This Morning, No 26

On beloveds.

This morning, I felt a bit…healed.

That sounds hyperbolic but I mean it. I spent this past weekend with my college best friends. We talked for three days straight. It was incredibly healing.

And for the past few mornings I’ve experienced a bit of a come down. My usual early hours of coveted solitude have felt lonely. I snuck down for one early morning during our weekend together. Sitting in the morning sun, I found myself hoping one of them would wake up soon and come chat. Truly, an aberrant feeling for me. I can’t figure out necessarily why I find it so easy to be with them, but there is a deep relief in spending time with people who totally know you and have known you for years. There are aspects of yourself that are just seen by them and don’t need to be explained. Though we are all scattered across the country, and I am famously bad at keeping in touch, I feel that they are permanently imprinted in me and vice versa.  Always with me in some capacity. Being with them is like being with a part of myself that I’ve been slightly estranged from and missed dearly.

When I say I’m obsessed with my friends, I mean it. I think they are the smartest, weirdest, most intelligent, kind, creative, surprising, beautiful and hilarious people.

Since this past weekend, the word miracle has been roving around my mind. Friendships are miracles.

Mir.a.cle

noun

a highly improbable or extraordinary event, development or accomplishment that brings very welcome consequences.¹ 

Friendship is all those things. The coming together of two people who were previously going about their own lives, randomly cross paths and decide that they are in some way meant to link up and move forward in life together. I think that is extraordinary. Then that relationship must continue to develop, through tending, life events re-shaping it, and the continual recommitment to one another. If you can hold on to each other through the ebbs and flows of a life, that is maybe one of the greatest accomplishments you can hope for.

Unlike a romantic or familial relationship, you are never legally committed to one another. Which makes the devotion to one another feel so meaningful. You are only participating because you genuinely want to be in relationship with each other. I know there can be toxic friendships too, but I do think overwhelmingly lifelong friends are generally of a net-positive nature.

I kept thinking during the weekend that my friendships, with my college friends and other beloveds, are some of the best decisions I have ever made. But a friendship is not really a decision. It’s just natural attraction, like magnets. The creation of a friendship or a friend group is one of those experiences where you can’t help but feel that there is something outside of you that is bringing things into your life benevolently, that are meant for you. When I think back to the beginning of each one of my friendships, there is this moment that echoes the feeling of falling in love.

Little miracles.

It was sort of odd the insistency of the word miracle in my brain during the whole weekend and the days proceeding. It kept appearing like an intrusive thought, but a pleasant one. Repeating itself to me so that I was forced to pay attention to it. The reason the notion of miracle was front of mind I believe, was that it was trying to draw my attention to the divine nature of friendship.

Another definition.

Mir.a.cle

noun

a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.² 

Similar: mystery

The first conversation we all had together this weekend, chairs pulled tight in a circle, we were so excited to be together that we were basically screaming at one another. It felt so good to be back in the middle of a gentle, loving cacophony. I had my sunglasses on, so my little happy tears hidden from sight.

There is something decidedly sincere about my group of friends. We are trying to go there, get into the nitty gritty of conversations, share what feels true to us, and be there to hear what feels true to each other. Most of our weekend was spent in various assemblages of circles, in chairs by the creek, around a dinner table, on towels by the lake. Constantly circling up and chatting about things that felt true. In Elise Loehnen’s recent conversation with Dre Bendewald, the founder of The Art of Circling, they discuss the sacred nature of women gathering. Basically, just women coming together, telling their truth, and holding space for one another. An ancient practice. In a way, we were Circling all weekend, and it did feel like a sort of remembering. I don’t feel that the idea of circling is exclusive to women, but I do think it’s about being in community with people who you feel truly safe with.

It reminded me of a conversation between Dr. Thema Bryant (the current president of the American Psychological Association) and Jessica Gill on this podcast awhile back. They were discussing this idea of decolonizing psychology, meaning moving away from the assumption that the individual is the unit to be therapized, and moving towards considering one’s social, economic, and political context. Highlighting cultural or indigenous ways of healing, which is often healing in community.

She recounts a story about American psychologists who went to Rwanda after the genocide with the intention of offering aid.

“One of the community leaders reported that ‘these people said they were going to help us heal so we let them in and they did not have any music, they did not have any dancing, and they separated us and put us into these dark little rooms and wanted us to re-tell all the terrible things about our lives. That was not healing so we had to ask them to leave.”

Something alchemical occurs when you are circled up with your people. Sometimes there is an intensity of sharing and confiding in someone one on one that can be overwhelming. There is relief in having multiple people in the experience with you, not observing it. Dr. Bryant says sometimes, you are able to “receive truth on another level when it comes from a member of your community.” I would add even if that truth is not pointed directly towards you. The truth of a conversation can wash over you, and you can just observe how deeply it resonated, without sharing a word.

Don’t worry, it wasn’t all this deeply sappy. We went to a large flea market where my cortisol spiked so high with excitement, I barely saw any of my friends while there; pacing the aisles like my life, or at least my living room, depended on it. There was mundanity, bill splitting, dehydration, laundry, but that all also felt sweet. To just be back in each other’s orbit, doing all the little things required of a life.  

The state of the world has been feeling a bit rough out there for awhile now. Being human, embodied, at this time in our history can sometimes feel like we got the short end of the stick; like we entered the play during the final act. But today, I feel like sitting in the miracle of friendships. What an amazing gift we get as humans. The ability to befriend one another.

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Other flash thoughts from this past week:

I love watching people eat food they’ve prepared on a park bench alone. There is something very intentional about it that I just adore. They took the time and made this meal and have brought themselves to this nice bench to eat it. So many people have sat there before them. Imprints. They position themselves in just the right spot to enjoy their meal. How lovely. You can tell they’ve prepared it by the Tupperware they are eating out of. Always very weathered.

Your intuition, or your knowing, is so quiet. It speaks to you in whispers. I wouldn’t blame you if you never listened. This world is too loud. 

The last time I saw my dog Wallie, I didn’t know it would be the last time. What else am I experiencing for the last time right now that I am unaware of? What about you?

1. Oxford Languages and Google

2. Oxford Languages and Google