Status Updates From Confessioni di un'amica

empathy wasn't always about guessing exactly what someone else was going through; it was about being brave enough to hold space for the not knowing and the impossibility of resolution. This, I think, is the key to ensuring friendships survive and thrive through different life phases. You do not have to travel the same path at the same time. But you can leave a room for their pain in the home of your own imagination.

relational health. What is the status of our relation-ships? are they draining our energy and making us anxious? How do we want to feel when were in the company of friends? What measures can we put in place to make that so? If a friendship ends, how can we reassure ourselves that this does not automatically equate to failure or shame? And how much are we willing to stretch in order to prevent this from happening?

I guess I should be more accepting of people as they are, but I struggle with that with my closest friends when I feel like they have years - if not a lifetime - of self-defeating behaviours that they're unwilling to confront and certainly not willing to change. And that's where my judgey part comes in.

I do think that the most worthwhile friendships allow enough safety for challenge. If we never feel safe enough to say, 'I don't agree with you', the chances are that friendship is flawed.

we can all cope far better than we think; what appears immensely threatening may be highly survivable. What is true of storms in the North Sea may be no less true of the turmoils in our lives.
The storms will die down, we will be battered, a few things will be ripped, but we will eventually - as the sun rises over the spires of Alkmaar - return to safer shores.

But choose instead to feel empathy for your ignorance. I choose instead to leave that arrowhead there, where you have pierced my ribcage, and I will grow around it and this growth will be a deeper human experience than you could ever imagine.

They would look at me, these parents, with self-conscious concern on their brows and a baby clamped to their breast, and I could see the smugness in their eyes. They didn't mean to be smug, but they were… I discovered there was a difference between empathy and pity, between kind consideration and patronising sentiment. 251

Grief is uncomfortable and spiky to look at. People often don't know what to say and would therefore rather remain silent in order to avoid further hurt, as if grief can be heightened by an ill-judged comment. It can't. Grief is absolute. It can't be made any worse than it already is, any more than an animal can become less extinct. They now knew it was more important to say something than nothing.

Brené Brown says that 'shame cannot survive being spoken'." She was right. Once I had started speaking, I couldn't stop. My sense of personal failure dissipated.
Sharing became a necessity.

When you're facing this absence alone, it can feel unmooring: a dream-like state where you wonder if you made it all up.

What I had learned over the preceding years was that friendship, in these circumstances, was not about the doing as much as the being. It was so lovely to get those auber-gines and flowers, but the real meaning lay behind the action. It was the intent to mark and acknowledge what we were going through that was important.

This, then, was the place I found myself when my truest friends revealed themselves. Emma was constantly in touch via text and FaceTime. She also called Justin to see how I really was and, in the weeks that followed, the two of them kept a lovingly close eye on me. Others followed suit. Our friends Bette and Sinead immediately offered to do a grocery shop and leave it on the doorstep.