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As a writer, I’ve built up some bona fides in the advice-giving business. But even if that weren’t the case, doling out advice—mostly unsolicited—is part of my “brand,” such as it is. Just ask my kids, the unwitting recipients of many a vibe-crushing mom morsel.
A topic I know a thing or two about is friendship, and it’s not because I’m some kind of wise crone, sage, or seer. It’s because I’m blessed beyond belief with incredible friends who’ve shown me how it’s done.
I’ll be 64 years old this summer, and something I’ve learned over these past six decades is that it takes more than one kind of friend to make life work. It’s unreasonable to expect any one person to serve as the friend equivalent of a Swiss Army knife, equipped and ready for every circumstance. You don’t need a lot of friends, but you do need a few different kinds.
You need friends who “knew you when” and continue to be cheerleaders for the person you’ve become. You need friends who will help you avoid heinous tasks lurking on your to-do list by agreeing to get lunch with you. But you also need friends who will call you on your bullshit, and tell you to go make yourself a sandwich.
You need friends who will wipe your kids’ snotty noses and feed them soup when you have a work function you can’t bail on. You need friends who will rage with you at a hip-hop show, even though you’re old enough to be the granny of everyone else at the gig. You need friends who will heart-react to the 10th derpy dog pic you send in a day. You need friends who will tell you those jeans don’t do your ass any favors. You need friends who will scrape you up off the pavement when your situationship goes south.
Missy, Sheila, Susan, and Valorie, pre-pandemic in 2020.
You might even need friends willing to help you commingle the ashes of your deceased parents and their pets when you’re forced to scatter their earthly remains in the middle of a pandemic. (We’ll come back to this.)
But what about the care and keeping of friends? How do we hold on to the friends we’ve collected through all the ages and stages of life? What makes friendship last?
To work out answers to these thorny questions, I messaged a few of my friends. I asked what advice they would offer on how to help friendships flourish, because we’re smarter and stronger together. To the person, each friend showed up with thoughtful reflections and gems of hard-won wisdom. Despite differences in ages, locations, and vocations, several common themes emerged:
Lead with authenticity.
The foundation of a healthy friendship begins with you. Give time and consideration to self-study; do your own inner work. Then you can offer yourself up in the full flower of your humanity, and draw the right people to you.
Sheila, a friend I’ve adored since our children started kindergarten together, said: “When we spend time knowing ourselves, it becomes easier to show up authentically.” Susan, a therapist, further advises: “Be honest and authentic. If a person does not accept you as you are, it’s not the right friendship to lean into.”
Be vulnerable.
When you’re open and honest—when you allow your raw, messy seams to show—you build trust, and invite your friends to reveal their true hearts to you in return. Don’t be afraid or ashamed to let friends carry you when you’re floundering. When possible, be specific in your asks. Friends can’t always intuit whether we need an ear, a hand, or a shoulder to sob on. And it goes without saying, jump at the chance to be that friend in return.
Kate, a friend of recent vintage, shared this simple, no-nonsense advice: “Ask for what you need.” When it’s your turn to reciprocate the kindness, the other key Susan in my life—let’s call her Susan No. 2—suggests: “Be a soft place to land.”
From left to right: Paula, Sheila, Valorie, Susan No. 2, Susan No. 1, Missy, and Wendy.
Pay attention, listen deeply, and withhold judgment.
None of these things are easy, and all require practice. Be an active listener, even when your head is thrumming with a thousand other things that need doing. Give your friends grace when they can’t show up as their best selves. When in doubt, strive to see your friends in the best possible light.
“Refrain from judgment, be a compassionate buddy,” advises Susan No. 2. Kate goes a step further: “Be unconditional in your acceptance.”
Don’t take things personally.
When disagreements or discordant moments happen, as they inevitably will, try to step outside your own feelings of hurt and disappointment. Uncouple your friend’s actions from the emotions that well up inside of you. And don’t get salty if a good friend goes silent. Instead of reading it as a lack of affection for you, reach out!
Sally, a friend of 30 years, suggests being proactive: “Don’t take it personally when you have not heard from friends for a while, even a long while. Take the first step to reconnect.” Even when distance grows out of discomfort, Sheila counsels: “Give people the benefit of the doubt, even when it may be challenging to understand a behavior or action. When misunderstandings occur, work to let go of resentments, work on forgiveness.”
Be generous.
We’re all busy people, but good friends give what they can, when they can. Look for opportunities to share your time, your encouragement, your praise, your love. Alice, my college dormmate 46 years ago, said, “I like this quote from Rupi Kaur: ‘The right person does not stand in your way, they make space for you to step forward.’” Kate adds, “Keep your eye trained to your friends’ best qualities and be ready, at every step, to see new ones you haven’t noticed before.”
Fortunately, we have the tools and technology at our fingertips to deliver small gifts of care quickly across oceans and time zones. Calls, texts, and voice memos keep us connected when we can’t be present in person. It only takes a few moments to send a message that will make your friend’s day. Susan No. 2 observes, “Something good friends do is believe in you when you can’t quite do it yourself.”
Show all the way up.
Celebrate everything! Mark milestones and achievements, big and small, from wins on the job to gutting out a half marathon. But don’t just show up when it’s time to pop corks. What solidifies and deepens friendship is walking through the dark together. When a friend is facing a challenging time, make an explicit offer of help. Ask if you can bring dinner on Tuesday night. Tell them you’ll water their plants while they travel. Volunteer to take notes at their doctor’s appointment.
Susan No. 2 is an end-of-life doula, so she believes we should embrace every part of the human journey, even its messy moments: “Close friends are there for us to celebrate the wins and to help us through the challenging bits. Go and help your friends do shit you’d rather not do—what goes around, comes around.” Sally, who’s seen me through all manner of life passages, notes: “Find reasons to laugh, listen, remember. Tell your friends what you love about them and how much they mean to you!”
Valorie’s wedding day in 1995; Alice (right) baked her wedding cake.
Sally and Valorie, posing as fictional country-western legends “The Dudds” in 1996.
All of these lessons in friendship came together for me recently in rather dramatic fashion. My mother died in 2020 at the height of COVID-19, in the heart of a Wisconsin winter. It was an overwhelming, sad, and lonely time, exponentially more so against the backdrop of a pandemic. In those strange and unsettling days, we were warned not to gather with others to eat, to laugh, to mourn. We were told to avoid enclosed, unventilated spaces.
My mother left behind a split-level ranch stuffed from floor to ceiling with the goods and ephemera of her 91 years. In a stack of papers squirreled away in a drawer, we discovered she’d taken a reverse mortgage on the house. The interest meter was tick-tick-ticking away. We’d need to clear, clean, and sell the house immediately to keep it from sinking underwater. I had no idea how my husband and I would manage the myriad tasks that awaited—a seemingly insurmountable series of hurdles to vault.
Against the admonitions of the CDC, a small army of friends arrived at my mother’s doorstep. Each person drove hours to rural Wisconsin, leaving the warmth and safety of their homes behind. They masked up, rolled up their sleeves, and got down to business, mopping up the mess inside the house and inside my busted-up heart.
Alice organized staging areas and hatched a plan of attack. Sheila and my shoe-shopping bestie Missy fought their way through the rat’s nest of my mother’s crafting room, piled high with every manner of fabric, frippery, trim, and tool. The two Susans dug through heaps of detritus in the basement, excavating and dispatching ancient pantry artifacts (20-year-old jam, anyone?), driving carload after carload to the local donation drop-off spot. There were situations in that house too gnarly to describe here, gentle readers.
Friends who weren’t able to join us in person called and sent texts of support, shoring us up when our spirits were sagging. We laughed and cried, often at the same time. During those difficult weeks, my friends were the filaments that gathered me back into a floppy bundle when I felt I’d fall to pieces.
Alice, Valorie, and an unknown dormmate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1978.
Alice and Valorie, on their way to see Caroline Polachek and Ethel Cain in 2022.
As we neared the end of the work at my mother’s house, there was one task remaining on the punch list that was delicate, deeply personal, and decidedly weird. My mother’s final wish was to be cremated and to have her ashes mixed with those of my father who’d died in 2011, along with the ashes of their dear, departed dogs, Bouncer and Angel.
Mom’s and Dad’s ashes were sealed in carved wooden boxes. Bouncer’s and Angel’s were stored in tiny tins with their name tags taped to the tops. None of the vessels were large enough to hold their collective “cremains.”
The house had already been emptied. The only container left in the garage capacious enough to serve as a mixing bowl was a five-gallon paint bucket. Carefully and as reverently as possible, we emptied each container of ashes into the bucket. We used a long-handled spoon to blend them together as best we could.
As the day darkened and long drives home stretched before us, we created a small ritual. Each of us spoke a few words of remembrance and gratitude. We sprinkled most of the ashes in the cornfield behind the house my parents had lived in for much of their married lives. We spread a few more on the shore of a small lake where my mother loved to fish during the sticky days of summer.
The ceremony was short, sweet, and somewhat surreal. My mother certainly deserved a better send-off, a more dignified bookend to her complicated, beautiful life. I wish I could have managed more in the moment. But to be in the places she loved best—raw and winter-swept—surrounded by a circle of friends, was poetic and perfect in its own way. It was everything, and enough.
Valorie Lee Schaefer is the author of The New York Times bestseller The Care & Keeping of You: The Body Book for Girls, an advice book for pre-teens. She’s the mother of two 20-something daughters who heroically navigate a nonstop stream of maternal advice. Currently based in St. Louis, she lives with her photographer husband and a pair of amped-up, reactive dogs who refuse to take advice from anyone.