The Qualities of Friendship

This year is the year of the Dog, according to the Chinese Zodiac.  The dog is known as one of the most loyal animals to people. Some Buddhist Traditions believe that dogs who are companions to humans will attain automatic enlightenment after they die, not having to reincarnate – because they are the only animal on the earth that actually loves, adores and cherishes human beings.  They keep our hearts open and offer us unconditional love, even when we feel unlovable.   Isn’t this really what a true friend does?

Friendship is one of those aspects of life that make the journey enjoyable, warm and supportive.  It is something that we all yearn for and also can be so absent, because we each carry a unique place of aloneness within ourselves. 

How is it, though, that our friendships change as we journey through life? I’ve been meditating on this for the last year, as I’ve had challenging experiences with endings of friendships, and experiencing frenemies, while inviting in new friendships.  How does one identify a friend?  A true friend?

Here are some qualities that I have considered make a great friend:

1)      They have your best interests at heart. There is no competition. There is only a true desire for your happiness and well-being.

2)      You can share your vulnerabilities, fears and concerns with them, trusting they will not use that against you.

3)      They see your heart’s truth and don’t listen to other people’s opinions of you.  This isn’t blind love. Rather they see you, all that you are and all that you do. They don’t just take the facts of you such as your bank balance, your family dynamics, your past failures as indicators of how much they accept you. They see your courage, strength and challenges and admire you for that.

4)      You have shared interests. You feel inspired together – experience wonder and awe at life’s joys and mysteries. Whether you enjoy painting, travelling, eating awesome food, long walks, t.v. shows…you enjoy each other’s company and it makes life sparkle.

5)      They offer a compassionate and empathetic ear and can provide feedback and solutions for your life’s challenges. In essence, you feel supported and understood.

6)      They will also challenge you to become a better, healthier person who wants you to meet your potential. They won’t let you make excuses for yourself and they will push you towards your goals and dreams.

7)      They will honour your boundaries and won’t see it as rejection or criticism. They want you to be comfortable, at ease and feeling good in your life.  They will respect your needs and voice and limits. 

8)      You can communicate easily and naturally. No need for complexities, misunderstandings, or feeling constantly triggered.  You just get each other.

9) The most obvious quality is that you can relate. There is something about your lives that you share. Either something you have survived. Or you have a similar lifestyle. Or you have had shared experiences. Often times the greatest friendships are formed because of adversity or common struggles.

So what do you think? Is there anything you want to add to the list?  

No one person can ever meet all of these needs, but these qualities of friendship can be used to assess the level of friendliness wherever you are and whoever you interact with. 

How friendly is your workplace, what you do for entertainment, an intimate partner, your clothes, your food, a new friend?

Life is too short to be around unsupportive environments. 

See if you can assess your life based on this list and see how much friendliness you have.  

What needs to change if your life isn’t friendly?

Understanding what you want in your relationships

What if every relationship is here to teach you something? About yourself? It could be about growing in compassion, self-care, boundaries, personal standards. Regardless, they are here to teach you something.

What I have discovered from facilitating Soul Constellations sessions (work that looks at family and ancestral patterns) for over 7 years, is that we are all very interconnected and that relationship dynamics inform how we dance in the world.  

We each have lessons around love, assertiveness, getting our needs met, acceptance and compassion for our human frailties.  And it begins at home, whether we like it or not. 

Relationships are about fluidity. There are no timelines or cookie cutter guarantees. They "succeed", "fail" and "transform" all the time.

I have had a few “failed” relationships in my life.  Yes, I went through the process of shame and self-blame, feeling like there is something wrong with me with each ending.  I didn't like that some of them became icky and conflict-driven. I wished some of them could have ended on a healthier note. Yet, that's why some relationships just have to stop. Because they don't work and they hurt.

I grew up in a divorced home, and before divorce became common, I was of the households where people thought I was a broken person because of it.  My parents divorcing was the healthiest move they could have made. But there was still a hidden stigma about it that carried over into my self-esteem, where I believed that I was undeserving of healthy, functional love and relationships . 

My parents never fully healed that experience. They still hold hurt feelings, blame, and regret. It is tragic and they have wasted a lot of years on unresolved emotional pain.

What was revealed at this past weekend’s Soul Constellations gathering was that my parents just failed at understanding each other.  There was confusion in their relationship about what the other wanted, so it created unmet needs, false expectations and verbal fighting. No one was truly at fault for the ending, other than not being able to really listen and accept who the other person was, without judgment, and make a decision if the relationship would be good and healthy for them individually.  

That’s true relationship empowerment – when we know what we want, communicate with another to see if you're on the same page, then get moving on it as a couple. 

If I were to look back at the relationships I still feel angsty about, the ones that still have a negative emotional connection to them and ended poorly with conflict or hurt, I can see that what was really happening was that we could not fundamentally understand the other. Whether that be through generational, cultural, gender, life paths or political differences. We just couldn’t breakthrough and find that tender place that would make our hearts open to each other.  

I am grateful for those opportunities to understand another and the differences in lifestyle, perspectives and their life journey.  They just could not be compatible with my life, goals, unique self and need for well-being, nor could I be with them.

I have been in two long-term relationships before meeting my current fiancé. The marked difference in this one is the natural trust, ease, and support that we give each other.  We can chat forever, be there through the emotional healing, and encourage the best to come out. Because we love and see each other’s hearts. We have compatible viewpoints. In simple essence: we relate.  We are not perfect in body, finances, family dynamics. But we get each other without question. Yes, the relationship will transform. And it will have an ending in physical death. But the feeling of knowing and love that is exchanged is there.

It has taken a whole healing journey for me to really feel comfortable in my own skin.  

I have been in mismatched relationships, relationships that weren’t clean and honest, abusive dynamics, relationships where I lost myself in order to be somebody I was not, trying to fit into their mold in order to be loved and appreciated.  

The inner work, healing and connection to my core values and truth, have been an important piece on this path.  Some things I came to realize about myself and the relationships I want in my life were the following:  I need affection. I need to be with people who still believe in love. I need to be with those who appreciate artistic expression. I need to be with those who are open to spiritual experiences. I need to be with people who are empathetic and are fine with emotional connection.  I need to be with people who want to know me and be there.  I need to be with people who want to become more caring, aware and healthy.

You see, these were my missing pieces in my family of origin. So I had to re-train myself to know that what I yearn for is exactly what I need to create in my closest relationships.

It’s not easy, as there are always layers and layers to ourselves, our dynamics and who we are.  Yet doing the work truly leads to the rewards in who we let into our lives, hearts, bodies and spirits.

What do you want in your relationships? What do you need to feel loved? Are you getting this now? Why or why not?

Orphan Shame & Self-compassion

Recently I did a personal growth piece that showed me a shame layer that I had tucked away in my consciousness.  When I was 8 years old, I came back to Canada with my sister (my mother and stepfather stayed behind) from living 3 years in Jamaica.  

We had survived a robbery while we were living there and within days, we were sent back home.  My sister and I lived with my aunts and uncles for about 6 months as we tried to normalize life.  I was relieved. I didn’t like living in Jamaica. I felt the abuse, oppression and violence there, which really was the history of slavery, and it was ripe in the cultural pain.  I also was an outsider as a privileged racial minority, and could feel the resentments and weird treatment from people around me. There was very little compassion and empathy coming my way, which I understand in the bigger scheme of racial oppression. However, as a child, it created the suffering of social isolation and exclusion for me.   

I also didn’t like the school system that used the belt to punish kids. I wanted to be back in Canada in a gentler school system where you could play, have a fun at recess and get to know other kids easily without the tensions of race and class.

As much as I wanted to be back in Canada, I also wanted my mom with me, which is natural.  It was unknown when she would return and join us. As weeks passed, my heart retracted and I had to soothe myself to sleep. No one around me, except my sister, knew my pain.   I was now the weird cousin who had a Jamaican accent who had no parents around her.  My aunts and uncles did everything to create stability for us.  I enjoyed the familiar surroundings.  

At the time, my mother was considering staying in Jamaica, having our aunts and uncles raise us.  I picked up on the adults’ concerns and messages around me. “Poor Heather”, “She doesn’t have any parents”, “What’s going to happen to her?”. 

For most of my life I internalized this message of “poor Heather” and I believed there was something wrong with me because I was so different than everyone else. I was deficient. I must have been so unlovable to have no parents who wanted to care for me.  It’s no wonder that my favourite movie at the time was Little Orphan Annie.  I identified so strongly with her character. I was an orphan with parents who were still alive and were still deemed as my caregivers.  I took in the shame that my mother, father and stepfather should have been carrying.  I believed that I deserved to be rejected and have no one care to come for me. 

When the truth of it is that I had bad parents. Adults who couldn’t care less to become better people. They were immature people. Escape artists who dumped their problems for other people to handle. They just wanted what they wanted. I was a burden in their eyes and too heavy for them to carry.

For most of my life, I’ve felt like the odd duck around families that functioned well, stayed together and showed normalcy. There was a sense that I could never get it together and I was the broken person. By recognizing that I have worth, I am strong for going through this and still have my heart in tact, I can see my goodness.  I am loveable even though I didn’t have people who had my back.  I belong to humanity, regardless of how I was treated.

Better yet, there are blessings in walking as the orphan. I am someone who isn’t afraid to be different. There is an inner strength in me that knows how to soothe myself and to not succumb to peer or family pressure to be a certain way. The only healing I have to do is face the loneliness that not having parents created in me, and to know that I deserve people around me who care, are empathetic and want to see me and know me. People who actually miss me. It has also made me highly compassionate for the people who feel different and unlovable, the outsiders of their family system.

Shame has so much to teach us. Often times it is usually an illusion and something that has been wrongfully put on us from a young age.  It lacks compassion and ease and keeps us separated from the world, telling us we are bad and deficient and beyond repair.  It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where we behave in ways that keep making this happen.

Here is an exercise that may help you tap into and find some resolution with areas where you may feel shame.  As a point to remember, shame is any area where we feel inherently bad, defective, wrong or weird.  

Get a journal to write down your answers to the following:

1) Identify a time in your life now where you feel lonely, misunderstood, hurt or rejected.

2) When was there a time in your life when you were younger where you felt the same way?  What happened? 

3) Meditate on that younger version of yourself.  What did he/she need or want? Why did she feel so wrong or ashamed? What was really happening in your life at that time?

4) Write a compassionate letter to that younger part of yourself, reassuring him or her that no matter what happened, she/he is still lovable and wanted and needed in this world. Offer a new perspective of what's really going on. Really find out what you decided about yourself and life.  

5) Reflect on how your younger self's experiences have impacted your reality now.  What are new decisions or beliefs you can make for yourself?

5) Take time to feel your feelings either by spending time on your own or asking a friend to be there for you. Your feelings matter and you deserve to have love and compassion in your life.

I would love to help you through any illusions of shame you may be carrying, where you can make new choices and decisions that allow you to step into your truth, personal happiness and feelings of self-compassion. I am someone who holds no judgment towards how you have had to cope or manage in your life.  Through my experience, tools and compassion I can guide you into healthier love and self-acceptance, bringing a deeper sense of who you are and a more enriching life.  

You can book a FREE "Be Your Own Best Friend" Session at: www.blossomingheart.ca