We love our friends. If something pops off, they’re usually the first people we call. When good news comes our way, they’re the ones we want to celebrate with. And when that raggedy good for something…but we have no business with him shows up and hurts our feelings…again…they’re right there with wine and ice cream. Or seaweed chips and chickpea puffs…you know whatever your preference.

We rehash stories about the past, make plans for the future, and shout them out in our daily lives. But something we don’t do often, is honor the friends who are no longer with us, our seasonal and proximal friends. The friends God put into our lives for a moment instead of a lifetime, but the friendship was real just the same.

So today, we’re rebranding how we look at temporary friends and we’re giving them our gratitude.

Fake Friends vs. Temporary Friends

Words matter and while we have all learned our fair share of lessons from fake friends, I don’t group fake friends into the same group as temporary ones. I don’t want you to sit on my couch and drink all of my Chardonnay thinking that I’m asking you to honor people who have hurt you. Because I’m not. So let’s see if we can’t unpack this a little.

Fake friends are people who were never really your friend. For whatever reason, their intentions weren’t pure and they weren’t rooting for you. There may have been something inside of you or something you possessed that drew them near to you. While it’s not our job to understand the inner workings of someone else’s mind, we know that these people were around for the benefit of what we had to offer, not for the joy of doing life alongside us.

Temporary friends are exactly that, real friends who were with you temporarily. Their intentions for your life were good and honest. They stood beside you in moments of hardship and victory. There was mutual love and respect. They taught you a lesson or lessened the burden of a particular season of your life and after that assignment, they left.

Releasing vs. Dismissing

We LOVE to use the phrase, “not everyone is meant to walk into the next level with you”. Sometimes, that is absolutely true.

But you aren’t going to be here eating all my snacks without me being able to be honest. Some of us are only leveling up on social media. You’re out here talking about s/he wasn’t meant to enter into the next level with you when you been stuck on the same level since 2015, sis. Stop it.

And if you have been progressing and elevating you know what else we need to stop? We need to stop insinuating that someone being unable to walk into a new level with us, means they’re beneath us. What if the real reason some people are unable to walk with us into our new level/season/breakthrough is because they’re going to be too busy walking into a direction we aren’t going in but is amazing just the same?

We trick ourselves into believing that no good can come to anyone apart from us. That is a whole lie we (read I, I am we) feed ourselves to feel better. That’s no good. We are better than that.

Letting Go and Being Let Go

Friendships, like any relationship, will never fully be 50/50, but they should be mutually beneficial. When they aren’t, it’s okay to let them go. It’s also okay to be let go. I’ve done a lot of letting go in my day, sometimes rightly so and sometimes not. But it wasn’t until last year that I was let go. For a season it felt terrible. I tried reaching out to restore the friendship and conversations always fell flat. I brought up old jokes and memories, but it not working. A ton of calls and texts professing my apologies later and it finally clicked that this was likely the end.

And then, anytime I saw her having fun and enjoying life, my heart got hard. I stopped following her on social media because she didn’t deserve that kind of energy. It wasn’t that she was not positioned to walk into the next season of life with me, maybe I wasn’t the one who could level up with her.

And that’s okay.

After some time I realized that I wasn’t working to hold onto that relationship because of where it was in its current state, but because of all the memories it held from the past. Because of the position she held in my life in the past. But if I was honest, she didn’t hold that same position anymore in my life and I probably didn’t hold it in hers.

And that’s okay.

It is possible to separate from someone because of time or distance or values, and still feel deep gratitude for the place they held in your life and they kindness they showed you. Separation doesn’t have to diminish our gratitude.

So, thank you.

So here’s to our forever friends. The women and men who have withstood the test of time and locations to love us fiercely. They might not be prominent in every season, but they’re present and they’re always rooting for our success.

And here’s to temporary friends. The women and men who stood strong in critical moments and season to love us fiercely too. They might not have been in every season, but they were there when we needed them most.

Because the reality is, we need both and we have to stop acting like we don’t.

There magic in our musings and friendships,
Nicole