“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.” —Toni Morrison, Beloved
Headline I saw said the loneliest part of retirement is realizing that most of your relationships were held together by proximity and obligation, not actual connection.
I just told my therapist that my latest mission is getting women to go get their friends. The ones they fell out with and ain’t talk to since. I only tell grown women this, because we’re best able to discern if the relationship is worth fetching. If y’all were holding on because of how many years it’s been, nah. The friendship was draining, transactional, or perpetually one-sided? Nah. The ones who give your pieces back in the right order? Yes.
The Sisterhood by Courtney Thorsson describes the friendship between Black women writers in the late 1970s. Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, June Jordan (who’s been calling me), Toni Cade Bambara, Ntozake Shange, Vertamae Smart Grovesnor, and more. They’d talk about life and literature, and they supported each other. If somebody gotta big check, they shared a little with who was struggling. Naturally, some grew closer than others.
Toni Morrison inspired my mission. Started it, really. She talked plenty about the friends who held her down when she was newly divorced and raising two children by herself while still tryna make her dreams come true. Betty Rose was one of them, they were classmates and Betty was also divorced with two kids, so she could relate. Then there was Toni Cade Bambara:
“We became a kind of group of people, who lived not in the neighborhood together, but behaving that way. Toni Cade was excellent in that. She lived in New York, Georgia, then Philadelphia. I remember her coming to my house with two bags of groceries. No one asked her. She didn’t say she was coming. She just appeared…and she said ‘I’ll take care of the children today. You go do what you have to do.’” Toni Morrison talking to Junot Díaz.
Then there’s Sula, who Toni Morrison’s 1973 novel is named for. Sula and Nel were so close people thought they looked alike. Sula slept with Nel’s husband. When Nel found out, he left town and Nel cut Sula off. The former best friends talked about it once when Sula was ill. Then Sula died and Nel realized that her decades of loneliness was more about missing her friend than her man.
It took me a long while to understand that one, but I do now. Friends long enough and you’ll feel betrayed or disappointed at some point. Sula took the betrayal to the extreme, but when you’re in it, that’s how it feels: unforgivable. Memes and reels, and sometimes other friends, will also encourage you to say fuck ‘em. Eventually the heartbreak will heal and you’ll think of them less.
If you ain’t careful, that will become a cycle. And that cycle will have you old and lonely.
My elders who have healthy social lives—including young people and old, family and friends—are in the best shape. They’re physically and mentally sharper. They recover from illnesses and injuries quicker too. Those who don’t have those genuine connections ain’t as well off. And marriage, regardless how good, cannot be the end all be all. Investing in our future gotta include money and relationships. Shallow accounts ain’t gon’ cut it.
I went back and read that article this morning. About proximity, it asked:
“Look at the people you spend time with this week. Then ask yourself a question that can be uncomfortable: If we no longer worked together, no longer lived nearby, no longer ran into each other automatically — would we still bother?”
My therapist brought up a GOOD ass point when I told her about my mission, how I went back and got one of my friends, and how I’ve nudged two other women to go get their friend.
Her: It takes a lot of vulnerability to have those difficult conversations, to say “I miss you.” That’s love. If I love you, I WANT to fix it. I might need time, but I want to.
That’s the real work of friendship in adulthood—not just finding people you click with, but finding people worth repairing with. People who gather you. People who can hold your truth without shrinking theirs. People who know your history, your grief, your patterns, your becoming, and still choose to stay in honest relationship with you. That’s what helps you THRIVE, regardless what the economy or your relationship status is doing.
And I don’t know about y’all, but I don’t wanna look up one day and realize I mastered independence and networking while starving for connection. I wanna life rich in people who can say, “I got you,” and mean it. I want the kinda friendships where somebody can show up with groceries, or a hard truth, or an apology, or just enough presence to gather my pieces back in the right order, and trust that I’ll do the same.
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