[00:00:00] Jennifer: If you can’t talk to your friends about things that become awkward and then become funny, you’re not good friends. We don’t always say the right thing, no matter what situation we’re in, so let’s just talk about it and we can laugh about it later.
[00:00:20] Nina: Welcome to Dear Nina, conversations about friendship. I’m your host, Nina Badzin. I’ve been writing about friendship since 2014, and I’ve been leading writing groups in Minneapolis since 2015, which is where I met today’s guest, Jennifer Cramer-Miller.
You know those articles and memes that are everywhere about what NOT to say to a friend who is going through a hard time of any kind? Jennifer is here today to say THE OPPOSITE OF THAT. She urging us to stop being afraid of saying the wrong things to friends with chronic illness or friends dealing with anything else.
Your friends will never say the perfect thing! WE will sometimes not say the perfect thing to our friends. And I agree with Jennifer that we need to leave so much more room for people to say the imperfect thing and then LET IT GO.
Jennifer Cramer-Miller is an author, speaker, and four-time kidney transplant recipient. Diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease at 22 and then experiencing the weight and relief of four transplants has given Jennifer a way of seeing life and the people in it that I could not wait to share with listeners.
Jennifer’s memoir is called Incurable Optimist: Living with Illness and Chronic Hope, and it’s available now everywhere where books are sold. I cannot wait for you to meet my friend Jennifer. Welcome Jennifer.
[00:01:45] Jennifer: Thank you so much, Nina. I am so thrilled to be here today. This is so much fun.
[00:01:50] Nina: It’s important to have a piece of your story, like a big piece because that’s an important context. Can you share what your life was like before you started feeling sick?
[00:02:00] Jennifer: So I was a happy, healthy, normal girl who went to college on the west coast. I am from Minnesota. I grew up here, and then I went to school at the University of Puget Sound, which is near the Seattle area. I had the greatest college experience. I had so many friends I got a business degree and a psychology minor, and I felt like I was on track for my great life and all my friends and I, we kind of wanted the same things.
We were ready to establish careers and maybe eventually have a family one day. I had a boyfriend and I had a best friend and I had all the things that I thought were the right ingredients of life. But after I graduated from college, I lived in an apartment with my best friend and suddenly I woke up one day and I was puffy.
I was tired. I kind of felt off I didn’t have a lot of medical experiences. I hadn’t really had any. But I knew to go to a doctor because something felt unusual. I quickly learned at that doctor’s appointment that I had kidney damage, which was a shock. I thought it had maybe the flu or you know, a cold, something fixable, but I was told I had kidney damage and I needed a biopsy to determine the cause and the extent.
Which was a very scary word. I mean, it’s still a scary word, but when you’re 22, biopsy just meant cancer. I had no reference so my parents wanted me to come home to Minneapolis and get the biopsy here, which I did. Thinking I would return to Seattle in maybe a week and you know, everything would be fine. What that biopsy showed was I had, an incurable autoimmune kidney disease and had kidney failure within six months.
[00:03:40] Nina: Is there a reason it got triggered? Like at this age, is this something that was gonna happen eventually? It’s just, yeah. Do they know?
[00:03:47] Jennifer: Nina, this is totally out of the blue. This is like bad luck. So there’s really no rhyme or reason to why it happened and why it happened to me. It’s a very rare disease, it’s called FSGS. It’s got a mouthful of a name. It’s Focal Segmental Glial Sclerosis. It’s just a very out of the blue autoimmune disease. Similar I think to Lupus. People get this disease and they don’t know why.
[00:04:15] Nina: And there’s just no cure,
[00:04:16] Jennifer: Incurable is a bad word to attach to a disease. Yes.
[00:04:20] Nina: So you went home to Minneapolis to the doctors that your parents maybe knew of or could be connected to, and they found that you have this autoimmune disease. And so what did that mean?
[00:04:30] Jennifer: So that meant that I was gonna start a boatload of medications, prednisone being the primary one, they were gonna try to save my kidneys. I was also told that sometimes spontaneous, Remission happens. if there is spontaneous remission, I mean, that’s best of all worlds. That’s what I wanted. Like poof, it’s gone and I’m just gonna go back to normal.
Well, I always held onto the idea that I was gonna go back to normal, but the prednisone. Which if any of your listeners know anything about high doses of prednisone, it’s a horrible thing to take a high dose of Prednisone. You get so many side effects and you get a puffy face. You get muscle wasting. A lot of people get very hungry from prednisone and gain weight. I had the opposite effect. I had zero appetite. I lost a ton of weight. I lost my hair. I lost my sense of self. It was not. A good time and it didn’t work, so I lost my kidneys.
Then I went on dialysis and was told I would be on dialysis until I could get a kidney transplant. That was the goal. Kidney transplant, I just set my sights on getting a kidney transplant and then my life would go back to normal. So I always had a goal that somehow this was all gonna return to normal and my plan was to get the transplant, then go back to Seattle and , pick up where I left off.
[00:05:50] Nina: That part is very clear in the book, and since I know you and I, and I know you weren’t able to pick your life back up in Seattle, I’m, Empathizing with, Jennifer as a 22 year old in the book, 23 year old, 24 year old, your, hope and assumption that like this is going to be just like a blip.
It might be a year blip, it might be a two year blip at worst, and you’re eventually gonna go back and move in with your friends and kind of pick up with the boyfriend and pick up with the fun burgeoning career. Your heart breaks a bit even though I know that things are going to come out okay, but they’re not gonna be okay because they’re gonna go back to how they were, they’re gonna be okay because you had to come up with an entirely different way of seeing the world.
[00:06:31] Jennifer: That’s really, the biggest takeaway from the book, or the largest theme of the book for me is how do we let go of the life we’ve planned and try to accept the one that we’re gonna have. That’s a hard mission, and I think it’s one that many of us face. Life doesn’t always go according to plan. I think many of us learned that in many different ways, and I certainly did.
When I had my first transplant, I had recurrent FSGS within three days.
[00:06:59] Nina: That part just, it’s crushing to read that because how long did you have to wait for that first kidney?
[00:07:05] Jennifer: I waited for a year and eight months, and I thought, this is it. This is my train ride back to the future. The train didn’t leave the station. That was a really devastating point in my life because I just had to really reckon with how am I gonna have a meaningful life?
How is this going to work? I know so many people who have things that go off base in their life and they struggle with the same thing in many different forms.
One thing I love about memoirs is if I’m in a room with a hundred people, I’m probably the only one who’s a four-time kidney transplant recipient. But I’m certainly not the only one who can speak to, yeah, things didn’t go like I thought they were gonna go, and I had to sort of figure out how to move forward with what I had to deal with.
[00:07:49] Nina: I bet that helps in your friendships too, because people who assume they’re the only ones who have suffered at all, I think they have a really hard time getting along with other people because then it’s a competition, then it’s a suffering competition.
[00:08:01] Jennifer: Oh my gosh, I have so many thoughts about that. For one, the competition that you mentioned, I find myself telling people this all the time because I feel so, uncomfortable or I reject this very much when people say to me, you know, I’m having something that I’m dealing with, but I don’t want to tell you because you’ve been through so much.
[00:08:21] Nina: Oh my God. I’m so glad you brought that up. That must be, yeah, like hello. I still wanna be able to connect to other people. Right. And hear about you.
[00:08:28] Jennifer: Yes, I totally shut that down. That’s so irrelevant because I’m someone’s friend. I totally care about what they’re going through, and it is not a competition. If we all acted like life was a competition of who has things worse off or who has things better, it just wouldn’t work. I really have come to believe that life is a mix of beauty and bummers. That’s just what it is. If someone’s having a moment that’s their bummer, I want to know all about it. If they’re having a moment that’s their beauty, I want to know all about it. Anybody out there who thinks that you have to tiptoe around somebody else’s issues because you don’t think yours measure up, please stop that right now because that’s not a good component of friendship.
Friendship should be two-sided, and we can all deal with each other’s issues together without there being any comparison.
[00:09:18] Nina: . So let’s get back to your story. I actually love doing these, moments of clarity in the story we don’t have to save it all for after. The autoimmune disease is still really fighting with your kidney, with the new kidney. Right?
[00:09:30] Jennifer: What my doctor told me, which has really been helpful to me to remember all these years is, I should really expect transplants to be a vacation from dialysis. And that was helpful to me to hear that because it managed my expectations in a way, it made me feel like Cinderella at the ball.
I had a transplant. I didn’t know how long I was gonna have it, but while I had it, I was going to really enjoy it, and I was gonna savor it. And that translates into kind of my view of how to live life because. None of us know what’s going to happen. None of us has any guarantees on anything, and so we really do need to savor the life that we’re living when we’re living it.
But I wanna talk to you about how this kind of related to friendships and things that I really learned along the way. I remember when I was first sick before I got that first transplant, and I was puffy and I didn’t feel good, and I had all the prednisone side effects. And my friend Rachel called and she wanted to come over my first reaction was, no, I don’t look good right now. I don’t think you should come right now. Let’s wait till the prednisone side effects go away. And she was like, I don’t give a flip how you look right now. I wanna see you. I’m so glad she insisted and she came over because I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was thinking, I gotta get back to me. She realized that, friendship is friendship. She wasn’t gonna wait for me to get back to a state where I thought I looked better because she wanted to love and support me. She came over and she brought me a gift, which was a, crystal, it was a healing crystal. And I remember I took it and I looked at it to have the light go in this healing experience.
And I kind of rubbed along the side to feel the healing energy and it cut my finger and we looked in like I was bleeding It wasn’t a big cut, we both started laughing so hard that, this healing gift drew blood and now I’m bleeding all over the place and she and I like doubled over laughing and I just thought, oh my gosh, this is such a lesson of, you know, back to the beauty and the bummers. The fact that she and I were just laughing so hard together in the midst of her giving me this love and support because terrible things were happening was such an example of what friendship is.
I really had to kind of learn to take stock in the things I still had, and I call it my lucky list. Laughing with friends, you can’t take that away from me. I can be on the verge of kidney failure and I can still laugh with friends. If any of your listeners out there ever feel like they have something going on that’s traumatic and they just kind of want to hide away, I really encourage you to try to fight through that and let your friends be your friends because it makes such a difference to be seen and your friends, “theirness” is healing in itself.
[00:12:22] Nina: I just want to say good for Rachel because it can be very tricky when you are the friend to somebody who is suffering in any way whatsoever. And that person draws a boundary and says, no, please don’t come. It is hard to push because you kind of go into this dynamic of everything that that friend says, is that friend’s truth? Who are we to question it? But I think what you’re speaking to is like, Rachel knew you before she wasn’t gonna let you just slip into this other identity of. Suffering or whatever. I don’t know if that’s the right word. I felt like what she was saying is, hold on, Jennifer, you’re still Jennifer. I know you, we lived together three months ago. We’re friends I don’t care what you look like.
[00:13:04] Jennifer: Yeah, but she wasn’t gonna let me hide. I kind of wanna talk a little bit about how there’s so many articles out there about what to say to your friend that has chronic illness and what to not say. I kind of wanna push back on those a little bit because they make people feel like they need to walk on eggshells. And I don’t agree with that. If you have a really good friend, they’re your friend and they’re going through something difficult. But how fragile could a friendship be? If you could say something that’s such the wrong thing to say that then your friendship is in this big upheaval. It just doesn’t happen like that.
Like if someone says, have you tried yoga?
That can really heal people I could easily say, I do really like yoga, but I’ve tried everything I know how to do. To reestablish my health and yoga doesn’t do it. You know, and they could go, oh, I didn’t mean to imply that you should have done yoga, to have better health. It’s a conversation always with friends.
I think if we have good enough friends, we don’t have to be so afraid of what to say. be honest and say, I’m not sure if that was the right thing to say. Please tell me. But don’t be so afraid. I think some of these articles make people so afraid to just talk to somebody that they already know.
[00:14:22] Nina: Oh my gosh, Jennifer. I hate those articles. I am so glad you said that. And it’s about every topic, what not to say to your friend going through a divorce, what not to say to your friend, going through infertility, okay then let’s not talk to each other. Let’s not
[00:14:34] Jennifer: Yes. They almost encourage you to not talk to somebody and people need their friends, you
[00:14:39] Nina: Or to just say all these platitudes, can’t we just assume the best? Like if you are friends with somebody and they’re going through something you’ve never gone through, I would like to think we can just assume we’re all kind of trying our best to be there. And you’re right, it does encourage people to not be there
[00:14:54] Jennifer: Right, and I think it’s up to the person, the person like me, that if somebody says something and it. Kind of rubbed me in a way that felt hurtful or made me feel bad. It’s up to me to go, you know, Nina, when you say that like that, it makes me think I should have done something that I didn’t do or whatever, and then you could be like, oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel like that. I just didn’t know what to say. It’s all fine. We just need to keep talking to people. One of my dear, dear friends Amy, that I’ve known forever and I love her so much, I think I’ve known her since kindergarten. We have this funny story together I mean, it could be categorized as something not to say or she felt bad about saying, and now we laugh about it all the time because we’re friends.
It wasn’t what she meant to say and it. Was fine, years ago. There was a movie with Julia Roberts called Steel Magnolias. And it was about Julia Roberts was on dialysis, had a kidney transplant. I went to see the movie with my mom cuz it was like, is this gonna be about my life? Well, Amy saw it and said, oh my gosh, steel Magnolias, it’s just like your life. And I was like, well, I hope not the end, because at the end she went into a coma and died
[00:16:04] Nina: It’s the saddest movie, Jennifer. That movie is so sobbing that movie.
[00:16:08] Jennifer: sad and she just got beat red and she’s like, no, no, no. I didn’t mean the end, I didn’t mean, of course I knew she didn’t mean the end. So we laughed about it. I’m like, I knew you didn’t mean the end. We still laugh about it. That’s what friends do.
And if you can’t talk to your friends about things that become awkward and then become funny, you’re not good friends. I think one of the biggest things about friendship is grace. Give each other grace. We don’t always say the right thing, no matter what situation we’re in, so let’s just talk about it and we can laugh about it later.
[00:16:44] Nina: I love that. You know that Amy story. Steel Magnolias, by the way, I did a deep dive into Steel Magnolias as a guest on a podcast. It was a lot of fun. I love podcasts like that. Pop culture things where you go down into it. I could see how you wouldn’t know how sad that movie was gonna be, because the trailers are all like, we’re in the South, we’re fun, we’re happy. Shirley McClain is here being a goofball. And it’s like, holy moly, that is actually an extremely sad movie.
[00:17:09] Jennifer: It was kind of built as a, dramedy, so there was supposed to be comedy in it, which there was, but it was really a sad movie.
[00:17:18] Nina: Oh yeah, it was okay. But back to the Amy part, it’s just like a slight thing. It seems like in today’s atmosphere of, internet, memes and all these articles, what not to say it seems like the way things are going these days, Amy would’ve been labeled as a toxic friend and all these things and it would’ve made such a big deal out of something that really was not a big deal.
[00:17:41] Jennifer: Yes, cuz of course she wasn’t a toxic friend. She just said something that came out wrong and she quickly went, oh, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s back to Grace, like let’s give each other a break. We can’t expect our friends to say the perfect thing all the time. Just like we don’t say the perfect thing all the time.
[00:18:00] Nina: That’s right. Okay, so let’s come back to your story for a moment cuz we’re still on. Kidney number one. So now we’re waiting for kidney number two, because kidney number one isn’t happening anymore.
[00:18:09] Jennifer: Yeah, kidney number one lasted five years and three months.
[00:18:12] Nina: Oh, it lasted a lot longer than
[00:18:14] Jennifer: Mm-hmm. So I cherished every minute of that, five years and three months, and I set out to have a good life. You know. I think sometimes we label ourselves, , the chronic illness label or the kidney patient label. I just wanted to throw off the labels and go out and just have a good life because, my kidney was working. I knew it wasn’t gonna last forever, but I wasn’t gonna carry around this heavy weight I wanted to go live a life. In that period of time, I did establish my career in the custom home building industry. I had really great time with my friends. We did a lot of fun things. We were in our twenties. I met a man who became my boyfriend, who became my husband, it was different than the average life because I did have a lot of medical things to sustain my life. You won’t keep your transplant unless you take the medication.
I just forged ahead after five years and three months, it started to peter out and I did go back on dialysis
[00:19:11] Nina: And let’s be clear, cuz not everybody knows dialysis is three times a week, correct?
[00:19:16] Jennifer: Three times a week , I was going to an in-center clinic, things have changed dramatically since then. Now, DaVita dialysis is on every corner. These DaVita clinics that you see now all over the place weren’t in existence at the time when people would go to hospitals.
Once you have kidney failure, you have kidney failure, you are never getting your kidneys back, so there are only two ways to survive. One is on dialysis, if your listeners don’t know, is an artificial kidney machine, your natural kidneys are working 24 hours a day. But when they don’t work at all and you get hooked up to a machine that cleans your blood, it’s kind of a substitute for what the kidneys do, but it’s only doing it three times a week so you don’t feel nearly as good as you do when you have a kidney. Then if you get a kidney transplant, That’s the most, I think most people would agree, the highest quality of life that you can lead once you have kidney failure you don’t have to hook yourself up to a machine. But you do have to take medication and be very health-minded. You can get infections more easily and things like that.
[00:20:22] Nina: Your immune system is sort of compromised cause of the
[00:20:26] Jennifer: Yep. You are always taking medication that reduces your immune system, which helps you keep your kidney, but by reducing your immune system, you are more susceptible to infections and flus
[00:20:37] Nina: Also, you made me appreciate in the book exactly what that kidney had been doing for the first 22 years of your life that you didn’t even know to appreciate that your readers probably don’t know to appreciate.
Just all the things that’s processing and the potassium and all the liquids and how everything you drank had to be so measured and you would be thirsty all the time. You’d see somebody drinking and you’d just be like, oh, cold water, dreaming of water.
[00:21:00] Jennifer: It was so funny cuz when I was recording my audio book, the producer who was working with me always had this giant water with her and she said, you, keep talking about how thirsty you were, it just makes you wanna drink water all the time. But yeah, that’s the thing, when you don’t have kidney function and I didn’t have any urine output at all.
Everything you drink stays with you. once you get a kidney that’s working, I mean, it’s a weird thing what you start to celebrate, but I was so excited to have to go pee because it’s such a normal thing that if it doesn’t happen, you, take it for granted. And, that’s really I think what happens with life in general.
Sometimes I compare it to when the power goes out. All the things that you can’t use, that you don’t really think about, and you’re like, oh, I can’t wait to get the power back. I’m gonna always appreciate my lights again. That’s what it’s like when something serious happens in your life, especially with illness. You know, when you’re on dialysis, things are really hard, when you get the kidney you feel so much better and it’s just like getting the power on, and you really appreciate life so much more when you’ve been kind of walking that tight rope.
And it’s the same with friendships too. Friends are on my lucky list and there are things that can’t go away. What would we do without our friends? Friends are there to witness life with you. And I think of all the life that I’ve witnessed in my friends and what a special bond that is to have that. So my first reaction to hide was so counterproductive to friendship. Let’s just be with each other through all the hardships and the heartbreak and the humor and the hope. It’s all rolled into one and friendships can absorb all of that.
[00:22:37] Nina: Your friends were about to have more reason to be by your side and for you to be by their side. Thank God, you know, you survived several more surgeries. So you got another kidney. You were married at this point, correct?
[00:22:50] Jennifer: Yep. Second kidney really allowed me to have my daughter. I will never get over the miracle of that because not only did, somebody who checked a box at the D M V give me the gift of life. They gave me the gift of creating life and I wouldn’t have ever been able to get pregnant and have my daughter, Liza, without that kidney.
So, the pregnancy did compromise the kidney. I had some issues after she was born. She was born premature. Then I developed a very serious septic infection. So there was a lot of low point there, but oh my gosh, the upside of us both getting better and still being here to tell the tail is nothing short of a miracle.
That kidney lasted about seven years then I didn’t need dialysis this time. This was a really big advancement in kidney transplantation. Because they were really promoting living donors. my mom, was by my side the whole time and we were very close and she wanted to give me her kidney for my first transplant, but she wasn’t a match.
But years later, by the time I needed my third transplant, so. She was a match because antigen matching had changed in that time and they knew that she didn’t have enough antigens supposedly way back at the first one. But the research that had happened in between and the advancements in medication made it possible for her to give me her kidney for the third transplant.
[00:24:17] Nina: Incredible.
[00:24:18] Jennifer: another, miracle. There’s so many miracles,
[00:24:20] Nina: and so that was the third kidney. Just because I think it’s important for listeners to know the next part, how you ended up with the fourth kidney. People could help so many others out there.
[00:24:32] Jennifer: Yes, I am so happy to talk about this cuz this was a game changer and in my experience of these decades with these kidney transplants, I’ve seen a lot of transformations , in progression of kidney transplants. The biggest one was for my fourth transplant, my wonderful husband really wanted to donate his kidney to me, but he wasn’t a match. Back to friends, I had 15 family and friends that tried to donate to me. None of them were a match, but that’s so heartwarming just in itself.
You know, just the fact that people would even try to see if they could be a donor. It will always stick with me as such a lovely, lovely thing. But my husband, very determined man was not a match and he just is like, there’s got to be a way we can figure this out. He looked into what’s called the Paired Exchange Program. The Paired Exchange program is such a game changer and the best way to explain it is a kidney swap, it’s like a cookie swap, but for kidneys. , Dirk, my husband, was a willing donor for me, but not a match. We could go into a pool of people who had a willing donor that were not a match.
Then from this pool. If I could get a kidney from somebody else and Dirk could give his kidney to somebody else, it just facilitates these matches more quickly. And that’s what happened. A 25 year old altruistic kidney donor.
And what an altruistic donor is, is someone who, out of the goodness of their heart, just says, I wanna give someone my kidney. They’re not directing it to anybody. I got a call that this 25 year old was a good match for me. Wanted to donate his kidney. My coordinator said he’s been thinking about it for a long time. He’d like to schedule the surgery soon, and I was like, he’s 25. How long could he have been thinking about it? It just was totally amazing. And so my husband’s benevolence and this super hero, altruistic donor converged to give me my fourth transplant, which was 12 years ago. The longest transplant I’ve ever had, it’s going well. It’s just been a really, wonderful, wonderful ride with this last one.
[00:26:37] Nina: Are you in touch with him, the donor?
[00:26:40] Jennifer: No. So I did send him a letter. My daughter sent him a super cute letter too. and then it’s up to the donor if they wanna reply. a lot of donors wanna do their good deed and then have privacy, and it’s set up that way so that there’s no obligation to connect. I’ve expressed my super duper gratitude and, he knows, and that’s all that the contact has been.
[00:27:05] Nina: That’s beautiful. And what about the kidney that Dirk donated?
[00:27:09] Jennifer: Dirk’s kidney went to a man in North Dakota who had diabetes. I just couldn’t believe the links of connection. I had so much compassion for the man thinking of here’s a man who gets this call from his transplant coordinator, that we have a good kidney for you. And that Dirk’s goodness was a double whammy of do good. It’s really the best of humanity. kidney disease is not a fun thing. I don’t recommend it, but the stories are just always so amazing. There’s so many uplifting stories of what people do to help people.
It’s pretty much the best act of kindness I can think of, but it requires a lot of information. If anyone’s curious about it, you can certainly go to the National Kidney Foundation site and get some more information.
[00:27:57] Nina: So I wanna end on any last thoughts you have about, kindness and pity and sort of separating those two, how do those get mixed together and, and then we’ll say goodbye.
[00:28:10] Jennifer: Yes. At the beginning, in my hide stage, I just felt like everyone looked at me with pity and I rejected pity so much this especially happened with my mother-in-law. I just felt like this love that she was dishing out to me felt like pity.
And I just was like, please don’t pity me. It made me feel like she was saying, you’re pathetic and I didn’t wanna be pathetic. well, I was young. It took me some time to learn that . It wasn’t pity, it was kindness. This same woman many years later when she was 80 years old and I was gonna get my fourth transplant, wanted to donate her kidney.
I clearly learned her pity was love and kindness. I think that when someone goes through something with a chronic illness, make sure you try to decipher what you’re actually feeling, if it’s something that you feel or if it’s something that someone’s actually spreading to you. Many times it’s really love and kindness that people are offering, and that’s worth noting, people wanna help. I know this from being on the flip side, when I have friends who go through difficult things, I just wanna do something. One of the hard lessons to learn is just let people love you.
We wanna shut off sometimes so much and just be independent and just, I’ll handle it. I’ll get over it. But if people love you, let them. I mean, that’s such a wonderful thing. also , I think one of the big things that I learned that is kind of an important lesson maybe for all of us is I really wanted to know how am I ever gonna lead a meaningful life?
I had all these things I wanted to check off. I wanted love and career and children, . Things miraculously I’ve been able to have, . But, there’s this really great study that is called the Harvard Study of Adult Development, and it started in 1938 by a psychiatrist named Robert Waldinger. And I love this study so much because they have followed these participants in this study over a lifetime, asking them what is the most important measure of happiness? And of course people started off thinking it was gonna be fame or wealth or all these things. But after I think 75 years of this study, what has really emerged as the key to happiness in a lifetime is close relationships
[00:30:24] Nina: That’s right.
[00:30:24] Jennifer: Friendships, I mean, hello. Friendships are so important to our health. I like to say that I maintain my friendships because it’s good for my health. We all need people. So I think that’s the biggest thing I learned from my days where I was going to shut off and get back to normal. Now I live with this illness, but I don’t label myself with it. And I don’t think my friends do either. But they know that sometimes I go through something just like they do. At 22, it didn’t seem like anybody else had any issues. But now, with my friends in their forties and fifties, we all have had life happen to us. Life doesn’t discriminate and say that some people have the bummers and some people have the beauty. We all have the beauty and the bummers. We’ve helped each other now through infertility, and the loss of siblings, and life-threatening prematurity—all these things that are just life, we all go through this we need our friends. We just need our friends to support each other through all the things that we go through.
[00:31:29] Nina: Perfect. Last thing to say, Jennifer, thank you so much for sharing your story, I really cannot wait for more people to get their hands on incurable optimists. If you haven’t seen the cover of this book, Everyone, it’s on the, graphic for my episode. It’ll be all over my Instagram, it’s just the best cover. And because Jennifer’s in my writing group, we have had lots of time together seeing this book come to life. The quote on the front is from Delia Ephron. I’m a huge fan of the Ephron Sisters and how cool is that? And just even getting to be part of like, do we like this cover? Do we like the quote on this side of the page or on the out that side? I mean, that was so neat to be part of that.
[00:32:09] Jennifer: Oh my gosh. And I wanna thank you so much, Nina, for your friendship Of course. And for all the things that we’ve been through together. Because we have traveled through this book journey together, and you’ve taught me so much, as a writing instructor, I’ve gleaned so much information from you and then just as friends. I just love our whole relationship. And now I celebrate your podcast so much because I saw this come into being it just feels so exciting to be here and talk to you, and I loved this conversation so much.
[00:32:41] Nina: I’m just honored that you’re one of my wonderful guests now. Incurable Optimist is the name of the memoir. And just like Dr. Waldinger said, I say it at the end of every single episode, when our friendships are going well, we are happier all around. See you next week.
One Response
Great episode and helpful to hear of Jennifer’s experience. I just finished Abby Jimenez’s book Yours Truly – and the main character’s brother is dealing with kidney failure and dialysis. I have learned so much!