Vulnerability Without Judgment: Shifting Parent-Adult Child Dynamics

Relationship and Friendship expert Shasta Nelson shares powerful insights on transforming parent-adult child relationships and building meaningful connections throughout life.

Emphasizing her Friendship Triangle framework of positivity, consistency, and vulnerability.

1.     The Triangle of Healthy Relationships : Shasta introduces a powerful framework for understanding relationships, which consists of three essential components: positivity, consistency, and vulnerability. To foster a strong connection with our adult children, we need to ensure that our interactions are filled with positive emotions, that we spend consistent time together, and that we allow ourselves to be vulnerable. This triangle is not just applicable to parent-child relationships but can also enhance our friendships and other connections in life.

2.     The Importance of Vulnerability : One of the most profound insights from our conversation is the idea that vulnerability is a gift we can give to our children. By opening up about our own experiences, regrets, and feelings, we create a safe space for them to share their own thoughts and emotions. Shasta emphasizes that it’s crucial for parents to ask their adult children about their childhood experiences and to listen without being defensive. This kind of openness can lead to healing and a deeper understanding of each other.

3.     Building Our Own Support Systems : As parents, it’s easy to become overly focused on our relationships with our children, sometimes to the detriment of our own well-being. Shasta reminds us that cultivating our friendships is essential for our happiness and health. By prioritizing our own social connections, we not only enrich our lives but also become better equipped to support our children. After all, a fulfilled parent can foster a more positive and nurturing environment for their kids.

I truly believe that this episode is a must-listen for anyone navigating the challenges of parenting adult children or looking to strengthen their friendships. Join us as we explore these themes and more! 🎧💖

Follow us on social media and visit biteyourtonguepodcast.com. Email us at biteyourtongue@gmail.com.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Gift of Vulnerability
• 7:30 Introduction to Friendship and Connection
• 14:10 The Friendship Triangle Explained
• 23:10 Healing Conversations with Adult Children
• 30:20 Building Your Own Support System
• 34:40 Combating Loneliness and Deepening Friendships

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Allow yourself to be vulnerable, you're bringing your defenses down. That's probably the biggest gift a parent can give because, let's face it, you could do everything perfect as a parent and a kid is still going to have issues because they were raised by a perfect parent. There's nothing you can do where you're not going to have issues. But I think the biggest gift that we can do as parents is to open up that conversation and to say, like, was childhood hard for you and what do you wish I had done more of, and what do you wish I had done less of? Where were the moments that really impacted you as a child and where was I in that? Be interested and not defensive.

Speaker 2: 0:45

Hey everyone, welcome to Bite your Tongue the podcast. Join me, your host, Denise Gorin, as we explore the ins and outs of building healthy relationships with our adult children. Together we'll speak with experts, share heartfelt stories and get timely advice addressing topics that matter most to you. Get ready to dive deep and learn to build and nurture deep connections with our adult children and, of course, when to bite our tongues. So let's get started. Welcome back to a brand new episode of Bite your Tongue the podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:19

It's been a whirlwind summer for me. I've been traveling, soaking up family time and, best of all, visiting my new grandson. People always say grandchildren are pure joy, but wow, I was not prepared at all for how much my heart would expand. But what's been extra special is watching my husband with our new grandbaby. When our kids were younger he worked such long hours and didn't have a lot of those baby days, but this time he got a weekend all to himself with our daughter, son-in-law and the baby, while I was off to my 50th high school reunion which is a story in itself and when he came home he looked at me and he said Denise, that was the most wonderful weekend of my life. My heart just melted.

Speaker 2: 2:06

But anyway, speaking of that 50th reunion, that brings me right into today's topic friendship. 50 years went by in a flash, but it was meaningful to reconnect with so many people I hadn't seen in decades. But today we're not talking about old friends, we're talking about new friendships. We're not talking about old friends, we're talking about new friendships, specifically the friendships we can, and sometimes can't, build with our adult children. Can we shift our relationships as they grow? Can we repair what might be strained? There's so much to unpack here, which is why I'm thrilled to welcome friendship expert Shasta Nelson to help us dive into the emotional heart of connection and how it shapes our families. If you've ever wondered how to stay close to your adult children without smothering them, or how to navigate the tricky dance between parenting and friendship, you're in the right place.

Speaker 2: 2:59

Shasta is one of today's most trusted voices on human connection, a TEDx speaker, a leading friendship expert and an author of three game-changing books on how our relationships. Listen to this our relationships actually shape our health, happiness and work. Today, she's helping us apply her tools to one of the most complex and evolving relationships of all the one between parent and child. But that's only the first half of our conversation. In the second part of the episode, we shift our focus to another connection challenge many of us face at this age building new friendships as we get older. So let's get started. Welcome, shasta. I thank you so much for joining us and I'm so looking forward to chatting with you. Yeah, thanks for having me. So tell me, how did you get into this whole world of healthy connections, strengthening connections and friendship? Never knew people, really studied this or were experts in this, so how did this begin for you? Can you tell our listeners a little bit about that?

Speaker 1: 4:00

Yeah, I mean my first career, I have my master's of divinity and I was a pastor. Oh my gosh, I know. So I go back to that every once in a while because the origins of that my world growing up, that was where community existed right, we all had relationships and belonging and a sense of a support system. After 10 years of that, I ended up deciding that I really felt much more excited about bringing community out into the world. Not necessarily fewer and fewer people are coming into churches to get that and I really felt like I wanted to take it out broader than that. So for me, I made the switch and did some life coaching and in that space I just kept hearing this ongoing issue. I would always ask like, who are your friends and what are they saying about this? And people weren't hiring me for friendship back then. It was they were hiring me for career development or divorce questions. And I would always say like, who's supporting you and what are they saying? Knowing that that determined so much of somebody's success with whatever their goals were. And I just kept hearing a reoccurring theme with all these amazing successful people on that at that time a lot of women and just saying I don't really talk to anyone about this or, since the divorce, I really don't confide in this. All these different circumstances that I was like, wow, people are not confiding, they don't have that support system in place, they're not being really vulnerable with very many people.

Speaker 1: 5:15

So it was really initially 15 years ago, trying to find resources for people who were looking for friendship, who I felt needed friendship. And it was in that space, denise, where I was like, wow, there is not anybody talking about this, there is no really good resources out there. That turned into I started the first female friendship matching website back in the day. That turned into me matching women up, doing retreats and conferences and friendship accelerators and workshops and blogs and books and all the things. But that's 15 years ago and in that space, I've just been researching, teaching. I think, especially as women, we get so obsessed with parent-child relationships and family relationships and or spouse relationships and we just haven't always paid attention to the relationships that actually impact our health and happiness the most, which is our friendship. So, yeah, I've just been in that space and I'm passionate about all healthy relationships, but yeah, I just feel like taking a stand for friendships has been important.

Speaker 2: 6:12

I really agree with you. As you're saying this, I'm thinking to myself. I'm almost 70. And what I hear over and over again among my friends and we could also have tons of friends you might look at someone and say, oh my gosh, they have so many friends and yet that person can still feel very lonely. There's still a loneliness. So I get that. That's really important. But right now we're going to start off talking about our adult children, because there's so much estrangement nowadays with parents and their adult children. I think when you're sad and when you don't have a healthy relationship with this person that you loved and nurtured and supported all your life, it's hard to step out and make new friends because you don't feel good about yourself. So I want to start by helping them at least have some kind of relationship that works with their adult kids. And I want to go back to your history, because I know you don't do this podcast anymore, but you had it for a while. Say it out loud, because friend intimacy or something.

Speaker 1: 7:09

Frentimacy like friendship, intimacy yeah right so I couldn't quite.

Speaker 2: 7:13

And I was listening to a few episodes and during it you said your relationship with your own mother was a bit prickly. From a personal perspective, what steps you took to make it a little un-prickly? Is it just a healthy relationship? What is the relationship that parents should strive for with their adult kid?

Speaker 1: 7:32

So many questions in there. Love it, yeah, I mean and I would go back to say I would well we can get into this too in a second about like friendship, as, like I would say, one of the most healthy things we can do in relationship with our kids is go build our friendships up and have healthy friendships, and so I think sometimes the answer is through our friendships, so having our friends who can we can share our broken hearts with and also have a reality check from our friends and people who can help pull up mirrors, and so our friends can play such important roles in this. But yes, I definitely have personal experience in this front in terms of a lot of my moms, and my disagreements have been political over a decade and I would say from my perspective I would say I always feel like she's trying to change me. I don't have a problem with us having different political views, but if you feel like every conversation you have, somebody is doing little jabs or just kind of trying to like pretend you're not smart enough and you don't know all the details and you need to hear the other side, it does something to you and it keeps disintegrating that relationship. We've never been estranged, but I certainly call less frequently and I certainly find myself, when she wants to come visit, finding myself being like, oh, do I have the energy for that?

Speaker 1: 8:49

One of my favorite stories that I think about when I think about my mom is I remember she came to visit me when I was living in San Francisco. I was speaking at some women's event that night and so I asked her if she wanted to come to my talk and I was teaching the friendship triangle, which we can get into here a tiny bit. But basically, when we look at all healthy relationships and this is family relationships, team relationships, romantic relationships, when we look at every healthy relationship model that's out there, there's three things that are present in all of them and we can use different words for them, but every single thing we want in a relationship is a synonym of these three things, an outcome of these three things or an illustration example of these three things. Those three things are positivity, consistency and vulnerability. So we can come back and dive deeper into that. But we were driving home from this event and I remember clearly we were coming across the Golden Gate Bridge and my mom said thank you for inviting me tonight. She was being very affirming about my talk and she said so.

Speaker 1: 9:39

I think if we wanted to strengthen our relationship, we probably need to increase our consistency. Like we don't interact enough, we don't see each other enough. And I remember my stomach just getting all tight inside and I was so impressed with her for trying to think through how we could talk about our relationship and I really wanted to meet her in that moment that there's a part of me that just wanted to keep it easy and be like, yeah, that would be good. And I realized that I needed to really speak up too in that moment and I said yes, yes, I said you're right, and I have to be really honest with you.

Speaker 1: 10:12

For me, the starting point has to be positivity. It has to be positive emotions, because I can't just increase consistency if it doesn't feel good. Like if it doesn't feel good to interact with you, if every time you're at my house or every time we're on the phone, I get off feeling bad we're psychological animals I'm not going to want to increase my consistency with you. So until we get that positivity down to me, that's just foundational.

Speaker 1: 10:36

When I go out and teach workshops, the research shows that we have to have five positive emotions for every negative emotion to keep a relationship healthy. And to me that's just huge, because the more stressors in a relationship, the more bad history there's been in the relationship, the more times somebody feels judged. We have two choices to get that ratio in balance. One is figure out how to decrease the negative, whether that's like forgive each other, set boundaries, solve that stressor, or the only other option is to increase the positive emotions. But when you're in a relationship where there's not enough pleasant emotions like hope and joy and inspiration and affirmation and acts of service and kindness and fun, and you know all the things we want, then you just can't do the other two requirements of relationships.

Speaker 2: 11:19

So yeah, for me that was a turning point with my mom I want to get into this triangle, but I want to ask you something. A lot of parents I talk to feel like the pressure's all on them, they're walking on eggshells, they're saying all the positive things, they're trying so hard. What part does the adult kid play in this? And how do you build an authentic friendship when the parents always feeling like they have to say that sounds great, or you did a wonderful job, or the baby sleeping great, whatever it might be? Sometimes you feel like you aren't being honest.

Speaker 1: 11:50

Yeah, yeah, well. So let's go back to the triangle, because I think we have to do that first, because everything's from that right. So the bottom of the triangle, at the foundation of every healthy relationship, is pleasant emotions. Let's be super clear that being positive does not mean always saying positive things. What you're describing a little bit there might feel like toxic positivity, like being Pollyanna, fake positivity. It's being just an encouraging person, and what we're looking for here isn't always just being positive, it's how do both people feel after this interaction. So it's based upon feelings, and how loved and accepted does this person feel, and vice versa. So what we're measuring here is, like all of us, when we want to be in relationship, we're looking for a reward. I mean, at the end of the day, we gravitate to the people, the places, the things, the experiences that leave us feeling good, and we go into relationships wanting to enjoy them, and so there has to be more of that than not. And then the two sides up the triangle we mentioned.

Speaker 1: 12:47

Consistency is one of them. That's where trust is built, that's where it's not just consistent time, but it's consistent behavior, which is really key when we're talking about long-term relationships. But this is where we log hours. This is where we have shared experiences, this is where we make memories together. This is our time spent doing things together or interacting.

Speaker 1: 13:05

Then the third requirement is vulnerability. This is where we feel authentic. Authentic and this is where we feel like we know each other, and this is where we feel like we can share our opinions and speak up a little bit. All three of these have to work together and they go round and round and round. So when we have a positive interaction, we're more likely to wanna do it again, which is consistency. When we interact, we hopefully get to know each other a little bit more, something that's going on in each other's life, which is a little bit of vulnerability.

Speaker 1: 13:31

In response to that vulnerability, we need to get off that phone call or leave that event feeling good that we shared what we shared. So it needs to have positivity, which will make us want to repeat the experience, which will help us get to know each other, which will feel good. Those three things just have to keep happening. In connection, what happens with our parent-child relationship so often is we have so much history and so we can do so much pain and hurt that we have to heal or come at it and realize that we're trying to create a different pattern, and so, yes, what you're speaking of is, I don't want anyone going out there being fake. I don't want anyone not being vulnerable. Vulnerable is a huge part of our relationships and building that, and you parents need to feel seen just as much as a kid needs to feel seen. So that is so, so, so important.

Speaker 2: 14:14

How does a parent feel seen and vulnerable in the kind of relationship where you don't want to feel like you're judging the child? Let's do a little example. Let's talk about something probably so many people deal with. Their daughter or son comes home and they're dating someone and you're just appalled at who they're bringing home. I know it's none of our business, this is who they've selected. But how can you be vulnerable? I wouldn't even say to a good friend I don't like him at all or I don't like her at all. So how would you take that conversation and run with it?

Speaker 1: 14:44

But see, I would say the same thing about my dearest girlfriends. I've had girlfriends who date somebody that I'm just like, oh, but it's not. If they're not asking for my opinion, then that is not my role to be. That's not where. That's not vulnerability. Me just weighing in on somebody's life, that's not vulnerability. If they're not asking for that vulnerability is me saying, okay, like in that situation, what is appropriate to share in this moment that helps me build my relationship with this person and support their life. Questions, questions I would ask, is what is it you like about him? Tell me what he does for you, how does he feed you and how is that different than other relationships you've been in? And they're only going to share those things with you if they feel like we're not judging them, if we feel like the positive emotions are there.

Speaker 1: 15:23

Our job in that moment is not to weigh in. Our job in that moment is a friendship is about accepting people's choices, no matter what, and trusting, 100% trust. And I do this for my friends, I do this for my adult stepchildren, I do this for myself, my husband, all of us. It's not my job to go be a judge of everyone's life. It's my job to say no matter what choices you make, even if they end up quote being the wrong choice, I trust that life is going to teach you what it needs to teach you and I trust that you're going to have the experiences and the growth that you need to have. Even if this relationship doesn't make it, that's okay, because you're going to become a better person through it, and my job is to go through life with you and be your biggest cheerleader. I want you to succeed and I trust that you're going to grow, so it's not my job to weigh in on that.

Speaker 1: 16:05

This is really interesting because I'm in a girls group that we talk, we are best, best. I heard all about that on here. I know we talk every Sunday. We talk every Sunday and I've got to tell you, out of the five of us, we're all really what I would call healthy, committed to personal growth, aware women, and I cannot tell you how much of our conversations have to do with our parents. There's a couple people who I would say have been close to being estranged to a parent. There's one who is I mean, we're talking about that all the time.

Speaker 2: 16:34

Are you able to share it all without diverging anything? What are the kinds of things that parents do? Because I remember talking about my parents and I'm sure my adult kids are talking about me and my husband they probably aren't talking about because he's so easy and easy to get along with. I'm a little bit more opinionated. What I aren't talking about because he's so easy and easy to get along with, I'm a little bit more opinionated. What are the kinds of things you would urge parents to stop? Start, what would help them make a healthier relationship? And then I want to ask you something more about the vulnerability.

Speaker 1: 17:00

Yeah, I mean. So I was going to say what's so valuable about us having that girls group and having those conversations is that's where vulnerability is happening, that's where we can be honest with each other so that we can then show up. One of my girlfriends is having a really tough. She doesn't think her dad. So it goes both ways.

Speaker 1: 17:16

We judge right, mom doesn't think her dad should have a surgery that he's going to have. It's just so easy to feel like very crunchy around this and, yeah, and all of us having these conversations and this just happened where I was able to mirror to her just at some point this is his decision to make. What you don't want is for him to go into the surgery and you being crunchy and something not going well. Right, but as friends, that's the vulnerability. We can do that with each other. As parents, we should not be processing that with our kid. We should have friends in our lives.

Speaker 1: 17:45

That's where vulnerability is happening, so that then we can come back and say, okay, where's the place where I might be able to speak into my parents' life and say, just FYI, this is making me nervous, I'm not like on board with this completely and so, yeah, I can weigh in and be vulnerable, but also realizing it is not my job to weigh in and make a vote for his life. All of us are struggling with like finding our ways to do that. If I were to say, across the board, the biggest things are just kids not feeling like their parents. See who they are and the contributions they've made and the healing they've done. I feel like every person I know just wants their parents to see them for who they are.

Speaker 2: 18:20

And be proud of them, and you never quite. For some reason, there's something you don't quite feel, and every time, as a parent of adult children, you're a little afraid to say anything that's concerning, because that's going to take away from you feeling like you're proud of them.

Speaker 1: 18:33

Yeah, yeah, and I think we just are so invested in each other and we love each other, and I think we just have to reframe what it means to love each other. We're not here to do life perfectly. We're not here to be right all the time. I think it's coming back to just holding it looser, and you can always find something to be proud of them for and recognize we don't do everything we say we're going to do. I was going to get a colonoscopy. I asked my doctor for it. It's been eight months and I was like I need to do that. But it's opening a conversation. All of us want to know somebody cares about us. So I think it's try to find the ways of saying how can I show up in this space and be supportive as possible?

Speaker 2: 19:11

and be supportive as possible. That's really interesting. So let's go back to friendship and building it. You were lucky. Your mother came and listened to you and heard the triangle and said we need more consistency. How can we, as parents, approach that kind of thing with our adult children?

Speaker 1: 19:25

Yeah, One of the other things. I really applaud my dad. I was going to switch to my dad here for a second. We were on a trip with my dad. We were sitting down and he said to me when he goes, did I say I love you enough to you as a kid? What a beautiful, reflective question to ask.

Speaker 2: 19:39

And.

Speaker 1: 19:39

I was able to say I always knew you loved me. But yeah, I don't know that you said it that much, but I knew it. And he's like, yeah, I thought about that a lot, it. And he's like, yeah, I've thought about that a lot and I'm really sorry for that. I want to try to do that differently. I have so much respect, so much respect for my dad for asking a question that allowed him to be reflective and allowed me to share my experience in a way, I think one of the most important things and this has got to be the hardest thing for a parent but it's let us share with you what hurt us, and that doesn't mean that we are blaming you. It doesn't mean that you didn't do the best you could do. That's vulnerability. Vulnerability isn't showing up and telling somebody what you think they should do with their life. Vulnerability is actually like how have I impacted you in a way that I might not be aware? That's real vulnerability.

Speaker 2: 20:25

That's a good question. How have I impact you in a way that I might not be aware?

Speaker 1: 20:28

Yeah, and to be, open enough to receive that, which vulnerable means letting somebody attack you in theory, right, like you're vulnerable, you're bringing your defenses down, and I think that's probably the biggest gift a parent can give because, let's face it, you could do everything perfect as a parent and a kid is still going to have issues because they were raised by a perfect parent. There's nothing you can do where you're not going to have issues. My girls group we kind of joke about this. They all have kids, their own, and it's terrible to think that 20 years from now, our kids are going to be sitting around griping about us the way we are our parents. But I think the biggest gift that we can do as parents is to open up that conversation and to say, like, what ways was I, was childhood hard for you and what do you wish I had done more of and what do you wish I had done less of? Where were the moments that really impacted you as a child and where was I in that?

Speaker 2: 21:14

Be interested and not defensive and I was going to say you can't say, when they say it say I did not, I tried to blah, blah, blah. Then you immediately say I'm glad you're telling me this. This is helpful to me. Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 1: 21:27

And then you're just like well, I am so sorry I was not able to be there in that moment for you.

Speaker 1: 21:32

I mean my I've had so many healing conversations with my parents in the last couple of years.

Speaker 1: 21:36

I am so grateful to them and it's helpful for me if, as soon as they become vulnerable if you will I immediately am just like no, no, I totally understand.

Speaker 1: 21:44

I mean, you guys are just like we've become the graceful parents of people when we see you hurting. But we need to know that we don't feel seen if we don't feel like our parents can acknowledge the things that impacted us, and I think that that's just something is always going to be there until a parent can say I want to know those things, I'm open to hearing those things, and kind of create the space for that and be a safe. For, if you like, to your point, if you're defensive in that space, you lose trust, Everything Very hard to do it again and you'll have to come back another time and you'll have to be like I did not do well last time, so sorry, but you have to own that and you have to say I am so sorry, I really do want to know this and I really am wanting a relationship with you, and I really do. You have to.

Speaker 2: 22:31

Then really own that so much of this is so true. I want to get into the friendship for us because truly I think if you have good friends around you and keep your life engaged, you're less dependent on the relationship. I was just with a friend last week and her daughter must have called 10 times in a day and I'm like, oh gosh, we will text a couple times a week and the fuller my life is, the less I feel like I have to depend on my kids. Rewind a minute. I want to get to the point where we have to develop our lives and our friendships in order to have fuller lives and not so dependent on our kids.

Speaker 2: 23:08

I interviewed someone. It was a professor from Cornell. He wrote a book about estrangement and he told me there's something called intergenerational stake. The parent's stake in the relationship is so much greater because they've raised them from a baby, they've invested emotionally, monetarily, every kind, so they just they want to still have this relationship. The child's stake they love their parents but they're developing their own life. They now have a greater stake in this family that they're developing. They have a new immediate family and that's hard for many parents of adult kids to take a back seat and say you know what I'm second now.

Speaker 1: 23:47

Yeah, yeah, and I think you're naming it. I would say this is the higher priority for all of us is to focus on building our own friendships and our own relationships. It can be so easy and I go back to where I started in friendship. We get so obsessed with our parent-child relationships and our romantic relationships, but the research continues to show that married women with kids don't live longer, they are on more antidepressants, they don't make as much money. I mean, marriage and mothering is not that great for our health and we're hopefully changing that the way we're doing life differently now. But the truth of the matter is the most important relationships to our health and to our happiness are our friendships. And I often say, when you just think about friendship, I often say, if you're feeling resentful for one person not really being there for you, that's not a sign that that person is failing. It's a sign that you have not built up the support system that you need. And what do you mean by that? You need more relationships in your life. Yeah, and I think so. I mean, for example, I think of some of my best friends, and I remember I was on book tour when one of my girlfriends got like a notice to move out of her apartment or eviction notice or whatever. And I'm like on book tour and I can like kind of text and sympathize but like I can't be there and I'm so grateful I was not her only close friend and that she had other friends that she could rely on and be there. We often get our feelings so hurt in friendships If somebody dies or we're moving and they don't come help us. We can ask for things, we can try to build better, more supportive relationships, but the truth of the matter is all of us need a variety of different relationships in our lives that we can rely on. And I think so often, especially in situations we're talking about here, we put so much emphasis on this one child that it's not only affecting our self-esteem but of course we're going to show up with resentment because we're not getting what we want from that relationship. And, to your point, if we can build healthy, meaningful, supportive relationships in our lives, those are our friendships. Then we have those. We're going to be able to manage that parent-child relationship better, but we're going to have so much more of the things that we need.

Speaker 1: 25:40

My definition of a healthy relationship is where two people both feel seen in a safe and satisfying way, and that's an element we can do with our parents for sure. When I studied friendship more and more and more, I got to a place where I realized I probably shouldn't be calling my stepmom one of my best friends. She's somebody I'm really close to but, to be honest, I'm confiding in her, but she's not necessarily confiding in me Appropriately, so she shouldn't be telling me all the things that are going on in her marriage and in her life, so I'm not her best friend. I was able to pull back and realize that it can be a wonderful, healthy relationship in our life, but she needs best friends who can be at her level and talk life with her, and I need that at my level and we both need that and then we can have this wonderful, healthy relationship. That's what it is for each other.

Speaker 1: 26:25

But it's getting clearer and clearer that children are not our best friends. They are a meaningful relationship. They can be fulfilling, they can be satisfying and we can be really vulnerable and confide in them a lot. We need to be processing who we are, how we're changing, how we're aging, how we're facing death, some of the regrets we have of how we raise our kids. That's the kind of stuff that we should be talking about, and it's not necessarily always appropriate to do with our kids. So, yeah, we really want to build those relationships in our lives.

Speaker 2: 26:51

Oh, that makes perfect sense. So what advice do you give to people when you speak? Because I find at my age a lot of people are having grandchildren. Some are taking care of them three and four days a week. We're spread out much more than we ever have been. I feel like I have a lot of friends in a lot of different places. New friends have blossomed, high school friends, old college friends We've come closer because we don't have the burden of little kids around us. But I also feel like sometimes I'm tired, I don't want any more new friends, I'm done. And yet then you can feel lonely.

Speaker 1: 27:23

Yeah, well, I think a lot of our loneliness. So let's go back to loneliness for a moment. Loneliness is our body's way of sending us a message that we have an unmet need, so similar to hunger or tired or thirst. It does not mean something's wrong with us. It does not mean we don't have food or we don't have a bed or we don't have water. It means we need those things right now and we're not getting it. And so when we feel lonely and we're not getting it, and so when we feel lonely, it's not any judgment about us, it's just simply a need. Our body's sending us a message that we need connection right now. So the most healthy, emotionally intelligent response we can have is like huh, what kind of connection am I hungry for? Who do I want to connect with? How do I want to connect? What do I want to experience? What do I want seen in my life right now? And then be able to ask the question of okay, so how can I go build this up so that I have access to these things? So some of us are lonely About 20, 25% of us are lonely in the way that, like some people are hungry because they don't have access to food, so about 20, 25% of us do not have a best friend.

Speaker 1: 28:15

We don't have somebody that we're confiding in, and we need to just build more relationships. Most of us, though, are hungry and, to your point, we have plenty of friends. We have plenty of people in our lives who are worn out. Trying to keep in touch with them. We might have jobs or being around people where we're actually peopled out, but we can still be malnourished. I mean, think about how you can eat plenty of calories and still not be nourished. I think a lot of us are doing that socially. We're eating so many social calories, but we still aren't getting fulfilling ones For most of us our real loneliness. It doesn't mean we need to make more friends. We need to go deeper with the friendships that we have.

Speaker 1: 28:48

My advice is always pull out a Post-it note. Who are the three to six names that you want to prioritize? Who are the people that, six months from now, you would love to be closer to? You would love to be talking to them more frequently. You would love to have them witnessing your life, knowing what's going on in your life, going and doing fun things with them. Who are the three to five names that if you could pick, would be those people. And then I always go back to the triangle and I go which of these three wall, the size of the triangle would make the biggest difference in each of these relationships?

Speaker 1: 29:18

Some of them have high vulnerability and positivity. Like when we talk to them, we pick up right where we left off. We love them, we get off the phone feeling so excited, so grateful, so seen. But we only talk to them every six months and so that relationship, while we can tell them anything and update them, we're not actually living life in real time. So we're missing the sense of support in real time.

Speaker 1: 29:36

If we were to increase that, that would be the one missing from that relationship, from some of our relationships. We might have really good positivity and consistency. We get together regularly at the country club or at book club or at the kids' school or church or our neighborhood, but for lack of vulnerability they don't really feel meaningful or deep. And so trying to figure out how we can start deepening that so we can go around and get zeroed in on how we could strengthen each of those three to six relationships. Now you are paying attention and being intentional in these friendships, you're prioritizing them and guaranteed, six months from now you're going to be closer to each other because you're putting it where it matters the most.

Speaker 2: 30:12

Gosh, I just get this so much because I'm just going to share a couple of things. This last month I was in Michigan, but I was also going to a 50th high school reunion and there's a friend in town that I went to high school with that lives where I live. She was flying to Ohio. I was picking her up at the airport. We were spending the weekend together with some other friends. Then she was driving back to Michigan with me. We spent more consistent time together two hours in the car from Cleveland to Youngstown, four hours in the car from Youngstown to Ann Arbor, and both of us looked at each other at the end of this trip and we said we've known each other since we were 16 years old and we feel 400% closer than we've ever felt. Suddenly, this relationship was so deep and so rich and yet we'd been with each other all these years. So that does take time and energy.

Speaker 2: 31:05

The other thing I want to mention is in one of your podcasts you talked about correct me if I say it wrong, but envy, jealousy that there's friends you might have and their life looks so perfect to you. You'll never be as good of them. You'll never, and one of my friends I was with this past weekend is exactly that person and I thought to myself why do I still love this friend so much? And after your podcast I called her and I said I want to tell you why you're such a good friend. I said you do this, you do that, you do this, but you always take the time to say something nice about me. You always take the time to validate who I am, and that makes me not so envious or jealous or whatever. It just deepens the relationship.

Speaker 1: 31:51

Yeah beautiful.

Speaker 2: 31:52

Those are good examples. I just have to figure out how to do this more locally. I like what you said. Write the three names down. I think I'm almost going to talk openly with friends. I want to have a deeper relationship, Yep.

Speaker 1: 32:05

I mean for me. I always find in my busy life that, like almost every single one of my close relationships, I can look back and say it happened initially because we had something that gave us more frequency at some point.

Speaker 2: 32:14

Yes, yes.

Speaker 1: 32:15

So for me, the easiest thing to do when I want to make new friends is like start a like Tuesday night girls group at my house, and it's just every Tuesday night is open and you just whatever system you put in place and we could brainstorm systems for hours, like potluck, it's soup night, it's takeout. There's so many different ways to do it. But what can we do to get ourselves together on a regular basis? Is that starting to go for a walk every week? Is it starting to have a good meetup for happy hour? Is it talking on the phone every Wednesday at 1215? Is it?

Speaker 1: 32:39

But whatever we schedule into our lives is makes it so much easier and the more frequency we have at least initially, I mean, I'll tell you those girls groups. We used to all live local to each other for a year and a half, 20 years ago and then we all moved away and we just decided we were going to get together once a year for a girls weekend and I would tell you that my vulnerability was so high with them, my love for them was so high, Like I had high positivity, vulnerability, I would have said consistency on some level at least we're still staying in touch and having these like long weekends every year. But it wasn't until the pandemic where we decided to add in getting together on Sundays for a Zoom, and now we also do Marco Polos throughout the week.

Speaker 2: 33:18

What's a Marco Polo? You mentioned that, and what is a Marco Polo?

Speaker 1: 33:26

It's an app and you can do like video texts back and forth. What's so nice is the five of us have a conversation that's ongoing but it's asynchronous, and so I can listen to it when I'm out on a walk and somebody else can, and I could then leave them my own update. Everyone can listen to it when they have their own time, which is so nice, so we don't all have to always be on at the same time, but we have this ongoing conversation. Whenever anything happens, one of us gets on and says, oh, my gosh, what a day. And we're just like I know what's going on in all my girlfriend's lives, like today, this week, which is such a different type of feeling supported. I mean, I know my girlfriends before would have been there for me if I needed them, but Girls Weekend was filled with us updating each other, and it's so different versus doing it in real time and getting the support in real time from each other and feeling witnessed and supported and seen now, not just telling them afterward what happened and how it ended up.

Speaker 1: 34:13

And I think most of us need to increase that consistency in our friendships, so figuring out to your point how to do that locally, and that's why I say pick three to five names and figure out, choose that you're going to prioritize them. That means you're going to say no to other people in order to say yes to these people. You're going to do everything you can to kind of just increase that consistency. You're going to do what you did. You're going to pick up the phone and call them and tell them how amazing they are. You're going to send gifts on their birthdays. You're just going to say these are people I'm zeroing in on and I'm going to love well for these next six months and build this, build that relationship.

Speaker 2: 34:45

That's great, I think. The other one other thing I'm going to say before we wrap this up is the other sort of hard thing that I find, and I think a lot of my friends do. We don't have a group. All of my friends are, I want to say, singular. Maybe a couple of us will have a birthday lunch together. It's not like we have five couples that are always going out all the time because so much has changed.

Speaker 1: 35:07

We had that when I was younger.

Speaker 2: 35:08

Yeah, and so it is more that is more common.

Speaker 1: 35:16

It is. It is.

Speaker 2: 35:16

We only have like a 50% chance of our two best friends knowing each other now, or in liking each other and spouses liking each other. There's a lot more involved in all that. So I like this Marco Polo idea and I know I can do that with a couple.

Speaker 2: 35:29

we have a couple of text threads and I'm going to suggest all those people that we try a Marco Polo, introduce it to them. Anyway, this has been terrific. I think I love this triangle and I'm going to share that in the notes, but I want you to leave our listeners with two or three things that you hope they take away from this conversation.

Speaker 1: 35:43

Yeah, if we were to go back to the parent-child relationship and the triangle, I would just say positivity is like how do I say to my kid I accept you and I love you, and just have that be the strongest message. They hear that if they were talking in Shasta's girls group, what would they say about me? Would they say I know my mom just absolutely thinks I'm the coolest thing. That's what they want, right? So how can I just be somebody who's making sure I'm showing up as a affirming presence in their life? Consistency this is interesting. If we have a bad pattern, if we've done something that's created that estrangement, then the most important thing we can hopefully do is have that kind of conversation that says I acknowledge that bad pattern and I want to try to change that, and so I want to try to change that, and so I want the opportunity to be given to create a new pattern, which hopefully a child would give you that choice to do, because consistency means you can't just show up and do the right thing once or twice, like when we have a history of something. We're not gonna notice it, but being able to say I want to change that pattern and I'm going to try to do that Naming that is so helpful to a child. And then that vulnerability.

Speaker 1: 36:50

I think the challenge there is the vulnerability, like we talked about how you be vulnerable. How can you share your weaknesses and your failings and your regrets and help create that vulnerability that way first, rather than thinking about how to speak into their life. I think these are really hard, challenging things, but this is where I'm just like. You have the wisdom of age, you have the wisdom of this whole life, and so you're in the most beautiful place to model to us, to your children, the kind of humility, the kind of self-awareness, the kind of emotional intelligence that you want us to have someday.

Speaker 1: 37:16

I think this is such a beautiful opportunity for parents everywhere to just kind of say I know I didn't do perfect and I don't need to be defensive about that. I'm going to hear them and that's not the place I'm going to cry and be defensive. I'm going to go do that with my friends and that's where I will get my healing and stuff. I'm going to let this child do what they need to say in order to be seen and witnessed, and then I am going to go have my friends so that I can make sure that I'm seen and witnessed. I think that just recognizing that there's different roles, the different relationships play different roles, and not putting all of that on our kids or on our parents, I think is really important.

Speaker 2: 37:49

I love it. Thank you so much. This has been great. I really appreciate you giving me this time. I know you're so busy and I know I'm going to pick apart this because I've got to share a lot of these clips separately. You're terrific. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you Well. Thank you, thank you Well. That's a wrap.

Speaker 2: 38:07

This conversation went quite a lot differently than I had anticipated, but I really think she led it the way it should go. We do have to learn to be better friends to our kids. Think about that triangle and also build stronger and better friendships for ourselves. There's no question about it. I hope everyone got as much from this as I did. Thank you so much, shostan. I will share everything about her in my episode notes. I loved this. So more to come from Bite your Tongue. Please remember to follow us on social media. Go to our website at biteyourtonguepodcastcom. Email us at biteyourtongue at gmailcom. I want to thank Connie Gorin-Fisher, our audio engineer. Please remember that we are not therapists. I get a lot of emails asking advice. I can't give advice. I can send you to some people I've interviewed that might be helpful, but I am not an expert in any way, shape or form. So enjoy these last hot days of summer, although I don't know when this episode is going to drop. But remember, sometimes you just have to bite your tongue.