Friendship + Intimacy
*Content Note* We recognize that The Nourished Postpartum Challenge may stir up past trauma, or feel confronting to folks currently pregnant or in the early postpartum months. What may feel clarifying and cathartic to one person may be another person’s deepest trigger. Please care for yourself this week, share what feels safe to you, and if you realize you need deeper mental health support, we have created a Resources page which you can find here.
In many ways we expect changes to occur across the threshold of parenthood. We know we won’t have as much time for friendships, social time or the ways we spent recreational time - but the acute ache of feeling ‘left behind’, or the sad shock surprise of who stays close and who falls away is rarely predicted.
Each relationship deserves its own dynamic look at the balance of love and trust, care and conflict. Sometimes we float from one another, and arrive back in friendship a decade later. Sometimes it feels like a severe cord cutting - even if no real rupture happened. Looking at the changing relational landscape of postpartum, we often pose these questions to our clients:
Did you voice your needs and boundaries?
What if this threshold is really a colander separating out what serves and what doesn’t?
What if in becoming a parent we get to use the shedding/falling away for a nutritive purpose?
What if we can consciously release relationships that are not holding us, or see the ones that have released us as unconscious space creation for the phase ahead?
While there is no way for us to know what is true for you in your individualized relationships, we do know a thing or two about bringing nourishment to friendship, and we wanted to share with you some of the agreements of care in the healing justice container of our friendship.
Needs
Voicing them, honoring them, striving to meet them
Boundaries
Expressing them, seeing them as gift to the relationship, an opportunity to go deeper
Repair
Commitment to showing up for repair, being humble about being wrong
Non judgment
Holding space for each other’s wounds, striking #bestself from the list of requirements
Tangible Support
Showing up. Doing the dishes and laundry. Letting them do the dishes and laundry. Making real exchange foundational.
Signs a friendship is not nutritive
Needs
Needs aren’t allowed. Needs are seen as a problem or inconvenience. There’s little effort to look for underlying needs, in this relationship you/they don’t feel seen.
Boundaries
They are leaky or non-existent. You/They are afraid to voice them or when you/they do those boundaries are weaponized.
Repair
You either have to bypass conflict to be in this relationship or there are many ruptures with little to no repair. Repair is left to the same person again and again. Gaslighting is the norm.
Judgment
This relationship requires you never make a mistake. Humanness is seen as weakness. Growth isn’t welcome. Toxic positivity/spiritual bypassing are common but infrequently called out examples. Comparing and competing are frequent.
No Tangible Support
They don’t actually show up for you, and/or you don’t show up for them. Your relationship isn’t based in reciprocity and healing. There isn’t a cooperative effort to help each other thrive.