How Are You, Really?: Living Your Truth One Answer at a Time by Jenna Kutcher

Author:Jenna Kutcher [Kutcher, Jenna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: self help
ISBN: 9780063221956
Google: LehCEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

11

Tacos and Truth:

How to Create Your Authentic Community

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

—ANAÏS NIN

“I’m beginning to doubt that having long-term friendships is even a possibility anymore,” my friend Brittany said, as she sipped her margarita. I reminded her we had been friends for fifteen years—and she said, “But that’s different.” I heard the meaning behind the words: finding true friends in each stage of life, the kind that will stick around, isn’t an easy process.

I’m guessing you feel this, too. As busy people, we find ourselves squeezing playdates and dinners and birthday celebrations into already full calendars. We send emoji check-ins to that new colleague who seems cool, hoping it might turn into a someday friendship. We try to reconnect with old friends over the noise of toddler tantrums or airport layovers. But life gets in the way, and things fizzle out, and sometimes, we’re left wondering why.

How do we keep a friendship alive? What does community look like as we age and evolve and let our identities transform? How can we feasibly foster the types of relationships we can bring our full selves to when we’re so damn busy all the time?

As we grow through each decade, it feels like there’s a fork in the road that reveals how the paths we take and the decisions we make can begin to divide us. Things like careers, relationships, children, health, geographic distance, and plain ol’ convenience all impact the vitality of our friendships, and our ability to create or keep the closeness we crave. Year after year, it becomes harder to create the kind of community that transcends the life stage we currently find ourselves in.

Remember when it was easy? Remember when our only criteria for friendship was whether or not we shared the same enthusiasm for Lisa Frank erasers or Twinkies or Full House? When did it all get so complicated? As grown-ups, the stakes seem so much higher. Do we share similar values? Does she hang out at places I can’t afford? Are we in the same season of life? What the heck happens if our kids or spouses can’t stand each other?

So, I get why we would want to try to blame our lack of close, intimate friends on honorable things. Like grueling workloads, or changing dynamics of parenthood, or moving cities for a new job, or the ever vague but well-meaning, “I’m just doin’ me for a little while.” It’s easy to wish for the kind of instant friendships that don’t require any clutter clearing, where we can jump right in as relative strangers and slip straight into the BFF zone where we’re loved openly and unconditionally. So many of us dream of the girls’ nights out when we spill the reality of our world and laugh endlessly over martinis, and yet most of our relationships are watered down to pleasantries or a random

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