Welcome to Dear Nina, Conversations About Friendship. I’m your host, Nina Badzin. This is episode 129 It’s the middle of January 2025. Right now you might know somebody in California who has evacuated from their house. You might know somebody whose house is gone, whose entire neighborhood, whose community, whose school is gone.

[00:00:27] Nina: And there’s often a time in life when you know somebody, maybe not as drastically as a situation like this, where it’s so many people at once, but you know somebody who’s really sick, or, you know somebody who’s going through a crisis of some kind, and it’s so terrifying to say the wrong thing that it’s tempting to say nothing.

And I’ve done episodes like this before. I actually already had one last week, which was episode 128 with Steve Phillips, who had written a letter to me about discovering my podcast because his wife died of brain cancer. he, from that experience of being married for 32 years to the love of his life then dealing with

learning to rebuild a social life after she was sick for six years, she had died two years ago and just really having to change certain parts of his life while she was sick. And then after she was gone, the episode is about him reflecting on friendship. One of the elements was noting the friends who didn’t necessarily say or do exactly the perfect thing but He was so glad he didn’t cut those friendships off because they were able to be there for him in a different way in a different time and he needed them too.

Maybe not in the first emergency person you talked to but he was glad that he had them in his life.

I want to encourage people to reach out to those friends who are in a crisis whether it’s right now, people who live in and around LA or any other thing going on and A friend’s life or an acquaintance even, but there’s some ways to make it easier on the person receiving the message. In episode 104, I had my friend Jill Smokler on who was diagnosed with brain cancer.

She gave a really helpful tip to listeners, which was that she really likes to hear from people at least at that time when we recorded, and she very much appreciated when people said, you don’t need to write me back. Just this acknowledgement that.

Life is overwhelming right now, medical discussions and doctors and so many things to deal with and that making the people who are reaching out to her feel good by always responding was not something she could take on right now. I mean, that’s a very impossible thing to take on when you are sick and freshly dealing with the result of

uh, diagnosis that now requires a whole life change, medical appointments, nonstop and research and information. Okay. So one thing a friend can do, or even an acquaintance is to reach out just to say, I’m thinking about you and acknowledge. I know that this isn’t a time for writing back.

I assume that you do not have the capacity for that right now. Just, this is so that you know that someone out here in Minnesota, I’m using Minnesota in my case because that’s where I am, is thinking about you, worrying about you, caring about what you are going through. Sometimes people just want to know that.

I had 2 other episodes that really focused on this message of not being too scared to reach out because you’re scared that you’re going to annoy the person or you’re scared you’re going to say the wrong thing. I also discussed this in episode 64 with Jennifer Kramer Miller, who has had four kidney transplants.

So she’s had plenty of time of being in surgery, emergency surgery, planned surgery, all kinds of surgery, recovery time. she has definitely been on the receiving end of sometimes someone saying the quote unquote wrong thing, but she was glad that they showed up. And she and that friend were able to have a laugh about it afterwards.

she could explain like why that maybe wasn’t sensitive or hurt her feelings, but everyone has to grow a little thick skin. Like the friend has to be able to hear that and then not be afraid to show up again. And now each person knows their friendships individually and whether their friendship can handle that.

I would encourage somebody to be able to handle that. Like if you said what might have not been the right thing to your friend to take it in and not then forever be afraid to reach out because friendships can survive these things. Friendships can survive saying the quote unquote wrong thing.

friendships can probably have a better chance Surviving saying the quote unquote wrong thing than surviving not showing up at all. It is hard to forget when someone did not show up for you You can forgive and forget that someone said something that wasn’t the perfect thing because here is the truth and it’s something that I have been writing about a little bit on my sub stack newsletter and within the show notes and the social media posts that went along with last week’s episode 128 with Steve Phillips, is that we are all different.

And so therefore, I don’t know that there’s such a thing as the right thing to say. I’m going to give you an example from my life. I have a friend who, when she is sharing something that she’s stressed about, she does not want to hear. Oh, I’m so sorry, or, oh, that must be really hard, or, oh, no, shoot, I’m sorry to hear that.

She wants to hear something more positive, and she told me that, because, by the way, that is my natural response. All the things I just said, it is my natural response. If you write to me something really stressful that’s going on, it is my natural response to say, oh, no, I’m so sorry. Why? Because maybe that’s what I want to hear.

I hadn’t really thought about it until she pointed it out, but I say that because it’s what I like to hear. What she likes to hear, and I wouldn’t have known if she hadn’t told me. I think that adds to her stress. And what she prefers to hear is it’s going to be okay and you’ve got this. Maybe not those literal expressions, but she prefers more of a tone of positivity and uplifting.

And, you know, maybe a tone of I’m here with you, whatever you need, I’m here. And less of a, Oh my gosh. Oh no. It gave me the opportunity to tell her, just so you know and whenever I’m in a crisis or something in the future, I actually don’t like that kind of positivity necessarily. I think I like a little bit more, just acknowledging the stress I’m feeling by feeling it with me for a moment.

So when someone says to me, oh no, I’m so sorry, and they even say it like in a voice memo or on the phone, and I can hear the sort of shared stress in their voice, I appreciate that. I wouldn’t personally for me want a glass half full moment in that moment. Neither of us is right and neither of us is wrong.

That is what’s important. She is right for her and I am right for me and I appreciated actually her honesty. She was going through a particularly hard time and I was doing sort of my typical. Oh shoot I’m sorry to hear that and she called me out and said I really don’t like when you say that and I’m glad she did because I’m in my late forties, I’m not a child, but I God willing have a lot of life left to live and we’ll probably be friends a long time.

And that would be kind of a waste to not know the way she prefers to be comforted. Right? So it was brave of her to say that. if I may pat myself on the back, I think I took it pretty well. And then it gave me the opportunity to turn around and say, as long as we’re talking about it, that would annoy me.

don’t say that to me when I’m stressed out. okay, now we both know.

Is every friendship going to have this explicit of a conversation about what they prefer when they are being comforted? Probably not. So that means we all need to learn to roll with it a little bit when your friend doesn’t say something exactly the way you want it.

Here’s the way I see it. You either can tell them and say, that’s not helpful to me, or you can assume they’re doing the best they can and move on with it. Both are valid options. If you think that your friend can take the constructive move one way or the other, then certainly you might as well tell them. that’s probably not something you can necessarily take on when you are in the middle of a serious crisis, like right now, somebody in LA, your house burned down. You’re not going to be kind of nitpicking how people send you messages. The bottom line of today’s episode is that showing up in some way is important. And it even might just be as simple as saying, I am thinking about you. Don’t text me back. I just want you to know I’m thinking about you. You’re not forgotten.

I’m following the news. I’m worrying about you. You know, something along those lines. I have seen a lot of people on social media give the message I’m about to give you and I think it’s a good point, which is it is not a time for giving perspective. Somebody who’s going through any kind of crisis or anything.

It is really not the friend’s job to give perspective. Most adults do not need you to say well Thank God you’re alive or thank God no one got hurt when your entire community burned down. I don’t think there’s anyone out there who values their things more than their, body and health. It may seem like that when they’re out shopping or posting things on Instagram and stuff in a normal time. But of course, when it comes down to it, when the, you know, what hits the fan, they know that their lives are the most valuable thing and, I have not had the catastrophe of having my home destroyed. I have to imagine if someone said to me. Well, thank God you’re alive I would be irritated. So I get that I I totally get why I’m seeing messages like that out on social media of people reminding others not to say that because I’m guessing they’ve been on the receiving end of Comments like that, or they’ve seen that.

I guess the overall friendship tip I wanted to share today, or that I’ve already shared, I’m just repeating it now, is to make sure you show up, to not be so overly concerned with saying the wrong thing, that you say nothing. The only wrong thing I guess I shared today is to not give a perspective that is extraordinarily obvious and not helpful, like, Oh, well, thank God you’re alive.

finally, If you have the kind of friendship where you can tell a friend how you prefer to be comforted, wonderful. if that just feels like too much at any given time, which I get because I think that’s really hard to say, then go ahead and assume that your friend is really just trying their hardest to be there and that the showing up counts.

For a lot and that we don’t want to discourage people from showing up by overly critiquing how they show up because that’s what makes people scared to show up, I said in a quote that I put out with Steve, it’s one of the little, clips I make of the podcast. That episode was about 30 minutes. I chose one clip. And it was the clip of Steve talking about how he was glad that even though his friend didn’t do exactly what he had hoped his friend would do when he was

Calling for help when he being Steve was calling for help He was glad he didn’t. That friend out because that friend showed up later and it was Helpful the way that friend showed up later and I said in response something along the lines of, I think people are scared to Show up at all because they’re scared to show up wrong and then be the subject of somebody’s internet rant. And I still think that’s true that there is fear people have about saying the wrong thing.

That is all for today. Just a little quick episode. If you haven’t heard the episode with Steve, it really is a very, very special one. So I hope you’ll go back and listen to episode 128. It came from a letter that Steve wrote to me. It wasn’t about being a guest. I ended up just asking him if he would, based on our email exchanges that were, just very touching and our conversation was meaningful to me and to him, I think, and to people have heard it. I will be back next week with a regular interview. So come back next week when our friendships are going well, even in the face of crisis, we are a little happier when we have those functioning relationships in our lives.

Thank you. And just thinking of everyone out there. Bye.