon arriving later than she needed it. I’m guilty for not wanting to get a thirtieth streaming channel, and for requiring my younger daughter to walk the dog when it was raining. I’m guilty for not wanting to hang out and gossip at 11 pm, and for being a working mom who’s not always available. There’s no shortage of guilt for this mom—I’m not an exception to the rule.

But in this case, after the six-month-long, herculean expression of pride and celebration, and a job really well done, it just wasn’t possible to take on guilt, to be the bad mom I was being cast as in the family movie. Something had shifted in me. The blame and shame wouldn’t stick; I couldn’t focus on what I’d done wrong in such an infinite sea of what I’d done right. And without the guilt and self-blame, the experience was radically different. Painful, but bearable.

I pay close attention to anything and everything that feels different and signals change. So, what did I know and trust in this case, and what had shifted in me that made me Teflon to guilt? What is guilt’s kryptonite, the one thing it can’t survive? These are the questions I’ll address in part two of this series on guilt. Stay tuned… and buckle up. There is another way to feel besides guilty.

The post A Radical Choice for Moms: Saying “No” to Guilt appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Let’s not restate what we know or even regale the deliciousness of mothering, much as I’d love to do that. Rather, let’s examine aspects of motherhood that are less regale-able and the feelings and truths we hide from others and ourselves. So, too, are the relentless expectations around mothering with which we punish ourselves.

A confession: When my kids were young, sometimes I’d tiptoe past their rooms, trying not to be noticed because I couldn’t bear the prospect of another imaginary skit on the floor with the Calico Critters and talking toothbrushes. I frequently dreaded the weekends spent researching and shlepping to arts and crafts fairs, build-a-bears, flower-plantings, and Legolands that nobody wanted to go to or particularly enjoyed but that I felt I had to offer to prove (to myself) that I was a good mom.

Believe it or not, now (and part of me knew it was then.), I felt too guilty not to do it. Interestingly, my husband never felt guilty, not even a little. He was OK with letting the kids do nothing or come up with their activities and most definitely didn’t see it as his job to entertain and engage them. On the other hand, I was convinced that if I didn’t provide at least one and preferably two interesting experiences or excursions each weekend, I was depriving my kids of a great childhood.

We all know that mom who can always find something magical to do with their kids. I had a friend like that when my kids were young. Wherever we went, she created an experience of wonder while I watched on, feeling befuddled and un-motherly.

In the park, she’d skip off with our kids and waft back what seemed like hours later, with everyone giggling madly, adorned in tiaras she’d made of daisies, and acting out mysterious forest adventures. At home, she delighted in playing board games, transforming french fries into Pick-Up-Stix, and, if time allowed, leading the charge to the bowling alley to spend more time together.

As to be expected, “Why can’t you be like Julia’s mom?” was the refrain in my home, to which I felt both righteous in my different-kind-of-mom-ness and, underneath the righteousness, terribly guilty, that I didn’t know how to do that, and that my kids didn’t get to have a mom like Julia’s.

So many women are convinced they should enjoy every moment they get to spend with their kids. The fact that we sometimes don’t enjoy it and don’t look forward to it, or worse, want to spend time with other people besides our kids or be with just ourselves, confirms that we’re selfish, unloving, and un-maternal. We’re choosing our own wants and needs over our kids. It’s either/or, and all roads lead us back to the same conclusion: We’re not good enough as mothers or women.

Watching our kids having fun and seeing their imaginations bloom is a delicious experience. At the same time, our children’s games are age-appropriate and a good fit for their intellectual and emotional development, but not usually for ours.

Still, we remain convinced that we should be fascinated and delighted by every activity involving our children and should be able to meet our emotional and intellectual needs just by participating in their experience. If we’re bored or unsatisfied, then once again, we’re self-involved and too focused on our own needs. And what’s worse, our own age-appropriate boredom is scarring our children and teaching them that they are the ones who are boring.

A day in the house with small children can feel like an iron-woman triathlon. We expect our watch to say 6 p.m. only to discover that it’s 9 a.m., and we still have 10 hours of activities to invent, 10 hours separating us from Netflix or some other kind of anesthesia. Of course, some moms genuinely enjoy hours of designing stickers, making slime, and thinking up homemade science experiments.

But there are also many moms for whom occupying their kids feels painful and exhausting, and they run out of ideas, patience, and energy.

Women struggle with the day-to-day labor of parenting. Yet, they continue to berate themselves for their feelings and assume that entertaining their kids for long stretches of time should come naturally and feel effortless. But why should it be effortless, and why would we enjoy it? Still, moms pretend to love it and delight in the snow days and Mondays off, which may explain why our own sippy cups sometimes smell like Chardonnay.

The truth is, you can love your kids and be a supremely good mother and not enjoy and not be particularly natural at certain aspects of the parenting job. This truth gets swallowed up in historical narratives, cultural mythology, and old beliefs about female virtue and motherhood, which still limit us despite all the societal changes that have occurred for women and shifted our place in the world.

Perhaps, alongside our devotion to our children, we can also allow ourselves to acknowledge that the job of being a mom to young kids is frequently not that interesting. We can stop fighting with and denying the reality of parenting and, instead, own and respect the effort and discipline that goes into mothering, and even celebrate ourselves for being willing to do hard things when we don’t want to and tolerate the boredom and difficulty of it, usually, without going mad.

If we can do this, we’ll feel free to make choices that come from want, not just should. And, we’ll feel kinder towards ourselves and sometimes even more grateful for getting to be a mom. Every minute we stay on the floor with the Calico Critters or do any of the endless difficult things we do, we might consider acknowledging it and bowing to our strength and devotion.

A great mom is not always one who wants to be with her kids around the clock and enjoys every effortless moment, but rather, one who keeps showing up, being present and doing her best to give her kids what they want and need, for as long as she possibly can.

Ultimately, we must trust a deeper truth: Our love for our children is big, wide, and infinite enough to include all of its contents. That said, we need not reduce our worthiness as good mothers to something so infinitesimal as whether we like or don’t like the tasks of the job.

The post Another Long Weekend With the Kids… Oh My! appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Men struggle with guilt, too — it’s a human emotion — but this post isn’t about men. It’s also not about guilt in a universal sense, as it relates to original sin. It’s about women and our habit of feeling guilty for pretty much everything.

What I see in my office day in and day out is this: women believe that everything that’s “wrong” has ever been “wrong” and will ever go “wrong” is their fault. If something or someone else isn’t okay, we’ve done something to cause it and are thereby responsible for fixing it. At the same time, women feel guilty for needing anything for themselves. The truth is women feel guilty most of the time, for most everything. Guilty is just our normal state.  

In trying to understand why this is, let’s take a step back. From a neurological standpoint, females tend to be more relationally wired than males. This isn’t always the case of course, but in general, the studies support that females are biologically designed to be attuned to other people’s experiences, to feel their pain, perhaps to be able to care for their offspring. If we look to science to understand women’s propensity for guilt, we might consider that females come into this world with neurochemicals that stimulate nurturing, bonding, and empathy.  But our empathic wiring isn’t the problem. Rather, the porblem is that we turn this beautiful quality of empathy, with which we’re gifted, into the self-destructive habit called guilt.  In essence, our natural attunement to other people’s experiences becomes something we use against ourselves; we’re bad if we fail to protect everyone else from suffering, or put another way, fail to keep everyone else happy.  Our capacity for kindness and connection transmutes into an unkindness we harness against ourselves.

At the same time, through our cultural conditioning, we’ve learned we can best achieve emotional safety and belonging by being likable. And so, we spend a lot of energy trying to be pleasing, which, if you’re female, means keeping other people happy.

When other people aren’t happy, when others perceive something as “wrong,” it means that we have failed. We’re then in danger of being rejected and criticized, thereby losing our place of belonging. Taking the blame for other people’s experiences becomes an emotional survival strategy. It keeps us likable.

So too, we assume everything is our fault to maintain control. If we’re to blame for everything and we’re who broke whatever’s broken, then we can also fix it. We can do better, be better—and we will, which will make everything okay.

But what if we can’t make everything okay by fixing ourselves What if things can go wrong for reasons we can’t know? What if everything isn’t our fault?  That would mean that life isn’t entirely in our control.  It would mean that life happens on life’s terms, not ours.  It would mean that we’re not the (negative) center of the universe.

For many, this is a scary idea. We avoid recognizing that things just happen for infinite reasons–even if it means living in constant guilt and self-judgment–rather than face the fact that much of life isn’t in our control or even about us.

Paradoxically, guilt is also a way of keeping us from having to feel what we feel. When something isn’t working in our lives, focusing on all the reasons we’re to blame–and what’s wrong with us–keeps us from experiencing the feelings related to what’s happening. While feeling responsible and guilty is painful, it successfully avoids the pain that might be properly associated with the situation. And so, we stay stuck in the rumination and negative looping about our brokenness, but we don’t process the feelings that would help us move forward.

But perhaps most importantly, when we get caught in guilt and self-attack, ruminating on our guilt, we abandon the possibility of purposefully addressing what isn’t working.  We get waylaid in the familiar and comfortably uncomfortable narrative of our failings.  We’re then distracted from the most important question: how to improve what isn’t working. We surrender the chance to chart a course forward.  We’re stuck in the old guilt and shame muck, and we end up with the same old question we always end up with: “What’s wrong with me?” It’s a question we know all too well.

So, how do you break the cycle and change your inner narrative?

First, you didn’t learn to be guilty overnight and you won’t break the habit overnight either. But as with everything, freedom begins with awareness. You start by noticing, in small ways, your propensity to blame yourself, the ways you personally dive into the guilty rabbit hole. And, when you notice yourself falling, you start catching yourself in mid-dive or may even pre-dive. 

If your 11-year-old tells you she’s sad because she has no friends, maybe you notice that you immediately start figuring out how you’re a bad mother, and haven’t modeled good enough social skills, and all the reasons why you’re to blame for turning her into a social outcast.

As soon as you notice that you’re turning against yourself and diving into the self-blame hole, stop and do something different: Offer yourself kindness instead of criticism. Try a new path. Instead of going down into the old, stagnant, guilty rabbit hole, treat yourself differently.

How to Make Different Choices

If any of this sounds a little too familiar, you can try this two-part process:

Step 1: Feel how the situation feels. Feel the situation, not how it feels to be the cause of it. For example, how do you feel knowing your daughter is sad because she lacks friends? Simultaneously, notice if your feelings toward your daughter (or whatever situation) change when you aren’t guilty of having caused it.

Step 2: Turn your attention to now. What can you do to improve the situation that’s not working? In this example, how can you improve your daughter’s relationship with other kids? Turn your focus from what’s wrong with you to the present moment and how you can create positive change.

When guilt becomes a habit, it causes suffering and stagnation. But guilt is a habit we can break; we don’t have to feel guilty all the time. We don’t have to throw ourselves under the bus when something is wrong. Things can be wrong without our being to blame, or responsible for having caused it, or having to fix it.  As revolutionary as it might sound, things can just be “wrong” without us being wrong.  But for the guilt habit to change, we must choose to create a different internal dialogue and attitude towards ourselves. So, make that choice; make that change, and pay attention to who you are and who you become when you stop telling yourself that you’re broken!

The post The Guilt That Women Suffer appeared first on Nancy Colier.

For a long time, I worked like hell to provide what she wanted, what she was demanding, not necessarily because I wanted to, but because I felt I should.  But no matter how much I gave, it was never enough and I was never acknowledged or experienced by her as the person who was offering what she needed.  I was constantly arguing my case for why she was wrong about me, wrong for blaming me; I continued telling her how much I was doing, why she should appreciate me.  But it never made a difference.  I was forever stuck in the role of the one who wouldn’t provide what she really needed.

After what felt like eons of giving and giving and continually being told and experienced as the one that wasn’t giving, I started to feel differently.  I started to feel like I shouldn’t have to provide these things that she demanded from me and felt entitled to.  I started to argue with my own sense of should and rethink what I should be willing to offer.  I also started to argue with her about whether or not it was right or fair for her to expect this service from me.

And so, for the next few years, we remained locked in a new battle, namely, who was right about whether or not I should have to offer the kind of help she required.  I said I shouldn’t have to and she said I should.  What was the truth?

More time passed but we both held our ground, each of us growing more stuck in our positions, convinced of our rightness.  Resentment infiltrated our relationship from top to bottom.

But then something truly unexpected happened, for me.  Something simple but utterly profound.  I don’t know what it will mean for the relationship, but I know that it’s opened up infinite space inside me, a deep okayness and strength, and thoroughly changed my reality.

What happened was this: I realized that at the bottom of this lifelong battle with this woman was a simple truth, a truth that had been shunned, stepped over, stepped around, ignored, and never allowed to the table.  I can say it out loud now, scream it from the rooftops, and here’s what it sounds like: I do not want to be responsible for providing what she needs.  It’s not that I shouldn’t have to (that’s a truth that depends on one’s inner universe), it’s not that I have been responsible and it’s gone unacknowledged; it’s far simpler than all that.  I don’t want it—that’s the whole story.  I don’t want to requires no further dialogue, explanation, or justification.  It sounds like a small turn, like something I already knew, but it was a revelation.  It was a truth that for decades had been forced to hide in the shadows of should and shouldn’t; buried under all the effort, the thousands of words, arguments, and tsunamis of fear and guilt. This truth had been denied permission to be heard or even to exist.

As long as I was still relying on the argument that I shouldn’t have to, I was still dependent on her and everyone else to feel solid in my choice.  The strength of my own truth didn’t yet belong to me.  It was still a truth of consensus, one that had to be agreed upon, and thus something that her rejection was able to undermine.  That I could never be validated in the idea that it wasn’t fair to ask this of me, that I shouldn’t have to, meant that I could never really stand in my own shoes. I could never not feel guilty for my choice even with the awareness that all the doing in the world would still not earn me the place of the one who was doing it.

What freed me was that simple but awe-inspiring shift in awareness and perspective, the appearing of the real truth, the I don’t want to reality.  In that moment of awakening to my own not wanting, I realized that this truth more than any other had been the unacknowledged, unsafe to acknowledge key to unraveling the whole knot.  It wasn’t about not being appreciated for it; it wasn’t about winning the fight that I shouldn’t have to.  It was just about discovering the plain and simple “I don’t want to.”

Remarkably, “I don’t want to” is not up for dialogue, discussion, or agreement.  This truth is not a truth by consensus.  It’s mine wholly, and to some degree, non-negotiable.  When I found my I don’t want to, I found my own two feet planted firmly on the ground, weighted and strong.  I found clarity and with it, freedom.  This other person no longer held the power to allow or deny me my truth.

What I’ve noticed since this awakening is that I am far more able to look at this other person without resentment.  What is is and I don’t have to defend it anymore.  And simultaneously, I don’t feel the same fear, fear of the guilt inspired by her belief about what I should be willing to offer, fear of being accused of being bad.  Oddly, it actually feels like I can enjoy her a whole lot more as well.  The truth, awakened in me, allows me to look at this other person in the eyes, and stand in the light of what’s true, for me.  Where it will take us in the relationship, I have no idea, but whatever happens, I don’t want to has, for me, turned out to be the get out of jail key to freedom.

The post When the Truth Sets You Free appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Very often close friendships, the ones that feel like family, are like family. But what aspect of family — this is the important question. A friend might present a similar challenge as a parent or sibling, and thus elicit the same feeling in us that we had with that family member. We then interpret that feeling as love and attachment. We say that friend is “like family,” because in fact they are. We are often drawn to and surround ourselves with people who remind us of our parents, which then gives us another opportunity to correct the experience that occurred with our early caretakers. This unconscious drive to re-script the past with a new outcome is one reason that we stay hooked into certain long-term but unsatisfying/unhealthy friendships. As we become more self-aware however, we can examine our long-term friendships, particularly the ones that no longer feel good, and investigate what our sense of deep connection is actually built around, and whether that connection is something that we still want or need in our life. The flavor of the relationship may indeed be familiar, and familial, but is it still nourishing to who we are now?

It is easy to talk theoretically about friendship, but what are we to do when an old friend with whom we have a lot of history is no longer someone we like or respect, or worse, is unkind, competitive and/or critical of us? Now don’t misunderstand me… I am not suggesting that we bail when the bumps come or when it no longer feels good all the time. There is no doubt that long-term friendships require seat belts and hard work, and most of the time they are worth the effort. This is not about bumps in the road of friendship. But what about when the effort is no longer producing a relationship that is nourishing or pleasurable — when our old friend is no longer someone we like to be around? Ultimately it should feel good to be around our friends, at least at some level. It certainly should not feel bad. After all, friends are people we choose to include in our life. When it feels bad much of the time, we need to make a change.

Today’s blog is not about relational strategies, however. Rather, it is about our relationship with friendship itself, and specifically how letting go and accepting the true lifespan of a friendship can align with a larger understanding of what friendship really is.

Mistakenly, we are taught that the only way to honor our history with an old friend is to stay in an active relationship. We believe that to let a friendship go because it is no longer nourishing or enjoyable (and may even have become harmful) is to dis-honor our history with that friend and eradicate the place that they occupied in our life. If we acknowledge that the friendship does not serve us any longer, it is tantamount to saying that it never had any value at all. We believe that what is true in the present must be consistent with what was true in the past — one continuous experience. Otherwise the past cannot be true.

Unfortunately, we have it backwards.

When we allow an important history to be infiltrated with resentment and un-friendly feelings, we are in fact not honoring the friendship and not treating it with the love and respect that the friendship’s history deserves. We are injecting something sweet with poison. We don’t know it, but we can hold someone in our heart, actively, in the present moment, honoring the profound place they hold in our life history — and — at the same time, also know that the friendship’s time may have passed. When we can be honest about a friendship, and about the season of life that the friendship belongs in, then, we can be truly grateful for the miracle that a friendship is. Trying to force a friendship to keep bearing fruit past its season is a disservice to its profound nature.

As humans, we are works in process and continually changing throughout life. There are friendships that belong in different places and at different times, with different versions of who we are. Because a friendship’s time has passed does not mean that it was not and is not important — still. To demand that a friendship continue past its rightful time can be an attempt to turn it into something it isn’t, which is to take away from what it is. Sometimes the only way to get to have a forever friendship is to let it go in the form that it was and allow it to take on the form that it needs to be — all the while holding it steady in your heart.

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