[00:00:00] Diamonde: I was reading a book and I liked the way that they said it. It was like, it’s complete, we’re done, we’re complete. The story has ended, the chapter has ended. I have now completed the way I can complete a meal, the way I can complete a grade. I have completed this friendship.

[00:00:18] Nina: Welcome to Dear Nina Conversations About Friendship. If you’re new here, I’m your host, Nina Badzin. I’ve been writing about friendships since 2014. In today’s episode, we are revisiting a conversation I had with Diamonde Williamson about friendship breakups.

Before I share that with you and why I’m sharing it, I want to talk about the amazing response I got from the most recent anonymous question on my Substack, and it does relate to this episode. You find my newsletter at dearnina.substack. com. it is mostly a free newsletter most times of the month. Once every about six weeks or so, I do an anonymous question and answer for paying subscribers. It’s one very small way that this podcast gets monetized. This podcast that I mostly do as a true labor of love for helping people with friendships.

All right. But back to the anonymous situation, somebody wrote to me, it was one of the most beautiful and heartfelt letters I have ever received. I think it just. pointed to something so many of us deal with in a friendship breakup, which is sometimes we know a friendship has run its course, either because I’m not even going to go and list the reasons.

There’s so many reasons. If you’re listening to this podcast and you’re interested in friendship, you have probably been on both ends of this where somebody has drifted away, away from you, or someone’s had a more direct confrontation with you. Or other way around. You have felt the need to separate from someone either in a more, abrupt way, because something happened, or just over time, this friendship had run its course.

In either scenario, it is hard not to dwell on it. Either scenario being you’re the one who was basically left behind as someone else moves on with their life, or you were in a period of time where you felt you needed to make that decision about a friendship. And yet, We dwell and we dwell. The letter I got was from someone who was really still thinking about this friendship a lot, even though she knew it was time for this friendship of eight years, eight very close years as adults to end.

I related to it from both ends of the spectrum. And as I was writing the answer, part of it was the season. This is episode 122, we’re in November, this is the season when we’re thinking a lot about gratitude more. It’s almost Thanksgiving.

The word gratitude came to mind as I was answering this. letter. It’s a long answer. I’m only going to read you one thing I wrote, which I think applies to this episode, too. I wrote, What if the slow end of your friendship could move from mourning and self torture to a torrent of gratitude for the years, this friend was the exact person you needed in a certain time of life.

What if we considered friendships that ended something other than a failure? What if we recognized the worthiness of our time together? And I suggested that she write a letter to this friend, not that she would send. Although you could, by the way, but I think she had already had a closure of sorts with this friend.

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend dredging it back up, but it was more for her, the letter writer, who was struggling to move on. And I thought that maybe It would be helpful to focus on how the friendship helped at a certain time. I just gave her a generic outline to do that. These are obviously really vague examples, but I suggested, you could write a letter of thanks to her that is just for you. And then I put in italic, sort of thinking this would be sort of a, a version of a letter like this.

Thank you for the years of listening and laughter. You took all those calls, you answered all those texts, you interpreted other people’s texts with me. You helped me make decisions big and small. What to wear, what to say, who to trust. I’m grateful you were by my side for those important years. And despite it ending in a way neither one of us would have predicted, in the best parts of our friendship, I am grateful to you for delivering me to this moment. You have released me. I hope you can remember the good parts of our friendship. I am releasing you and cheering you on from afar as we each move towards who we will become in the future.

My answer had a lot of other ideas too of how to move on from this friendship. And if you’ve never been on Substack, it’s just a website where a lot of people host their newsletters. One other final thing I want to remind you about before I introduce today’s guest is that there’s a really beautiful community blooming in my Facebook group, which is called Dear Nina, the group.

People are writing anonymous things there. They’re writing shorter, anonymous questions. And then. Instead of just getting my answer, which I do answer there too, but just not as long as I do in the newsletter, you’re getting a lot of the community members answers. And people are so thoughtful and smart in their answers.

Sometimes I don’t get to it till 12 hours after it’s been written. And there’s already so many wonderful suggestions, nothing that I would even say different. It’s such a wonderful group of people. And I hope you can find us there. We also talk about what we’re reading, what we’re watching, that’s at Dear Nina, the group on Facebook.

Today’s guest, it’s a conversation that I shared, maybe it’s been two years, and it’s really been interesting to watch Diamonde. Fabulous name, Diamonde Williamson. It’s been really interesting to watch her move from one career to another. When I interviewed her, it was about a documentary she had made about friendship breakups. Diamonde Williamson is the founder and CEO of third and wonder productions. It has been a go to media and production company for black women and black culture. Diamonde has been a TV and documentary director, created hundreds of videos for notable clients like Oprah, Google, Warner brothers, Essence, And since recording this, she has moved a lot of her work into the art space, visual art, beautiful work that you would find on her Instagram, but also on her website. Lively, gorgeous pieces and she says my return to art came during an intense season of grief. She said it’s so wild what grows from the spaces we gift our grief. her documentary that we talk about in this episode also came from a period of grief. The documentary is called Best Friends Not Forever.

I mean, I can’t not have somebody on my show who made a documentary called Best Friends Not Forever. You could find Diamonde’s art at Instagram is @therealdiamonde, little caveat Diamonde, she spells it with an E on the end. I present to you. a very candid conversation about the end of friendships with Diamonde Williamson.

Hi Diamonde, welcome to Dear Nina.

[00:06:41] Diamonde: Thank you for having me. I am so, so, so excited to talk to you.

[00:06:45] Nina: we share this passion of this topic. Friendship breakups are a big topic on my podcast, and it’s universal, it’s ageless.

[00:06:52] Diamonde: It transcends everything you mentioned there. Transcends every demographic, like we all experience it.

[00:06:58] Nina: What brought you personally to this topic. Because you can do films on any number of things and have done films on lots of things. What brought you to this one?

[00:07:06] Diamonde: It’s so crazy because I think that, well one, I had a friendship breakup. I’ve had multiple friendship breakups, but the one that I had, recently, I think, it was my therapist saying like, Hey, use your art to heal. Right? And she’s told me that before, but I think this time was different because it was a friendship that I had been in for almost 15 years and we broke up as I had moved to a new state.

So it was a time when I actually needed my friends. The pain felt really tough. We had a lot of mutual friends and I just needed a way to metabolize the energy. It came to me. I’m gonna do a documentary about this and I’m really glad that I did.

[00:07:42] Nina: So the mutual friends, that’s, that complicates things because lots of us have friendship breakups, but sometimes you’re moving away from the whole group in some ways, and sometimes that can be cleaner. How did that work with the mutual friends?

[00:07:54] Diamonde: Disappointing, right? Because I think that the challenging part with my mutual friends was that they never acknowledged it. Like nobody was like, Hey, how are you doing about this? Hey, how do you feel? that’s tough because it’s like, this is something that’s hurtful. You don’t have to take sides. But it’s just like, as a human, I would love for you to check in on my mental health.

[00:08:13] Nina: That really speaks to me because I say that in a lot of ways. Like I always say, I don’t care if people listen to my podcast, like my own friends, let’s say. But obviously I care if people listen to it. I want people to listen to it, but I don’t expect my friends to all listen to it or family members. But I like if people occasionally say, Hey, how’s it going? Like you can ask someone how they’re doing without getting involved.

[00:08:35] Diamonde: Exactly because I feel like it’s a way of saying, I see you and it’s like, if you don’t acknowledge it then you’re not seeing me because this is a huge part of my life. And it’s like, can you imagine had you had to break up and then you moved to a new town? And I think a part of me felt like it wasn’t acknowledged because I was the one that did the breakup. So it’s like if I do it, then you don’t need anything. But I’ll never know. You know how they really feel about acknowledging it?

[00:08:59] Nina: It is a tough position to be in the middle, and I’m sure most of us have been on every side of this. Decided to break up. . A friend decided to break up with us, and we’ve had friends that probably broke up and then you don’t know what to say, but I think you are giving a good tip here which is just to ask about it.

And maybe you can even say, Hey, I know you’re probably going through a rough time with this, and we don’t have to get into the details, give the person permission to not get too much in the middle of it, but Yeah. acknowledge.

[00:09:26] Diamonde: I just want to share like how I’m doing and how I’m feeling. That’s it. And I would love to do it with my friends.

[00:09:31] Nina: Okay, so then the process of the film itself, let’s talk about that cuz that’s something I know nothing about. I wanna know how you got people to interview, how you got people to be honest on there. Let’s start with that.

[00:09:41] Diamonde: well first I did start with my own interview. I shared my experience on camera first so that I can know exactly what I needed to be a part of the film. Um, but how I even got to the point where, well, actually, you know, when I think about like, yes, it was part of my own experience, but the more I shared with other people, maybe my filmmaking friends or other good friends, what I was going through with my friendship breakup, the more I realized that other people are experiencing the same thing.

The more that I talked about it, the more I started to do a little healing from it, and the more. I heard other people’s experiences, the more I was like, I gotta do a documentary about this. I’m about to do a documentary about this. And it kind of became clear the more I talked to people. So I first shared my experience, then I reached out to the people who had been some of my friends, like, who were not in my friend group, but some of my other friends.

I reached out to them to be a part of it. So they were a part of it. And then when I needed a larger group, I posted about it on Instagram and there were some people who I reached out to who were not interested in sharing. It was too sensitive of a subject to them, and I completely honored it.

I didn’t push for it at all because it’s like, it can feel very close, it could feel very tender. So that’s how I got people to be a part of it. And I used my own healing process. For what to put in the film. Grief was a big thing I wanted to talk about in the film because it was such a huge part of my experience.

And I got therapists involved and , so yeah, I just used my own process to figure out how do I want this film to flow?

[00:11:03] Nina: Let’s talk about that process a bit. Cause I get a lot of anonymous questions, by the way. I use them in my newsletter. Friendship. Breakups come up a lot. I think friendship topics kind of come into buckets. There’s making friends, there’s keeping friends, and then there’s ending friendships. It’s like that’s it’s own bucket People ask me a lot, how do you heal from a friendship breakup? There is no one right answer, but how have you found it for yourself? And now that you’ve interviewed all these other people,

[00:11:29] Diamonde: Yeah. So I definitely therapy for sure, but also honoring all of the feelings. It makes me tear up because it’s like all the things that I realized Like my feelings were valid. There’s regret there. I honor the regret. There’s nothing I can do about the regret, but I honor the regret.

There’s disgust there where I’m disgusted with the things that I allowed, but I move on there. There is grief, there’s this sadness that comes from just missing having somebody you feel like is a good friend, you know, there’s sadness from also realizing like, yo, maybe sometimes she wasn’t a good friend to me.

So I really think the biggest thing was allowing myself to feel every single emotion and not putting a time limit on it either, because while I’m much better than I was last year, there’s still little things that come up where it’s like, man, dang, you know?

[00:12:14] Nina: You brought up something really interesting that you’re the one who made the decision to do it. And I have to imagine there was a lot of anger on the side of your friend.

[00:12:22] Diamonde: No, that’s the hard part.

[00:12:24] Nina: Oh, that’s interesting.

[00:12:26] Diamonde: We kind of had it on Instagram, where I ended it because we were talking and I was just done she just was like, I understand. So, no, there was no, there was no questions there. And so I think that made it even more hurtful for me because I would love for somebody to not necessarily fight, for our friendship, but advocate for our friendship if they really cared.

And there was no advocacy at all. It made me also feel like I did the right thing.

[00:12:53] Nina: Do you remember, I mean, not that you don’t remember. Of course you remember, but sometimes it’s hard to say it off the cuff like this, some of the other stories in the film that stood out to you.

[00:13:03] Diamonde: yes. One of my friends that’s in the film, she talked about how she was the one who led to maybe some of her friendship breakups. Like it was her fault because she wasn’t the communicator. And I thought that was so important to have her perspective in it and even though I know that I contribute to my friendship breakup and the challenges.

It was really nice to have somebody who was like, that was her perspective, and that’s the part that she shared was that she wasn’t communicating, she was realizing that that was a huge part of why her friendships would, I guess the word would be dismantle or why her friendship would kind of fall apart is because she was not communicating. And I have learned too that that, I mean, that’s a huge part of like all relationships, right? Is communication.

[00:13:42] Nina: That’s actually a really fantastic perspective to have in the film because, it’s pretty rare to have someone really articulate this is where they brought issues to the relationship and they kind of don’t blame someone for. While it’s hurtful, they may not blame somebody for not wanting to stay in the friendship.

[00:13:59] Diamonde: Yeah. And see, can I say too, and I actually wanted to just like take ownership from mine because I think the biggest ownership that I have is. That I’m the one that changed. My friend never did, so I stayed in the friendship too long. I could have left a long time ago. She was always who she was, but it was me who changed. And when I changed, I should have left, but I hung on too long.

[00:14:22] Nina: That’s fair and very common, right, this is what all my letters are about. I mean, it is hard to end a friendship. It’s not just hard to have a friendship ended for you. It’s hard to be the one to make that decision. Especially like with friends, you can have more than one. In some ways, there’s no reason that you have to end things except that it can drain you.

[00:14:39] Diamonde: Exactly. I was reading a book and I liked the way that they said it. It was like, it’s complete, we’re done, we’re complete. The story has ended, the chapter has ended. I have now completed the way I can complete a meal, the way I can complete a grade. I have completed this friendship.

[00:14:55] Nina: , I think you’re a spiritual person. I’ve listened to some of your podcasts and I am as well and I do believe that, you know, sometimes people come into our life for a reason and, and maybe that’s like you’re saying that’s story has they done what they’re supposed to do or maybe your, their life for a reason. It’s not just about who comes into our life. Maybe we were supposed to do something in their lives.

[00:15:14] Diamonde: Exactly. I feel that way. I think for a long time, like I was angry about how much time I spent in the friendship, but then I got to a point where I was like, thank you. Because I learned some things. I’ve learned what I would like in a friendship. Cause I think when you’re friends with somebody for so long, especially like at such a young age, you kind of just think this is the way that friendships are.

That’s what I thought. This is the way that friendships are supposed to go. But when I moved and also got more exposure to the type of friendships I wanted, I learned what worked for me. Then at 18 is not gonna work at 33.

[00:15:44] Nina: That’s so true. So we talked about the story of, the woman in the documentary who realized the communication was part of the issue. Any other story that stands out? Um,

[00:15:52] Diamonde: There was a woman in the story who lost multiple friends at once and it’s like, oh my God, that’s so difficult. It was so hard for me to lose one and she lost three. And so for her, I’m really excited that she got to like, share her experience because I.

For her to lose her friendships and they still remain friends, I think it’s really challenging. But we also have stories about, you know, stories about women who know how to communicate with each other, who are able to have challenges and strife. We show a cycle of friendship that, like a friendship breakup. And I include that in the documentary is like from the. Part of making, to, like, having a conflict to deciding are we gonna stay in this friendship or are we going to let it break up? We talk about all of that.

[00:16:32] Nina: Oh, that’s great. I also love stories about reconciliation. Were there stories in there of people who, I know it’s about breakups, but people who were able to reconcile.

[00:16:41] Diamonde: Yes, we have one story like that the film is 18 minutes, it’s very condensed, but there is a story of reconciliation that I think is really beautiful.

[00:16:49] Nina: I had on my podcast, my best friend from college. We stopped speaking for two years after college, and then that was a long time ago. I’m 46. And then we’ve been friends ever since those two years. But I had her on one of my early episodes and we talked all about why we stopped talking, how we started talking again.

I ended up writing her a letter. Like you, I kind of had decided that it was time to step away and I regretted doing that so dramatically. I wish I had done a lot of things differently. And then I wrote her a letter a couple years later and she didn’t answer for a long time because really it was on her terms now.

But eventually she did, and I mean, we just went away. We were just in Colorado together. She lives in Maryland. I live in Minneapolis, so we don’t see each other much, we both have four kids. We both have, you know, we have a lot of things in common, and I think we’re closer for those two years apart.

[00:17:32] Diamonde: You know what? It makes me tear up because like I have two best friends and both of them have had like moments where we’ve paused. We’re closer because of it. And I love that we can talk about it now. And even doing this documentary, allowed me to talk to my current best friend who we’ve had the breakup before, but just allowed me to be more vulnerable with her and how I even felt about our friendship breakup. Because , we had the friendship breakup, we were maybe 25, 26, we just got back friends.

But we never talked about like how we felt during that time or how we felt about reconciliation or how we felt after that. And we got to do that. It was so beautiful. Art is so healing and I’m just really thankful to have done this cuz I, I told myself if nobody watches it or nobody likes it, it’s okay because I am healing because of it.

[00:18:18] Nina: Your therapist said to use the art to help you heal. That was great advice. It really worked.

[00:18:25] Diamonde: she always says it and sometimes I listen, sometimes I don’t. I’m glad I listened this time because , for me, it feels like my best art, my most vulnerable art. Cause I’ve told stories about other things in the past as it relates to black women, but this one feels most close to chest, most vulnerable.

[00:18:39] Nina: Well, actually that’s a good segue because I wanted to ask you, I know we, both said that friendship breakups absolutely affect every person, all demographics, but I’m totally interested in your work specific to black women and black culture and. Is there anything you learned in making this film that felt, you know, sort of specific to

[00:18:58] Diamonde: Yes.

[00:18:59] Nina: Why is that?

[00:19:00] Diamonde: I don’t know if it’s specific to it, but it’s, the thing that I heard the most is like, that we don’t talk about this, that we don’t talk about this, that we ignore it, that we will break up with a friend and go about our business like nothing happened. And especially when you have mutual friends or your friendship breakup is in a group, it can feel tough.

And so I, a lot of the women were just so thankful to have this space. And it’s funny because I had, I shared it with a few of my friends, my filmmaker friends, they’re my friends, but they’re filmmakers, and they were like, you’re not done telling the story, you have to keep going because it is sparking something in everybody.

Like, yo, this is how I feel. Or I want to talk to my friend. It also sparked this conversation. Can I tell you about, what happens when you’re friends with somebody and one has children and then the other doesn’t? Right. So it’s, it’s like it’s sparking so much conversation, but I think when it comes to black women in black culture, it was just this idea that we don’t talk about it enough.

[00:19:57] Nina: Why do you think that is?

[00:19:58] Diamonde: Hmm. I really don’t know. When I think about, I don’t know, I feel like it’s just something we just didn’t talk about when we were younger, so we don’t talk about it when we’re older, right? Like we deal with breakups when we’re younger, with our partners.

But, and we talk about that, but like with friendships, I don’t know. I think it’s a reflection of the way that we dealt with friendships when we were younger. That’s the thing that’s happening.

[00:20:20] Nina: I’m trying to decide if it’s commonly spoken of, I really can only speak to, you know, like Jewish culture really. I think so. I mean, at least in my experience, although I do get a lot of things or I see a lot of things online where people are like, we never talk about, you know, friendship issues.

And I guess cause I’ve been so engrossed in this topic for almost a decade, I’m like, that’s all I talk about. So I don’t know. my mom always talked to me about friends and, the importance of friendship. She would let me know, you know, if there was an issue going on or something.  Maybe there was no, like, no shame in it. It was part of life. There was ups and downs.

[00:20:52] Diamonde: Yeah. So yeah, I don’t think it’s talked about, like, I think a lot of time, the reason that might come up for friendship breakups is a jealousy, and it’s like that’s not always the case. Sometimes it’s , This person is not for me. And there’s some things that this person did and they might not have did it because they were jealous.

They might have did it because it’s who they are as a person. So, yes, and I think even when I look at the media landscape, there are very few people that are black women that are talking about this, in terms of like our stories that are at the forefront, it’s just very rare. I do have more plans for content around, a friendship because it’s still, I’ve, I’ve just moved again. And so this idea of, making friends is so sensitive to me. And so it’s like that’s where I’m going in my journey, but people are like, we need to talk about friendship breakup still. I’m like, girl, I gotta move on.

[00:21:40] Nina: Well, there’s all the what’s Yes. I told you like there’s the buckets, right? There’s the, you kind of started at the end, which is like the end of a friendship, but now you’re coming back to the beginning. Where do you live now?

[00:21:49] Diamonde: I’m in Texas now. I’m in Dallas.

[00:21:50] Nina: And you just moved, or you’re moving

[00:21:52] Diamonde: Just moved, just moved to Dallas, so I was living in la. But see that’s the thing too. You know what? I actually don’t think I started at the end, because my work before this, I had a competition show called Biz Bestie Showdown, where it was best friends competing, against other best friends and business competition shows.

So like I created that too. So I kind of feel like I started in the friendship realm and then moved to the breaking up cuz even my same friend that I broke up with was in that show with her best friend. So it’s

[00:22:21] Nina: Oh my gosh. Well, and this topic calls you what? You know I get Cause it calls to me too. I think the fact that you now, as an adult have moved twice in a kind of short amount of time. You are perfectly poised to do a whole thing on making friends as an adult that’s your next project.

[00:22:38] Diamonde: It literally is because even just moving, I moved to LA. I was only there for a year and I was like, oh. I think I had been friends with the same group of people for so long and I had other friends, but nobody as close to me as this same group of people and moving helped me to see that’s not what I want anymore.

[00:22:55] Nina: That’s really important that you get a chance to see that. See, I’ve lived in the same city for 20 some years. I’m from Chicago, but I’ve been in Minnesota almost my whole adult life. And yeah, you don’t get that distance if you don’t have a chance to, go somewhere new. Is there anything else you want, you know, my listeners to know about the documentary or about like things you learned about being a friend from making the documentary?

[00:23:17] Diamonde: Oh, I love it. So I did learn that communication is everything. I feel like now, one of my goals is to be like the best communicator. I learned that communication was affecting, My business, it was affecting my actual relationship. It was affecting my friendship.

But through the documentary, I realized how much it was affecting my friendships, how much of what I wasn’t saying. , I was trying to put that responsibility on my friends, but it’s like, there were things I wasn’t saying but I didn’t know. I’m assuming they should know, So I think I’ve learned communication is really important. In making the film I learned that it’s just so important to do something like this was for me. For the artist listening, for anybody that’s creating something anybody, actually any human, some stuff has to just be for us, this documentary and making it was for me but I’m very excited to share it.

[00:24:03] Nina: That really made me smile. Cause I feel that way about the podcast sometimes. I know I have listeners. I’m glad to, but I love making it anyway. I love the opportunity to talk to cool people like you. I mean, really. Where else would we run into each other? You’re in. LA then Dallas. I’m in Minnesota. It’s the coolest thing.

[00:24:18] Diamonde: And this is like separate conversation, but I just speak to this as an artist. I think sometimes social media makes us feel like everything we’re doing is for public consumption, for popularity, some of this stuff is really for me because I’m a human and I take life seriously.

So it’s like I’m trying to heal, I’m trying to learn, I’m trying to absorb as much information, I put it into art and I’m very, very, very excited to share it. And I’m thankful for you, thank you for this podcast, this platform, and this conversation. you’re so perfectly poised for what you’re doing. I think it is just so special, to have a full space that’s about friendship. I think that’s so beautiful.

[00:24:51] Nina: The more people talking about this stuff, the better get along better. And I end every episode by saying when our friendships are going well, we’re happier all around. And I think you would agree. That’s my tagline cuz it’s true.

[00:25:04] Diamonde: It makes me tear up. Because I’m sorry, and I’m gonna say this, it makes me tear up because while I am grieving friendships, I have friendships that I’m celebrating. Like, I had a friend just voicemail me, me, and your other friends that we coming down, we gonna plan our trips together to come see you. And it’s like, thank you. Thank you so much. So for coming to see me down here, you know, so Yes. And I feel so much better. I, love that they want to come see me, it’s so beautiful.

[00:25:27] Nina: Yes. It just makes us so happy. And the opposite’s true , and that’s what your documentary’s about. When things aren’t going well, it gnaws at us. It is hard to focus on anything else. It affects your work. It affects your romantic life. It affects your family life when you’re not getting along with people that are important to you, and things need to end.

[00:25:43] Diamonde: this has been healing too. This conversation with you and listening to your podcast has been super healing, so thank you.

[00:25:49] Nina: All right, you know what I’m going to say If you’ve been listening to this show for a long time, I even said it already once and that is when our friendships are going well, we are happier all around. Have a great Thanksgiving. Bye.