[00:00:00] nina: welcome to Dear Nina, Conversations About Friendship. I have a beloved and consistent guest. Not really consistent it’s probably been about a year That is my mom, Kathy Sackheim. Welcome mom.
[00:00:21] kathy: Welcome me. Thank you.
[00:00:22] nina: I do not record with my mom unless she’s in town visiting because I don’t have a lot of faith in her sound situation at home. The phone rings, the clocks go, and I can’t really control the situation there like I can here in Minneapolis in my little studio. Doesn’t sound like me, Mom?
[00:00:42] kathy: It sounds exactly like you.
[00:00:44] nina: . Because I have you here close to the Jewish holidays, there are some things I want to talk about that I think relate to friendship and relate to everybody whether you Jewish or not. I know I have a lot of non-Jewish listeners. And part of what I appreciate about the fall Jewish holidays, which are Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur—so the Jewish Year and the Day of Atonement, which both really important holidays for us—is that the lessons from them, the things we think about, can be appreciated by all people. Just like we can appreciate things other people’s holidays.
A major focus in this month of Elul, E L U L, is to be thinking about ways we want to be different in the next year. That includes, asking forgiveness for things we’ve done that might have hurt other people. And a lot of people assume that happens on Yom Kippur, on the Day of Atonement, which this year is September 25th We are on a Lunar calendar. So it changes all the time. But that actually is not correct. It’s actually the month of Elul when you are supposed to begin the process of asking for forgiveness. Did you know that, Mom,
[00:01:50] kathy: I didn’t know that.
[00:01:51] nina: Okay. So you learned something here with your daughter? My mom begot a very Jewy daughter, Right? I mean, we’re equally Jewish. No one’s more Jewish. I’m just . . . extra,
[00:02:01] kathy: more religious,
[00:02:02] nina: extra into it. Yeah. It’s very important that everyone know there’s really no such thing as being like more Jewish. don’t use that expression. you might say more religious, you might say more observant of the laws, but I grew up in your house where it obviously really important in our house, and it’s important to me.
Before you can ask people for forgiveness, you have to think about people you might have hurt. And that means intentionally and unintentionally,
We should think about what are ways that we could our friends . Let’s with unintentionally, because think a lot of hurts are unintentionally.
[00:02:35] kathy: Well, when your life changes for one reason or another, having lost your dad, I’ve had to start some new relationships. And how do deal with the old relationships when wanting to spend time with newer friends and an older friend is asking you to do something and where you always used do it, then want to be with a new person too, it becomes a problem.
[00:02:59] nina: Yeah, so that would be an example of an unintentional hurt, and I guess that could turn intentional if you never do anything to acknowledge that other person is probably missing you?
00:03:08] kathy: I know how to address it. I’m just saying it’s a problem. I don’t know exactly what to say to make it better.
[00:03:15] nina: This is just one example, but maybe acknowledging when you know somebody is likely feeling a certain way. Maybe they’ve dropped hints, but also, we sometimes run the danger of assuming we know how other people feel. We don’t always know. I’m not sure that I would up a friend and say, Hey, I have a thinking X, Y, and Z, and I want to apologize or acknowledge that you’re feeling this way if they haven’t said. So I think speaks how important it is to communicate with our friends.
You’re often someone who advocates picking your battles, and so it’s possible that you have a friend who has decided not to pick this battle, so hasn’t communicated with you. But this friend is maybe thinking about it and acting differently.
[00:03:58] kathy: Right. I suppose you can say, have I done something to hurt you? I’ve noticed a change in behavior.
[00:04:04] nina: I llke that. If the person doesn’t take you up on that opportunity, I mean, there’s only so much you can do.
[00:04:10] kathy: Right.
[00:04:11] nina: What other unintentional things is it possible we might have done to hurt other people? One thing one has to do with modern technology. It’s a real issue. That would be ignoring somebody’s text email.
[00:04:22] kathy: Okay, that’s a whole generational thing.
[00:04:24] nina: it’s not that different than a phone call. If you left friend a message on an answering machine—my mom still has an answering on her home uses it. I like leave messages you on your machine and you get them,
[00:04:36] kathy: right
[00:04:37] nina: Do your friends have answering machines still?
[00:04:39] kathy: Mostly they do.
[00:04:40] nina: So let’s say you left a couple messages for a friend on her answering machine and she never got back to you. Would you be a little miffed?
[00:04:48] kathy: I would assume that something’s wrong.
[00:04:49] nina: What if it was a repeated behavior it wasn’t just once. Because that’s a fair assumption. I think that speaks well of you and your friendships that most of your friends wouldn’t just ignore your messages if they didn’t return your message many times in row something probably is wrong. Have you ever had— and I’m thinking in your forties, fifties—who just repeatedly ignored messages or eventually get to you, but already the date has passed since you were maybe trying to get tickets for a show like that. Or did your friends not really flake out like that?
[00:05:20] kathy: I don’t remember experiencing that. I remember my mother complaining about someone who didn’t return two phone calls and saying to my mother, Mom, maybe something’s wrong. You should to speak to her, keep calling till you reach her. That’s not really about forgiveness.
[00:05:36] nina: Well, it’s related because you don’t always have get to the level of forgiveness if can assume the best in the first place. Sometimes so much assumption goes back and forth and then we therefore act accordingly, like you act a little put out by a friend, and then you sense the friend’s put out, and now you’re kind of like, well, I didn’t even do anything, so now you’re irritated and now there’s tension.
If we could skip that, we don’t even need to get to the point of asking for forgiveness. I do think you tend to really to do a better job of assuming the best than I do, but I try. Because I think it’s important.
[00:06:07] kathy: I think so too. And if you sense that some behavior has changed, as we just said a few minutes ago, you can try to say, have I done something to hurt you?
[00:06:17] nina: And there is a common phrase, I don’t know the Hebrew for it, but in English, I mean, I hear more religious friends often say that throughout this month and closer to Yom Kippur: If there’s something I have done intentionally or unintentionally to hurt you, I hope you’ll… accept my apology, or they’ll even go as far as to say, I hope you will give me the chance to apologize. That’s actually more powerful because a blanket, will you accept my apology, can be a little meaningless. I’ve seen some people say, I’ve even seen write this on Facebook, will you allow me the chance to ask for your forgiveness? That’s different. I think that’s what you’re looking for, is a chance to hear what you might be upset about so I can answer for it.
[00:07:02] kathy: When I had my store for 13 years, and I had an unhappy customer. I was given the advice of asking the customer—if the customer says I’m unhappy, it’s alright, the person’s already saying what they’re unhappy about, is not offering to do X, Y, or Z, but to say to the customer, what can I do to make the situation better. What can I do that would please you? Which I guess is a variation on the theme.
[00:07:27] nina: Yeah, that would work.
[00:07:29] kathy: Well, what the advice I was given is oftentimes what we do is offer more than the customer is expecting or wants. So I suppose we can change that to a friendship situation where, if you ask what you could do, the friend will be honest about it, maybe it’ll be much simpler than coming up with something more complicated.
[00:07:50] nina: Yeah. Another thing I appreciate about a holiday that comes every year and forces us to think about the things we might have done to hurt other people is I think it breeds whatever the opposite of a victim mindset is. Because we’re not just walking around, well we shouldn’t be, just walking around saying, who owes me an apology? It takes work not to actually think through, who might be waiting for an apology from me? Which if I think about it, I think already forces you to be a better partner, colleague, everything. Daughter, mother, sister, those things. Because the kind of person who’s walking around keeping track of who might owe me an apology, is probably someone who’s harder to get along with.
The reason we don’t just do it all one day is because we’ve lived since the last Yom Kippur 364 days or something. Who could think of all that one day? It really takes some thought. You have to kind of think about your year, and we all make mistakes.
[00:08:54] kathy: I agree. You know the story of the one time I broke up with a friend who, in essence, I said to her, I feel like I never come through for you. And then she had a list of all the things that
[00:09:08] nina: she was was like, as a matter of fact, let me get out this parchment.
[00:09:12] kathy: She did. She had a list many, many things I hadn’t done and times I hadn’t come through for her.
[00:09:16] nina: What kind of examples? I’m curious.
[00:09:18] kathy: One thing she said, I didn’t come to sit with her husband at the hospital when she had surgery. At the time I had young children, and I don’t know her husband would have wanted me to sit waiting her. It would be different than when you have grown up teenage children, and you’re free to do that. And I have done that. That was just one thing, but she had a whole list. And at that point, it wasn’t a thing that could be forgiven. It was a whole person, and I ended up ending the friendship
[00:09:49] nina: She couldn’t forgive you or couldn’t forgive her?
[00:09:51] kathy: She was somebody who very needy. And I knew that I had kids and a husband. I couldn’t be there catering to her every whim.
[00:10:00] nina: Well, I think what you might have sensed in her is that she was holding a grudge. And she was going to forever hold a grudge. And like said, it was probably for the best for you, if she was that kind of person. It’s almost like the opposite was true as well. She had decided, well, Kathy’s not the kind of person who’s going to drop everything at any moment. And she was right.
[00:10:18] kathy: And she was right.
[00:10:19] nina: Yeah. it’s best know that about each other. I’m going to read a couple quotes from, Maggie Smith. Not the actress, but the poet and writer. And she’s written a book called Keep Moving, which is really just a bunch of quotes that I love. Then she had a memoir out recently. The name is escaping me. I’ll have it in the show notes. But anyway, this is from her book, Keep Moving.
So one says, “Maybe we say holding a grudge because that kind of resentment is a heavy thing have to wrap your arms to carry. Holding it weighs you down, not the other person. Set it down anytime. Right now, for instance. Keep moving.”
So all these end with that and they’re very motivating. A little later she says, “Expect what you tend to will grow. Expect that what you feed with your care and attention, what you shine your light on, will thrive. Choose wisely. Keep moving.”
Do you see the connection here? I do.
[00:11:18] kathy: Well, you’ve heard this before. People say that holding a grudge weighs you down, not the other person. So that’s how forgiveness is tied into grudge holding. That if you can forgive somebody and keep moving, it’s much better for you psychologically.
[00:11:35] nina: I wrote an article for, I think it was for Kveller, it might have been the Jewish Daily Forward, it was a while ago now, it was about what you do when you are the person waiting for an apology that never comes, and it had to with this time of year. I interviewed a Reform rabbi, a Conservative rabbi too. And an Orthodox rabbi. And I asked them all the same question, which was what do you do when you’ve made all the apologies that you feel are owed to other people in your life— We are still all human and while it’s ideal to not be walking thinking like, who owes me an apology, we can’t always help it. So what do you do when there’s someone out there who was pretty rude or did something over the year that they really should apologize for, and of waiting for apology they basically all said you are not required to forgive them, but you should.
Essentially in different words, different ways, and it doesn’t matter what their Jewish background was. I don’t think you need to be a rabbi to realize that you, like you said, are only harming yourself when you carry around anger, but they did all say that forgiveness doesn’t mean you have to be close to the person.
[00:12:50] kathy: I was going say that. I think you can recognize in this person that the relationship isn’t working for me. I need to stay away
[00:12:56] nina: so you can forgive without reconnecting necessarily.
[00:13:00] kathy: You can end the connection.
[00:13:02] nina: That’s hard to do, you know, it’s interesting because of our different ages and just my involvement in social media that I you don’t have, and most of your friends don’t have. I I know you’re on Facebook, but that’s different than being involved in it. You can be on it without being super involved. And I’m involved. So when you’re not close to somebody, there is an awkwardness when you are still pretty connected online. It’s hard to disconnect.
Is that an issue at all in your age?
[00:13:29] kathy: I don’t think so. I guess I’m not that connected.
[00:13:31] nina: That’s probably a better way to be but gosh, it just kind of is what it is now.
[00:13:36] kathy: I was having lunch with a friend and a friend of hers, and I was telling them about your podcast that it was about friendship. The other person, who’s not my friend, was saying she and a friend had for 12 years dropped her because she had given the son a wedding gift and the store went out of business so they couldn’t return the gift. And the mother of the son just stopped speaking to her for no reason. And then, maybe years later, she called her—This other person said to the person who called, why are you calling me now? Why did you stop talking to me? She was told, well, it was about this gift, and I felt you were dishonoring me. I mean, it was such a crazy thing.
[00:14:19] nina: Listeners, you cannot see this, but, my mouth has dropped open at the level of pettiness.
[00:14:23] kathy: Yeah. the friend who had sent the wedding gifts said, well, why didn’t you call me? I would have sent him a check. I would have taken the gift back. Why didn’t you say something to me? I think she opted not to reconnect the friendship because…
[00:14:36] nina: Yeah, stay far away.
[00:14:37] kathy: I was appalled by the story.
[00:14:41] nina: I’m glad shared that. I think that’s good example of when know someone is walking around carrying grudge. Yes it weighs them down. But if they’re willing to walk around for 12 years being weighed down like that, it’s like yeah, I don’t really want to be friends with you. That’s petty.
[00:14:58] kathy: I mean, it was so stupid.
[00:15:00] nina: Look we have never really been this judgmental on the show.
[00:15:06] kathy: Yeah. So this was all because I mentioned your podcast, it managed to bring this memory. She didn’t know me that well.
[00:15:16] nina: Yeah. Well, it obviously bothered her, even though she’s not connected to that person now, to be on the receiving end of being dropped over some like that. It’s something that would be hard to forget. Did she suspect it was that?
[00:15:28] kathy: No. She really had no idea.
[00:15:30] nina: It was a big mystery?
[00:15:31] kathy: Big mystery.
[00:15:31] nina: Did they have mutual friends?
[00:15:33] kathy: I don’t know that much of the story.
[00:15:34] nina: Like I need some follow up. I need, give me her number. I’m going to be obsessing about this story. This is one of those stories that is going to get to me. I mean Mom, I get letters from people who are are so mad at their friends and maybe they’re waiting for an apology. Sometimes I get letters and, they’re usually anonymous so I can’t respond, which is probably for the best. And I just kind of want to say, is there anything your friend could even do to stay in your good graces? You know, there’s like some people you can’t really ever please.
[00:16:01] kathy: Well, we’ve had this in previous podcasts. If you want to have friends, you have to be willing to overlook a whole lot of things, like someone’s basic personality, sometimes.
[00:16:11] nina: Well, that’s maybe a lot to ask. Like, maybe you shouldn’t be friends with someone if you have to overlook their personality.
[00:16:17] kathy: Sometimes a person can behave one way, but is a really good friend. So maybe they have an attitude that you sort of get annoyed by, but in other instances that person’s a really good caring friend.
[00:16:30] nina: Yeah, that’s true I actually have said many times in this podcast, but if someone is new it’s good to hear that kind of like your friend was irritated with you for not showing up at the hospital, I’m going to be the friend that is never going to be the first to offer you a ride to the airport. Like you’ve heard me say that before. Right?
[00:16:46] kathy: And I’m not going to be the friend who offers to make a main course for dinner party. I’ll bring or lemon slices, something I make, but I don’t expect to do the main catering for somebody else’s dinner party.
[00:16:58] nina: Do people ask people to bring main dishes?
[00:16:59] kathy: It was the same friend who was mad at me for not going to the hospital.
[00:17:02] nina: Mom, that’s so funny. I’ve never heard you tell that part of the story. That’s ridiculous. Okay, I’ll bring an appetizer. I’ll happily bring drinks, dessert. But if I’m going to bring the main dish, I’m going to have the party.
[00:17:15] kathy: Exactly.
[00:17:16] nina: That’s silly. That’s really funny. Oh my gosh.
Okay, so I’m curious growing up, did your family have any kind of tradition around talking about forgiveness around the holidays? Was there any discussion of that?
[00:17:31] kathy: Absolutely not. No discussion whatsoever.
[00:17:34] nina: I can’t remember if we did growing up. Bryan prints out a list of, sort of like, deep questions that he’s answering about his life at the beginning of the month. It’s not just about forgiveness stuff. That kind of comes later. At the beginning of the month, it’s really more, what are things that I want in my life. What am I doing to achieve those things? Not in a December 31st, New Year, kind of way. It’s deeper than that. It’s not goals, more spiritual, emotional kind of things.
So my kids are growing up in that atmosphere where we’re constantly talking about it and he goes to each kid and says, How have I been as a dad? Are there things you’d like to see different? I mean, he really does this every year.
[00:18:15] kathy: Do they tell him?
[00:18:16] nina: Yeah. They tell him. And I do it to a degree, but the problem is he gets to everything first. And I feel like if I around do it, I’m just sort of copying Bryan. I, in my own way, will do it and I’ll ask their forgiveness for things I might have done that hurt their feelings, and we kind of make them do it to each other. It’s like a whole thing.
[00:18:36] kathy: I can’t imagine this happening in the house I grew up in. It was another generation ago where parents were always right. You always deferred to your parents.
[00:18:45] nina: Well, I mean, we’re not always right, the kids aren’t always right obviously either. There are things that we should have done better because we’re the adults. There’s times we’ve lost our temper, and that is not the kids’ fault. We’re the adults. We should be able to control ourselves more. So it’s like we owe them an apology for that. Even though they’re kids and we’re in charge. When you’re the adult, you have burden of acting like the adult. And so if you haven’t, then you that kid an apology probably.
[00:19:09] kathy: That’s really important. There are people my age who’ve been in therapy for a gazillion years who are still waiting any apology from a parent who’s long gone.
[00:19:19] nina: Yeah, well right, that’s tough. Now I’m not saying we’re perfect at all and I’m not saying my kids couldn’t benefit from many years therapy when they’re going to be upset with us one day. But, I say that the holiday, the month of holiday, really does help frame that.
Any other thoughts, on forgiveness, the importance of asking forgiveness? .
[00:19:38] kathy: It’s something I don’t think about very much, but one always learn from one’s children.
[00:19:43] nina: Oh, nice.
[00:19:44] kathy: And, I will take it under consideration.
[00:19:46] nina: Whether you should ask people for forgiveness?
[00:19:48] kathy: Yeah.
[00:19:49] nina: I can tell you right now that you do not owe me an apology for anything. You really don’t.
[00:19:53] kathy: Well, that’s nice hear.
[00:19:54] nina: And it’s a year by year basis. I’m not like, you know, years ago maybe, but this year I could not think of a single thing. Do I owe you an apology, is what I should be thinking about.
[00:20:05] kathy: No, I can’t think of anything you need to apologize for.
[00:20:08] nina: Okay. All right. That’s good. If you know, change your mind, can. Send me a text or I can call you back on your answering machine. Listeners, if you have not heard my mom on the podcast before, you might enjoy going all the way back to episode one. She was my very first guest. We talked about friends who will only text and not pick up the phone. And I taught her how to use emojis live on the podcast. It was really fun, and we have a picture of it.
Alright, Mom, wishing you a Shana Tovah, a Happy New Year. I wish we could celebrate together. You’re never here for the holiday. I’m rarely in Chicago for the holiday. I don’t think you would like how intense we are here.
[00:20:44] kathy: I probably wouldn’t. I wish you L’shana Tovah as well.
[00:20:47] nina: All right, listeners, I’d love to have my mom back again. She has to visit me more, but we might teach her do it remotely so can have on more. And, you know what I’m going to say if you’ve heard this show before. You should come back next week because when our friendships are going well, we’re happier all around. Thanks!
