Discerning Your People

I wrote this blog post almost a year ago and never posted it.  

Painting entitled Nameless and Friendless by Emily Mary Osborn, 1857.

A few months ago at a local women’s circle I went to, I pulled a card that was entitled “Discernment.” It was meant to be a guidepost for the next month or season for me to reflect on what it means to me.  At the time I had a few ideas. Now I’m starting to get a deeper sense of what it was really about. Or perhaps another thing it was about.

I’ve heard many life coaches and guides speak of how, when you’re involved in personal growth, it can be lonely at times as you evolve and, in many cases, it’s fairly common that this means you grow out of certain relationships, whether those are romantic, friendships or something else. 

In a different sense, (but related,) it is also a good thing to “find your tribe” and there are sayings I can remember from childhood friends’ bathroom walls that mentioned how some friends come in your life for just a little while, and some for much longer, etc etc. It doesn’t necessarily make a shorter one any less meaningful. 

In the last few years, I have learned a lot about discernment when it comes to forming new friendships and relationships of different kinds.

I moved to a new city, and it took time to form new friendships and find a community. But something that became clear for me in the last year is that the time I put into creating my new community had begun to have a cumulative effect I could see, and I liked it.  And I feel grateful to have found and co-created this new community. 

In romantic partnerships, many of us have gotten attached to people before we really got to know them, and when you think about it, we’ve been taught to do this for centuries (just think of quotes from movies like Pride and Prejudice, based on Jane Austen’s novel, when a character said “there’s plenty of time to get to know him after the wedding,” fairly laughable to today’s audiences but still something many of us have been taught to do, though these days, less drastically.)

The same is true for forming new friendships and finding out whether people are meant to be your people or not, whether as friends or part of your greater community.

We may have an idea about who a person is, but if we only just met them, we still have to take the time to really get to know them before we can see how good of a friend they are, or what kind of person they will be in our lives- a passing acquaintance, friend for a little while, or true friend. Of course the same can be said for romantic relationships.

And this of course, applies to many people we may really like at first, but through situations we encounter with them, we may later find they are disappointing or hurt us in some way and we may have to reevaluate. 

I was recently in a situation that left me wondering if I still had any friends in this community I had become a part of, and I felt pretty lonely for a few days.

Thankfully, I reached out to a person who had been supportive in the past, from that community, and was reassured that I was not the only one who had had the experience I was describing. There were others. So from this, I learned, it wasn’t just me- I didn’t need to take it personally. And, this led me to conclude that the people who made me feel that way were not my people, but Thankfully (I would say,) this person was.

It is important to be around people who are “your” people and treat you the way you deserve to be treated- with respect and in a way that lets you know they care about you.

If you’re like me, you’ve been on the wrong side of one too many one-sided relationships, and they hurt. (Neither side is really good in a situation like that though.) Mother Hunger, or a disorganized attachment style may also lead women to experience this. Or being an empath.

This weekend, I also saw a friend I hadn’t seen in awhile, and who I had previously decided was not meant to be a part of my tribe. But it was really good to see this friend, and they ended up letting me know they were in fact, meant ot be in the friend category, and one of my people. 

While I previously found that person to be one-sided, they actually really wanted to know, that day, why I stopped talking to them. And when I told them, they were understanding and glad to know. And their openness and understanding let me know they could be in the friend category after all.

So friendships can also evolve in a good way, when we have the chance to talk things out and both parties care to understand where the other person is coming from find the friendship worth making an effort for. 

Not everyone is going to be for us, and this is not a bad thing. 

There can also be different levels of friends- some that belong in the innermost circle, and some farther out. Both can be good. It may hurt when a friend has to move from an innermost circle to an outer ring, or becomes one you can no longer consider a friend. Although it may hurt, it’s not really a bad thing. For your highest good, or supporting yourself to be who you were meant to be.

Being around people who treat you the way you want to be treated is important and helps you feel supported and more confident about who you are and what matters to you. It can be the difference between you being an introvert or extrovert. Neither are a bad thing here, but many people who have known me in earlier parts of my life thought I was shy, but I simply wasn’t used to being around my people- I hadn’t found them.

In Asheville, my new community, I feel less introverted and find myself being more outgoing because there are more people I feel like I can be myself around.  It’s very much my “vibe.”

This weekend, I especially got to be around my kind of people, and I could definitely feel the difference.