Concentrating on the friend you are deciding to be and finding the friend in you is truly the only thing one has the capacity to evolve or change. Putting that energy out there and living your life as an example of what you believe to be a true, meaningful relationship or friendship will resonate with the people who also seek this intimacy and will therefore be drawn to you. This is what I believe to be the very basis of the “laws of attraction” of the universe: create what you desire.

This is a very gentle process. It is sometimes a slow process. It is a process of growing and evolving and becoming a person who you like and, yes, even love. Living with your own truth will probably cause you to live with the truth of others as well. If you could really love yourself imagine how much you could love another person albeit a friend, a parent, a husband, a child, a neighbor.

I also believe that friendships come and go in our lives because they are what we need at any given point. Sometimes we continue to draw the same type of relationship to ourselves that is toxic and then we wonder why it keeps happening over and over again. Perhaps we haven’t changed something in ourselves that brings this type of friend to our life. Again, be the friend that you want to have.

Something I see repeatedly with people I know is that they do not have friends or time for friends etc… What has been very fulfilling for me is to recognize the friendship I have with the immediate people around me. I have come to know my children as my friends in a way that does not compromise our parent-child relationship. How meaningful it is to read and play together, to go for walks, to talk openly and honestly. Or how about our husbands? Can he not be our friend? Or our parents or people that sit lonely in an old age home that are a wealth of information that we could learn from?

Friendships come in varying degrees and in varying forms and even at various times in our lives. If we embrace and accept these moving tides we will probably feel happier and more fulfulled. Perhaps we need to consider that this is the nature of relationships: they change over time just like anything else because we change. How can we possibly have the same relationship with the same people indefinately if we are all changing. I am not the same person I was 20 years ago and I am quite happy about that. I miss the old Linda but she too is an old friend that I remember fondly.

I have a couple of friendships that I have had for many years and none of them live within hours of me. We talk on the phone 2 or 3 times a year. We hardly see each other and yet when we do connect the whole world comes to a standstill and our conversation is like sitting by a warm fire on a cold winter eve sipping hot cocoa and indulging in delicious talk about the world. That to me is true friendship. I choose not to judge my friend because I do not want my friend to judge me, I choose to love my friend because I too want to be loved. This is everything to me. To feel free to be me.

So when my friends are too busy and I need a friend, I find the friendship with myself fulfills me. I spend time by myself taking care of me (even if it is only a few moments at a time). I have learned to focus on what is happening here and now (in the moment so to speak) whether I am with a group of friends or all by myself!