CHAPTER 13 How to Create the Best Friendships of Your Life

When we moved to our new town, I felt so lonely. I was brand-new to the area. I knew no one my age. And I was miserable.

At some point in your life you are going to experience this exact same thing. Every life change creates changes in your friendships. You'll experience it if you go through a breakup or divorce and people pick sides. You'll experience it if you or a loved one go through a major struggle and people either have no idea how to support you or are uncomfortable, so they distance themselves. You'll experience this when you have to move for your career or education.

And even if you're super excited about the change—you're going to your dream school or moving to your dream city—the reality is that, when you get there, you'll have no friends. The first time you may have experienced this in your life was when you went to college. You get to college and you expect to meet all your best friends right away, and that is not what happens. Everyone is nervous and latches onto the first person they meet and they try to form a group.

Within a week, it feels like everyone is already in a friend group. But, if you think about your college or even high school friend group, by the time you graduated your friend group changed a lot. That's because it takes time to find your people.

Give It A Year

When my daughter went to college, she called me crying all the time, saying, “I'm at the wrong school. My people are not here. I think I need to transfer.” And I constantly told her to hang up the phone, go to the cafeteria, and ask to sit with someone who looked interesting. “You have to put yourself out there, and most importantly, you must give it a year.”

She hated that advice. She called me all yearlong. She felt so lonely and desperate. And the two friends she had made early on felt the exact same way. (Hi Lexi and Micaela!) To their credit, they all kept putting themselves out there their entire first year.

I know my daughter, Sawyer, was asking to sit with people, DMing people online to get lunch, she joined a million clubs, tried out for the club lacrosse team (got cut), went to events on campus, but nothing clicked. It really took her a full year of trying. And then, in the last few weeks of school, she met one of her now closest friends, Mary Margaret, who then introduced her (and her two friends) to seven other girls who to this day are her people. She really had to give it a year.

And when I moved, somehow I forgot my own advice. I needed to be reminded it would take a year of trying. Within a week of moving, I was convinced that I had made a huge mistake. I felt bad for myself for an entire year. I cried all the time. And I was convinced I would never find a person that I would connect with or relate to. But what was I doing during that first year?

Nothing. Sitting in my house, feeling lonely.

I was not putting myself out there at all. I was not looking for opportunities to connect. I played sad music and felt bad for myself. I cried and complained to my husband. I was closed off. And I made the mistake of expecting friendship to fall out of the sky and land in my lap. It doesn't work like that.

I'm sure you've had an experience like this too. Maybe you moved, or changed jobs, or went through a breakup, or took care of a family member who was struggling, or became an empty nester and felt like you were starting over. In those moments, I'm sure you felt pretty lonely. This is normal.

And even if you have great friends who are far away, you feel alone if you don't have any friends near you. It got so bad for me that I was on a walk one day with my two adult daughters, sobbing about how I had no friends, and how I hated where we lived.

We passed by the house of a woman I had met once six months prior, and I mentioned to my daughters that I had met the woman who lived in the house and she seemed like she could be cool. And my daughters forced me to walk up her driveway, right then, and knock on her door and say hello.

I didn't feel like it. I was really scared to walk up the driveway. I felt like a loser. Has it really come to this?!

Yes, it had. When I really think about it, this was the exact same thing I told my daughter Sawyer to do when she called me crying freshman year of college.

It was embarrassing to knock on her door. I could feel my heart racing as I heard the dogs barking and footsteps coming. And when the door swung open, it wasn't the woman I had met; it was her husband.

I asked, “Is Mia here?” And then blurted out, “I met her a while ago, I'm brand-new, I'm really lonely, I thought I would stop and say hello. . .” My daughters chimed in, “Our mom needs friends. She thought your wife was cool, and so we made her come say hello.”

He was so gracious, invited us in, gave us a tour of the house. We met the dogs, Mia was thrilled we stopped by, we exchanged numbers, and one week later, she and I were walking that very same loop together. And that was the beginning of turning this part of my life around and learning that adult friendship isn't something that happens. It's something you create.

I am happy to report, from that painful knock on Mia's door, and a hundred other awkward little moments—introducing myself to someone at a coffee shop, pulling into a field at a local flower farm to tell the owners that their flowers were incredible, saying hello to the person next to me at an exercise class—I was able to slowly but surely create my own new little community.