Some friends need a hug. Others need a gentle reminder that they are not allowed to dodge their own birthday.
Amongst Friends
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My latest theory on friendship is that sometimes you have to gang up on your friends. Recently, a group of us ganged up on a friend who is going to celebrate a big birthday and did not want a fuss to be made.
Now, I know a lot of these people, and I kind of identify as one of them where the birthday comes and the idea of celebrating yourself is so uncomfortable, and people going out of their way to make an effort for your birthday is so uncomfortable that you are just like, “Forget it. I do not celebrate my birthday. We are going to move on.”
And I had a little bit of this back and forth with this very dear friend, and I had actually suggested and offered to plan something big for her. You know, have a bunch of people out to my place. And right now, given the state that I am in, I am kind of overwhelmed. I have some health stuff going on, and that actually felt unviable to me.
So we had this beautiful exchange where she said to me, “That feels like too much,” and I said to her, “All I want to do is to do this for you, because you do not have someone who is planning something for you, and that just feels so wrong. And I love you so much, and I want you to feel so celebrated and special and made a big deal of, but you are probably right, I cannot pull it off this year, and I am sorry.”
And she was crying and I was crying, and it was kind of a beautiful exchange, because I wanted to do something for her so badly that I could not do and she knew that, but she felt the love. I know she felt the love.
And so fast forward, I am talking to a couple of friends, and we are like, “Okay, she is going to resist us, but we know her so well. She does not like to receive care. She is super good at giving it, I mean the best at giving it, but does not like to receive care like all of us. So we are just going to bully her into it. We are just going to decide we are going to be like, ‘We are doing this for you, we are set, we are doing a birthday party for you, and you are not allowed to resist.’ We are just going to do it.”
So I am telling the story because this has happened on so many levels with this group of friends that has gotten really, really close and has allowed a real intimacy into our own stuff, the stuff that makes us who we are and makes us human, and the things that are these hidden obstacles to us pushing through some old beliefs or patterns. And so we know each other’s stuff so intimately, and this interesting thing happens that the whole group knows, and we are all kind of ganging up on each one of us to push us through them, little by little, with a lot of gentleness and love and humor along the way.
And so there are so many things that we have pushed people through in terms of, I do not know, like there is a lot of money stuff, there is a lot of charging your worth. There is a lot of not letting people over-give. There is a lot of forcing people to receive care. There is a lot of not letting people hide when they tend to hide, and saying things like, “Hey, we see you hiding over there, but we do not want you to hide. We want you to be here, right here with us, because we love you.”
And so this idea of having a level of intimacy with friends, and especially in a group of friends, where we are so intimate and we know each other so well that we can see when you are trying to escape the vortex of love and care, and we do not let you escape the vortex of love and care. We just pull you back in. That is one of the gifts that I have received from finally being able and willing to be open in friendship.
I have always been lucky enough to have a lot of wonderful, loving people around me, but I have not been willing until I learned more recently to open myself to it.
So yes, sometimes you have to gang up on your friends to not let them go down the path and pattern that you have seen them go down so many times. Gang up in the most loving but sometimes firm way possible.
Thanks for listening. All my love.
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