Letter 10: Delicate threads of friendship…
Dear my fiercely loyal daughters 1 & 2,
I missed writing a letter to you last week, as I was trying to figure out what topic to write on next. I know that personal growth and development have no boundaries. Self-confidence and lack thereof can also have no boundaries. While I thought I was done talking about self-confidence - I am not! I realized that in whatever I write, I will continue to talk about it. Even with this new series of letters I write on relationships. Why?
I was talking about this just yesterday with a couple of smart women - a mother-daughter duo that I adore - the mother being my contemporary/friend and the daughter a rising sophomore in college. We were talking about friendships that come our way and the ones we choose in life. How they impact us and how our need to fit in sometimes is driven by our need to feed our self-confidence but ends up shattering it.
Today, I want to talk about just one experience from way back when in my life. A lesson, my mother, your nani taught me. I was probably 13 or 14. I had one good friend in school. She and I were 'best' friends. And we got into a big fight. Over something so trivial but I remember there were days or weeks where we went from bickering about it, not talking to each other to potentially ending the friendship there and then.
My mother, as always was the sounding board I had. Each day after school, I would be eating lunch with me sitting at the head of the dining table and her sitting to my right. I would be pouring my heart out to her about the atrocities this said 'best' friend put me through! She listened to me patiently. For about a week or longer. And then one day asked me - if this friendship was important to me more than the argument or fight I had with my friend.
I said - "but what she is doing to me is so unfair, mummy; how do I just forget all this."
She responded very calmly to that. She said, "In life you are born with relationships - like the ones you have with your blood relatives. These are like a thread or a cord so to speak that is very tough. You fight with your family, get hurt, sacrifice for them, get hurt again, fight again - but the thread that ties you together, remains. Might be tattered - but relationships are severed only when something unthinkable happens, the bond of being same blood is too strong."
She continued, "You also form friendships in life with people you are not related to at all by blood. These friendships are like threads that can easily break much easier like with a single fight." I don't remember if she said it out loud - but I feel like what she really meant to say was - these threads that hold your friendship together need constant reinforcement. Through forgiveness and forgetting - if you want to have the bond to grow and stay stronger for long.
More than anything, the imagery she painted for me was very clear. I could not imagine that thread of friendship breaking between my friend and me, and somehow I got the courage to apologize (even though I remember thinking - I am in the right!!), I swallowed my pride and made up with this friend. And if there is such a thing called 'best' friend, till date - at the age of 46, she is it.
She was there for me when my mom was sick and on her deathbed. She was there when I needed support in getting a copy of my father's book printed so he could see it before he passed away, through the thick of the COVID pandemic. And all this while I lived in the US and she was in India.
I am so thankful for those words of wisdom that I received from my mom. Something about the vivid description of this friendship thread, made me realize that relationships need nurturing. So today I can confidently say that even though I have a few friends - most of them fit the category of 'best' friends.
And what does this all have to do with self-confidence? I think what my mom saw in my childhood friendship was the way my friend always had my back. She made me laugh and would fight for a place for me if I even uttered a single word. Our fierce loyalty to our friendship is something my mom had seen and she knew its importance. She knew how critical it is to surround oneself with people who build you up in the long run. Being able to recognize these qualities probably came from her experiences. It is all so intertwined but in the letters that follow, I hope to write to you about some aspects of building strong relationships and friendships and how to know when to sever a relationship.
Your lifelong voice of reason (just like your nani was to me!),
Mumma