Welcome to another episode of Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship. I’m your host, Nina Badzin. I’m a writer and a friendship enthusiast.

Today we’re talking about being friends with people who are different from you. There have been a ton of articles on the topic lately because of a new study about cross-class friendships— just one kind of difference possible in a friendship

I of course could not tackle this topic alone, so I invited the fabulous friendship pair and podcast duo from HerNext Chapter, Stephanie Pierce and Julie Burton. 

Highlights from my conversations with Stephanie and Julie

I’ve seen tons of research over the years on the benefits for society as a whole when everyone isn’t exactly like their friends. This is also common sense!

• We talked about Stephanie and Julie meeting through a friend who brought them together because of their shared business goals. Their deeper friendship developed over time. And I loved their points throughout the episode that the purpose of their friendship was not to learn about each other or become a “project” or “education” for each other. Yes, they eventually spoke about differences in experiences lives and found their lives richer for it, but it was the commonalities that brought them together.

• We discussed Julie’s desire to make ModernWell a more welcoming place for all kinds of people.

Stephanie on mindset and intention in making new friends and looking for change in your life:

I think part of the reason why Julie was able to do that was self-awareness and a mindset. This is where friendship and reinvention come together in a happy little marriage, because when you’re at a place of transformation in your life, typically your heart is open. Your mind is open to new things and new potential. You’re putting yourself in different environments . . .  I do know that a whole bunch of people decided in the last several years that they needed to have more friends that look different than them. And If I break it down even further, everyone decided they needed a Black friend. While there are many, many people of color, African Americans, in particular in the Twin Cities, most of us do not want folks just rolling up on us at the Jerry’s saying, Hey, I’d like to be your friend because I don’t have any Black friends and I’m trying to be more diverse.

To that, I say, I’m happy that that’s what you want to work on, but I don’t need to work on that with you. I don’t know you. So to the how part, I really ask people, and I did this with Julie: Why do you want ModernWell to be diverse? Get really clear with what it is that you’re trying to do and know that that is your journey, but that may not be mine. I would prefer people be friends with me because they think I’m a cool person. We have something in common vs. I just want to be able to say that I’ve got a Black friend or I want to understand more about your culture. You understanding more about my culture is really just you understanding more about me because I can only speak to my experiences. I cannot speak to the experiences of an entire race or gender. And so I think that’s the first thing that I ask people to think about is remember that your journey to enlightenment through knowing people who are different than you may not be everybody else’s journey, and you can’t get frustrated when the first three people that you want to be friends with aren’t interested in being friends with you.

Because again, if you go back to that self-awareness piece and asking yourself why you’re doing it, it should be about a lifelong journey, not a summer project because somebody told you that was the right thing to do. And that is one of the things about Julie that I love. It was clear to me that it was a lifelong journey. Now, was she frustrated that change wasn’t happening to the pace that she wanted to? You betcha. She’s a business person.But she was patient. And she stayed focused on building relationships that were meaningful for her. And I think that is the how. You can’t just decide on a Tuesday that by Friday you are going to have friends that look different than you. That’s not how friendship works. But you do have to open yourself up to be in places and spaces that might be different or being in the same places and spaces and just talking to new people. Most of us can probably think of times when we were in an environment with people who were different than us. We just chose to talk to the parents of our kids’ friends because that’s what we do every single time.

Julie on first meeting Stephanie and showing up somewhere new alone:

Our mutual friend, Julie Harper, co-hosted an event with Steph at Stephanie’s house. This was a year or so before I opened ModernWell. I remember standing in Stephanie’s living room. That’s the other thing to your point, Stephanie, showing up in places. I knew no one. I didn’t know Stephanie from anything. I knew Julie Harper, but she was hosting. It wasn’t like I could stand in a corner and talk to Julie Harper. You know that feeling right? You walk into a space, you know nobody. Part of it too, is just getting used to that uncomfortable feeling of putting yourself out there. I suppose I could have asked someone if they wanted to come with me, but I wanted to be by myself because I wanted to experience the night and talk to who I wanted to talk to and learn what I needed to learn . . .

I remember Stephanie got up and introduced herself and started talking about community and about women and about just finding your power. I remember just thinking to myself, I want to be her friend because of what she was saying, because of her heart. And I knew that Stephanie is the kind of person who I would want to have a close relationship with because of how she sees the world and how she sees the power of community.

Stephanie on their friendship developing: 

We didn’t meet each other and then start talking to each other every day. And then a podcast was born. I mean, this was a lot of time and attention about a very specific topic [business] and it wasn’t until we started talking more about things that we started entertaining all different types of topics–our kids, being Black in America or in Minnesota, understanding the Jewish experience.

It could have been very easy for me to just sort of exist in the world that is the Black experience. And did I know that Julie was Jewish when we met? Sure didn’t. Was it something that I was going to try to figure out? Sure was not. But as she and I started to talk about what it means to have family members and friends be the subject of a hate crime, the feeling of a church being bombed or a synagogue, she and I were able to really get into conversations about how our families were experiencing those things. But that wasn’t the genesis of the relationship. It wasn’t, let me understand her lived experiences.

The genesis of the relationship was community based and business. What we got to and what we’re at right now is this place and space where I feel like I am constantly learning and understanding through Julie what her family has experienced, the work that she does within her community and how, in many instances, that parallels the work that I’m doing in mine. . . And I love that. But that is not the essence of our relationship. The essence of our relationship is moms and kids and husbands and business and vacations. . .

All of your friendships should be with people that you like. As we get older, we have less–there’s just not a lot of time. You can’t have all the people. I try to do whatever I can to cherish my cherish relationships. You get to a certain point in your life. You’re like, I can’t love everybody the same. I just don’t have enough time. And I don’t want to. And so I get to choose who I wanna spend time with. And I choose Julie because we have a good time and I feel like I’m growing and I know that she loves me and I know that she loves my family and I think that’s really what most of us want in this life, right?

Julie: 

The other thing that I think is really important is that when you do have a friend different from you, you see the world through their eyes. Like Steph was saying earlier, if she’s out in the community and here’s something Antisemitic, she’s going to think about me, as a person, as a human being. If I’m out in the world and I hear something racist, I’m going think about Stephanie. And I’m gonna think about her husband and her children who I love. That to me is part of what makes this so powerful.

Stephanie on expanding your network and meeting people not exactly like you:

I would challenge you to think about the network you already have, because I bet you are one degree away from an expanded network, particularly those of you who have kids. Those kids have parents and there are probably folks that your kids connect with that are very different from you. . . You could just take one step out of your immediate inner circle, go to your friend’s friends. And there could be a ton of diversity. You just have to broaden what your definition of diversity is. . . you don’t have to go far sometimes to expand your network.

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Nina Badzin

Nina Badzin hosts the podcast Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship. She's been writing about friendship since 2014, co-leads the writing groups at ModernWell in Minneapolis, and reviews 30+ books a year on her website.

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