You didn't fail at friendship

Episode 10: The Friend At Every Stage

Somewhere in your phone is a woman you used to talk to every day. You didn't fight. There's no story, no betrayal, nothing to recover from. The kids stopped playing sports together, or somebody moved, and the friendship that used to have a standing Tuesday just stopped having a Tuesday. I carried something like guilt about that for years — like the right kind of woman would have kept every one of them forever.

I don't read it that way anymore. Most friendships are built on a shared situation — same street, same dorm, same field — and when the situation goes away, most friendships don't survive the move. Not because anyone failed. Because they fit a stage, and they did exactly what they were supposed to do. This episode is about those friends, about the box that showed up on my porch after I told my oldest friend I was getting divorced, and about the friend I met at a baseball field in my forties who turned out to be made of the same stuff.

In this episode:

• The woman in your phone you used to talk to every day, and why the drift isn't a report card on you

• The dinner where I shocked my second-grade friend with the news, in bits and pieces, in no logical order

• The box on my porch, and the wall hanging inside it that said everything

• The friend who doesn't need an updated bio when your life changes — she remembers your handwriting from sixth grade

• Folding chairs at a baseball field: meeting my Friday night beer friend in my forties

• The Friday night with beers to go, and the friend who knew before I said one word

• Why the very lucky ones get the old friend and the new old friend

"The years give you the archive. The recognition gives you the friend."

If a friendship has drifted out of your life, stop being upset with yourself about it. You were lucky to have her when you did. And the recognition kind can still find you — at thirty, at sixty, at a baseball field, on a bar stool, in the middle of a stage you didn't know was about to start.

Follow Honestly Kristin on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so new episodes come to you. And send this one to her — the second-grade friend, the Friday night friend, or the one you haven't talked to in a while. She'd probably like to know you remember.