Here is part eight in our ongoing series that shares some of the wisdom different women have about friendship. Below are a few quotations selected from a variety of podcasts.
How to Make & Maintain a Healthy Friendship, Julie Mickler – Lillian McDermott Radio Show
‘A friend is a diamond. Sometimes it’s in the rough; sometimes it’s really polished – but once you recognise that friend it’s very special.’
Lillian McDermott
‘Stepping out of my new comfort zone and stepping into a new comfort zone is what has allowed me to do the things, and all we need is 20 seconds of courage. That’s it. And when you muster those 20 seconds of courage you can do just about anything.’
Lillian McDermott
‘One thing that I learnt to shift… I cared more about listening to other people’s lives than I cared about sharing my own life… Listen to the other person and their story, and interject when they were asking me questions. That was a great shift for me.’
Lillian McDermott
‘You’ll see after a while. If the inquiry doesn’t get returned, you’ll kind of know [that they’re probably not a great friend for you].’
Julie Mickler
Ep 368 Female friendship: The good, the bad and the lonely – The Irish Times Women’s Podcast
‘I kind of realised that actually, I think it’s true of me and I think of a lot of people, there were loads of people, particularly women, in my orbit who I liked and admired, ’cause I worked with them or I knew them through, you know, a mutual friend of the handful I had back at home, who I liked and I kind of thought and often considered “I wish I was friends with that person”. But I never told them, I never asked them to socialise, kind of asked them out as it were, declared my intentions and said “You! You have excellent hair. Let’s go for tea!”‘
Laura Kennedy
‘It’s good to have people around you, if you don’t drink, whose social life doesn’t orient around it because you need those people. You know, you can do things that aren’t about pubs, essentially.’
Laura Kennedy
043 SelfWork: When Friendships End – The SelfWork Podcast
‘One of the first steps [after losing a friend] is to refrain from social media, or just to get off for a while. It is so tempting if not downright seductive to watch your ex-friend from the safety of Facebook or Instagram, and if they’ve unfriended you, you can really get obsessed and play detective, pulling other friends to help you figure out what’s on their page, which is really not too good for that friendship frankly. And all that detective work, all it really does is to prolong your own grieving and increase your sense of being replaced in their life. That’s a different type of grief, when something’s over and then when you’re replaced or you feel replaced that can really hurt your own sense of worth.’
Dr Margaret Rutherford
‘The second idea is to focus on creating fresh experiences and relationships in your own life. This can be hard if you have mutual friends. You don’t want them to feel as if they’re in the middle. And you don’t want your friends to bash your old friend or ex friend either. He was your friend for a long time, or she was, and bashing them will get you nowhere. So you really want to be proactive.’
Dr Margaret Rutherford
‘What was the friendship’s long-term value to you? Whatever inherent gift did that friendship bring to you that will always be yours? The friendship that ended for me, she taught me how to dance… and I’ll always be grateful for that. And as I said, what can you even learn from its ending?’
Dr Margaret Rutherford
Friendships & Breakups with Estée Lalonde – What I Know Now with Amelia Liana
‘… realising that another person really can’t make you happy, if that makes sense. They can bring happiness into your life, but they can’t really fill that soul kind of happiness. And they’re not suppose to.’
Amelia Liana & Estée Lalonde
Feminine Finishing School 