Once my friend Mary was telling me about a conversation with her high school-aged daughter. Her daughter, frustrated with the high school she returned to after COVID, told her mom she wanted to switch schools. Mary, a very pragmatic woman said, gently, but firmly, “Honey, you’re not changing schools. You need to learn to grow where you live.”
I remember hearing that phrase from Mary for the first time and thinking how simple and brilliant it is. What other choice do we have but to grow, no matter where we live.
A few years ago I had a rupture with my “best friend” Miriam. Instead of working towards healing the rupture, Miriam, who I’d been close to since high school, decided to cut all ties and, as a result, we haven’t seen each other or spoken for three-and-a-half years.
A few weeks ago, one of our mutual high school friends experienced a tragedy when her brother died. There was no question that all of the old high school crew would show up to support our friend as she honored her brother, but I knew that meant I would have to face Miriam.
As the day of the funeral approached and I prepared for my flight, I struggled to imagine how I would be able to be myself around Miriam. In my mind, she had snipped me off like a crooked branch on a bonsai tree, and I didn’t know how I could face her again.
The intellectual side of me knew that Miriam probably had a story of her own, but my own story was all I could think about. I experienced Miriam’s estrangement as rejection, pure and simple. In my rejected state, I resented her inability to communicate with me for three-and-a-half long years. Her silence felt cruel and selfish.
The night before the funeral, all of the old friends met for dinner. This would be the first time I’d come face-to-face with Miriam. Before dinner at the hotel, my twin sister asked me how I was feeling about it all. “I’m going to be a golden light,” I told her. I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but I was counting on all my years of yoga, meditation, and other contemplative practices to help me rise above the seething anger I’d been feeling for a long time.
When Miriam arrived at the restaurant with another friend, I took a deep breath and stood up. I made a beeline for her, stepping past the friend she was with, and gave her a big hug. When it was over, I turned back to the table and found my seat. Strategically, we were not seated next to or across from each other. For the rest of the evening, we both participated in the lively group conversation and avoided any face-to-face contact.
During our walk back to our hotel my sister and I debriefed. “I feel good,” I told her, “it went as well as I could have imagined.”
The next day at the memorial was more of the same. We danced close to the fire of being alone together and drew deeply from the support of the friends around us to keep us separately safe. But at the end of the several hour service, our friend who’d lost her brother brought all six of us into a huddle to share her love and gratitude. I was next to Miriam, frighteningly close to the fire. I was in the fire.
When we all said goodbye at the end of the long day, I hugged Miriam again. It would be another goodbye with an unknown future. Maybe we’d talk to each other and maybe we wouldn’t. But we’d walked through the fire and we’d survived. Now the only choice we had was to keep walking.
When our friendship rupture first happened, I had to manage my sadness. I built a wall around me and made it okay. I thought of Mary’s sage advice, “Grow where you live,” I reminded myself over and over. In this new world, Miriam was no longer part of my life. And so I did. Like a potted plant, I created walls around me and grew in this new container. My life continued on. And I was okay.
Part of my resistance to seeing Miriam again was the idea that I’d have to put myself back into the community of my friends, including Miriam, all of us together. I couldn’t be a potted plant anymore. I’d have to find a way to grow in the garden of all the other plants.
During our short two days together, grateful for all of our well-being and ability to be together, even in these painful circumstances, I could feel the energy of our reciprocal nurturing. We’d been friends for over forty years and we were all in this life together, all growing through this particularly difficult time alongside each other.
My fear of reconnecting with Miriam was rooted, in part, in my fear of losing something of myself. I feared that, in breaking out of my safe, contained pot I’d lose some of my integrity. And I worried about surrendering my sense of rightness. Letting go of these commitents felt like a betrayal to the self I’d worked so hard to create after the rupture.
Life as a potted plant had been working fine for me for the last three-and-a-half years. Until it couldn’t work anymore. Not if I wanted to go be among my friendship flowers. I’d have to join them in their garden or miss out on all of their beauty and nourishment.
“What’s next?” a few of my friends ask me after the long-awaited reunion. And I’m sure they asked Miriam the same question.
“I don’t know,” I told them, “For now, I’m just going to try to keep growing.”
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