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How to Cope With The Loss of a Friendship

Elizabeth is a freelance health and wellness writer. She helps brands craft factual, yet relatable content that resonates with diverse audiences.

Dr. Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and a professor at Yeshiva University’s clinical psychology doctoral program.

Henglein and Steets / Getty Images

Why Friendships End

How to cope with losing a friend.

Friendships are some of the most important connections and relationships a person can experience—oftentimes creating a greater impression than even a romantic relationship.

When you have a good friend you expect to have them by your side to weather the bad times and enjoy the good, and you don't always consider the fact that this relationship could end. Sadly, sometimes people grow apart or realize they're incompatible.

Friendships are undeniably important, but friends may not always be a part of our lives. It doesn’t matter if a friend has been a constant presence for decades, or only a few months—different factors can come into play to bring your connection to an end.

Likewise, different reactions can follow the loss of a cherished companion in your life. We'll dig into the reasons friendships may fail, and the appropriate ways to handle losing a friend.

Friends aren’t just comfortable company during social events or support systems during trying times. A friend can provide the same amount of encouragement, and emotional fulfillment as family members. This is why the dissolution of a friendship can feel just as painful as heartbreak. 

There are different reasons why a friendship might come to an end. These scenarios are discussed below.

You Outgrow Each Other

Under normal circumstances, a friendship usually begins with innocent intentions. These connections are usually forged on common ground: liking the same television shows, enjoying similar kinds of music, or even engaging in common hobbies.

Friendships are unlikely to demand too much and are based on people who purely enjoy the company of others.

However, as the saying goes, 20 friends cannot play for 20 years . There are times when companions grow out of each other.

Sometimes, the interests that started off the relationship are unable to sustain it. In other cases, friendships fizzle because what initially began as common ground, has evolved into different things between friends.

A Fight Breaks Things Up

As humans, our differences are one of the things that make us colorful and interesting. A world where everyone thinks and feels the same thing will appear monotonous and dull. 

With friends, the same principle applies. Friendships teach an accommodation of different belief systems. They are one of the first points where conflict resolution is handled practically.

While differences are encouraged, however, there are some disagreements that may not be resolved so easily. When friends hold different views on matters that are fundamental to their ways of life, these views may prevent the friendship from progressing.

Likewise, where a betrayal takes place, the friendship may be unable to survive the pain.

Distance Complicates Things

Some of the beauty of friendship is found in doing things together. Cooking with a friend, working side-by-side on a term project, going on weekend adventures together—make up the little joys of having a friend.

But with everyday life comes everyday complications. Moving away for work, marriage, travel, and other reasons can put a strain on the friendship.

While there is no shortage of love between friends that find themselves in different parts of the world, this distance can contribute to reduced communication. Ultimately, friendships may end when too much time has passed, and too many events have occurred apart from a once loved peer.

Expectations Might Change

Friendships come in different forms. There may be low-maintenance connections , where friends are happy to communicate and catch up every once in a while. If this kind of friendship ends, it may not hurt so much.

Other times, friendships may be more intense. Here, friends are in constant communication and are usual fixtures in each other’s lives. The latter tend to be involved in day-to-day activities, and may usually expect the same from people they consider friends.

When friends have set expectations from their peers, this can create some tension. The pairing of low and high maintenance friends may be difficult. This is because one half may consider the other as doing too much, while the other remains convinced that more can be done to promote the friendship. Where expectations constantly clash, this can bring an end to the friendship.

The value of a friend can be immeasurable. Having a person to reach out to in your darkest moments, someone to laugh and ponder life’s mysteries with can cause a positive leap in well-being. This social connection is so important, it can assist with life preservation in old age.

When you lose a friend, the pain can cut deep. Now out of your reach, is a person you could confide in, and trust to show up for you. To manage this loss, here are a few steps to take.

Learn to Prioritize Yourself

When you lose a friend, it’s easy to get caught up in the pain of loss. This can mean a significant period of mourning the happy times, which can be unhealthy for well-being.

Letting yourself feel the impact of a lost friend is admirable and even advisable. However, this should not become the status quo. Going on walks, exercising, learning about life with loss , can put you in a better frame of mind to manage a friend’s absence.

Strengthen the Bond With Other Friends

The loss of one friend can help to highlight the importance of others present in your life. Where your social community includes friends that are invested in your growth and happiness, this is a good time to show your appreciation.

Spend time with these friends, and nurture your relationship. Now is a great time to take stock of how to grow your friendship.

Speak to a Therapist

While friendships are never elevated to the position of romantic relationships, this connection can be just as important. Because of this, it can be difficult to deal with the pain and isolation that can follow the loss of a friend in your life. 

Seeking expert guidance can help with navigating the hurt and changes that will follow life without your friend.

Keep in Mind

Losing a good friend is one of the most challenging situations to steer. This is why friendship breakups can feel like an unexpected pain in your gut. 

To navigate the loss of a friend, focusing on yourself, and your existing friendships is a positive step in the right direction.

Likewise, expert advice can help with managing and overcoming the challenges of a lost friend. 

Amati V, Meggiolaro S, Rivellini G, Zaccarin S. Social relations and life satisfaction: the role of friends. Genus . 2018;74(1):7. doi:10.1186/s41118-018-0032-z

Blieszner R, Ogletree AM, Adams RG. Friendship in Later Life: A Research Agenda . Innov Aging . 2019;3(1):igz005. Published 2019 Mar 30. doi:10.1093/geroni/igz005

By Elizabeth Plumptre Elizabeth is a freelance health and wellness writer. She helps brands craft factual, yet relatable content that resonates with diverse audiences.

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I thought we would be friends forever. How I finally accepted it was over

We have all heard the math about healing after a romantic breakup. Half the length of the relationship should mend you right up, they say. If you were together for four years, you need to be ready to hurt for about two. Only two years of togetherness? No worries, then: Twelve months will fly by. But what about the math for a broken friendship? Does the “total time together, divided by two” equation still hold true? Is there math for that kind of loss? Can you heal by acquiring a new friend, much in the way a new love can often heal you? 

My friendships have been my haven — where I can go when nothing feels right in the world. I can say things to friends I cannot say to anyone else. Because the very fabric of friendship feels unbreakable, I’ve never worried if I’m going to mess up and suddenly end up on the outskirts of their affection.

On the contrary, I have expected to lose romantic loves. Read a book, watch a movie — romantic love is not built to last. It makes sense, right? What kind of relationship can flourish under that kind of intense pressure? Romantic relationships tend to confine us. Fit here, do this, be this, make me feel this. Friendship accepts you as you are. Friendship — oh, glorious friendship — with its giant, flexible confines of acceptance.

When I lost a friend I’d had for 20 years, I was devastated. It was unlike the loss from any romantic breakup I have known. Our love wasn’t chemical, or nonsensical — our love was based on true connection and uncomplicated feelings. Losing her was one of the most intense griefs I have ever been through.

I met her when I went to college. She was one of the first relationships I had that was completely severed from my home. For the first time, I was allowed to create a family away from the family of my origin. Gone were the ideas that you had to tolerate those born around you. This was freedom. The freedom to create camaraderie — the freedom to essentially create a new family. This chosen family took on a role my family members had never filled — the chosen ones, I thought, could not leave me. How could they? No one made them choose me. They chose me, headfirst, knowing me. I thought friendship was the safest kind of relationship I had ever found, flat out. I was right. And I was wrong, too.

She looked like Lea Michele and was the funniest person I had ever encountered. We became roommates and spent every day and night together. We played games and ate snacks and attended parties and laughed. She often made me laugh so hard it hurt. She was fashionable and had the prettiest brown eyes on this planet. They sparkled like they were filled with tiny crystals. Our friendship wasn’t perfect, but that’s the thing about friendship — it doesn’t need to be.

Our friendship wasn’t perfect, but that’s the thing about friendship — it doesn’t need to be.

We remained friends after college and ended up in the same place: Chicago. We no longer lived together, but the rhythm of our friendship remained. Weekday evenings, I’d leave the office where I worked and walk 10 minutes to wait for her to finish her shift at a department store downtown. I’d peer into the glass, past the mirrors and shiny products, and wait for her to look over and spot me — then I’d perform an impromptu jig, hoping to make her giggle. On weekends, we’d bike from neighborhood to neighborhood, eating everything the city had to offer.

For the first three to four years after our breakup, I lived the loss of her as if it were a death. Grief caught me at odd times, and at all times. She was fused into so many parts of my life and memories that I could barely get through one day without her popping into my mind. Eventually, I got rid of everything in my house that reminded me of her — everything. Including an amazing sweatshirt that she’d given me one day. I looked good in it and I loved it. But every time I put it on, the only thing I could hear in my head was: People can stop loving you whenever they want to. Which is true. But it’s not a super cozy feeling, and sweatshirts are designed to be cozy. Of course people can stop loving you. But that’s not something we need to be thinking about all the time. So one day, I packed up the sweatshirt and dropped it off at Goodwill.

It was only recently that I came to understand the truth of how and why our friendship ended. It wasn’t that she uninvited me to stay at her home a day before I flew across the country with my husband and newly 1-year-old son. It wasn’t that I ended up forgoing the visit to her entirely. It was that there was a crucial moment in time in which neither of us had the ability to make each other understand what was happening inside ourselves; neither of us knew how to give that vulnerability to the other person without fear of hurting them. I can only ruminate on why I think she asked us not to come to her living space. She said it was about there not being ample space, but I think more was going on. I was too shocked and hurt to ask if there was something deeper happening. And instead of being sincere about my hurt, and about our discomfort with staying elsewhere, I canceled. In the absence of deep and brutal honesty, we were left with the only thing that can be substituted for them — our only choice was to abandon.

It’s been six years now, and I finally feel differently. Until now, it was painful to merely think of her existence. I had such a hard time understanding she could be in this world and not want me in hers. But starting in year five, I began to finally reach something like acceptance. My shock began to subside. I no longer cannot believe we are not friends. I know it now, the way I know about other disappearances. My mother died a few years ago. As it turns out, people often leave — for myriad reasons — no matter how surely we believe in the permanence of their presence.

My longing for her has subsided finally, too. This past weekend, I walked past the door in downtown Chicago where I used to wait for her at the end of our workdays. I took a picture on my phone. I took four, actually. Snow was lightly falling in the night air. I tried to capture how it sparkled in the street lights. I took a couple slightly different angles that I thought might urge her to remember how valuable our friendship was — how valuable I was.  

For the first time in six years, I felt grateful for the friendship we had had, instead of resentful that we no longer have it.

But I didn’t send them. Instead, I went back through the photos on my phone, alone in the dark at home, and remembered how much I had loved her. How much fun we once had. For the first time in six years, I felt grateful for the friendship we had had, instead of resentful that we no longer have it. I sat there, composing versions in my head of the most perfect text message I could send to tell her all of this. And then I stopped composing, and I deleted all of the photos but one. 

Kelly Green is a writer in Madison, Wisconsin, where she is often cold.

Friday essay: on the ending of a friendship

Emeritus Professor of Creative writing, The University of Melbourne

Disclosure statement

Kevin John Brophy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Melbourne provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

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Friendship is an incomparable, immeasurable boon to me, and a source of life — not metaphorically but literally.

• Simone Weil

About eight years ago, I went to dinner with a dear friend I had known for more than 40 years. It would be the last time we would see each other and by the end of that evening I was deeply shaken. But more lasting and more unsettling than this has been the feeling of loss without his friendship. It was a sudden ending but it was also an ending that lasted for me well beyond that evening. I have worried since then at what kind of friend I am to my friends, and why a friendship can suddenly self-destruct while others can so unexpectedly bloom.

My friend and I were used to going to dinner together, though it had become an increasingly tricky matter for us. We had been seeing each other more infrequently, and our conversations had been tending towards repetition. I still enjoyed his passion for talk, his willingness to be puzzled by life’s events, our comically growing list of minor ailments as we entered our sixties, and the old stories he fell back on — usually stories of his minor triumphs, such as the time his car burst into fire, was declared a write-off by insurance, and ended in an auction house where he bought it back with part of the insurance payout and only minor repairs to be made. There were stories of his time as a barman in one of Melbourne’s roughest pubs. I suppose in a lot of long-lasting friendships it is these repeated stories of the past that can fill the present so richly.

Nevertheless, both his opinions and mine seemed to have become too predictable. Even his desire to come up with the most unpredictable viewpoint on any problem was a routine I expected from him. Each of us knew the weaknesses in the other’s thinking, and we had learned not to go too far with some topics, which were of course the most interesting and important ones.

He knew how politically correct I could be, and shrewdly enough he had no time for my self-righteousness, the predictability of my views on gender, race and climate. I understood this. He knew too that his fiercely independent thinking was often just the usual rant against greenies or lefties. Something had begun to fail in our friendship, but I could not properly perceive this or speak of it.

We were a contrasting pair. He was a big man with an aggressive edge to his gregarious nature, while I was lean, short and physically slight next to him, a much more reserved person altogether. I liked his size because big men have been protective figures in my life. At times when I felt threatened I would ask him to come with me to a meeting or a transaction, and just stand next to me in his big way. During one long period of trouble with our neighbours he would visit when the tension was high to show his formidable presence and his solidarity with us.

I was always reading and knew how to talk books, while he was too restless to read much. He knew how to sing, bursting into song occasionally when we were together. He had been unable to work professionally since a breakdown that was both physical and mental. By contrast, I was working steadily, never quite as free with my time as he was.

Nearly two years before our last dinner together his wife had suddenly left him. As it turned out, she had been planning her departure for some time, but when she went he was taken by surprise. I saw a more confused and fragile side of him during those months when we would meet and talk through how he was dealing with their counselling sessions, and then how the negotiations were proceeding over belongings and finally the family house. He was learning to live alone for the first time since he had been a young man, and was exploring what it might be like to seek out new relationships.

Read more: Research Check: is it true only half your friends actually like you?

A safe haven

We had met when I was a first-year university student boarding at my grandmother’s home in an inner Melbourne suburb. I was studying for a Bachelor of Arts, staying up through the nights, discovering literature, music, history, cask wine, dope, girls and ideas.

He lived in a flat a few doors away in a street behind my grandmother’s place, and I remember it was the local parish youth group, or the remnants of one, that used to meet in his flat. In my friend’s flat we would lie around the floor, half a dozen of us, drinking, flirting, arguing about religion or politics until the night was strung out in our heads, tight and thin and vibrating with possibilities. I loved that sudden intimate and intellectually rich contact with people my own age.

My friend and I started up a coffee lounge in an old disused shopfront as a meeting place for youth who would otherwise be on the street. I was the one who became immersed in the chaotic life of the place as students, musicians, misfits, hopeful poets and petty criminals floated through the shop, while my friend kept his eye on the broader picture that involved real estate agents, local councils, supplies of coffee, income and expenditure.

Perhaps the experience helped delay my own adulthood, allowing me time to try out a bohemian, communal alternative lifestyle that was so important to some of us in the early 1970s. My friend, though, was soon married. It was as if he had been living a parallel life outside our friendship, outside the youth group, coffee shop, jug band, drugs and misadventures of our project.

This did not break us up, and in fact after his marriage he became another kind of friend. I was at times struggling to find some steady sense of myself. Sometimes in those years I would not be able to talk or even be near others, and I remember once when I felt like this I went to my newly married friend’s home, and asked if I could lie on the floor in the corner of their lounge room for a few days until I felt better.

They indulged me. I felt it was this haven that saved me then, giving me the time to recoup and giving me a sense that there was somewhere I could go where the world was safe and neutral.

In time, and more bumpily and uncertainly than my friend, I was with a partner raising a family. He was often involved in our children’s birthdays, other celebrations, our house-moving, and just dropping in on family meals. It worked for us. I remember him lifting our cast iron wood-burning stove into its place in our first renovated Brunswick cottage. He lived in a more sprawling home near bushland on the edge of Melbourne, so one of my pleasures became the long cycling trips out to see him.

My partner and I were embraced by a local community thanks to the childcare centre, kinders, schools and sport. Lasting friendships (for us and for our children) grew in the tentative, open-ended, slightly blindly feeling way of friendships. Through this decade and a half though, the particular friendship with my songful friend held, perhaps to the surprise of both of us.

‘Tolerating much, for the sake of best intentions’

In his thoroughly likeable 1993 book on friendship , the political scientist Graham Little wrote under the bright light of writings by Aristotle and Freud, that the purest kind of friendship “welcomes the different ways people are alive to life and tolerates much in a friend for the sake of best intentions”.

Here perhaps is the closest I have seen to a definition of friendship at its best: a stance imbued with sympathy, interest and excitement directed at another despite all that otherwise shows we are flawed and dangerous creatures.

On that evening, the evening of the last time we went out to dinner together, I did push my friend towards one of the topics we usually avoided. I had been wanting him to acknowledge and even apologise for his behaviour towards some young women he had spoken to, I thought, lewdly and insultingly nearly a year before in my home at a party. The women and those of us who had witnessed his behaviour felt continuing tension over his refusal to discuss the fact that he had wanted to speak so insultingly to them and then had done it in our home in front of us. For me, there was some element of betrayal, not only in the way he had behaved but in his continued refusal to discuss what had happened.

The women were drunk, he said, just as he had said the last time I tried to talk to him about this. They were wearing almost nothing, he said, and what he’d said to them was no more than they were expecting. My friend and I were sitting in a popular Thai restaurant on Sydney Road: metal chairs, plastic tables, concrete floor. It was noisy, packed with students, young couples and groups out for a cheap and tasty meal. A waitress had put menus, water and beer on our table while she waited for us to decide on our meals. Wanting to push finally past this impasse, I pointed out to him that the women had not insulted him, he had insulted them.

If that’s the way you want it, he replied, and placed his hands on each side of the table, hurling it into the air and walking out of the restaurant as table, bottles, glasses, water and beer came clattering and smashing down around me. The whole restaurant fell silent. I could not move for some time. The waitress began mopping up the floor around me. Someone called out, “Hey, are you all right?”

This was the last time I saw or heard from him. For many months, I thought of him every day, then slowly I thought of him less often, until now I can think of him more or less at will, and not find myself ashamed of the way I went for him in a conversation where I should have been perhaps more alive to whatever was troubling him.

Improvised, tentative

For some years after this, I felt I had to learn how to be myself without him. I have read articles and essays since then about how pitiful men can be at friendship. We are apparently too competitive, we base our friendships on common activities, which means we can avoid talking openly about our feelings and thoughts. I don’t know about this “male deficit model”, as some sociologists call it, but I do know that the loss of this friendship took with it a big part of my shared personal history at that time. It dented my confidence in ever having properly known this man or understood our friendship — or in knowing how secure any friendship might be.

I was drawn to read and re-read Michel de Montaigne’s gentle and strangely extreme essay on friendship where he was so certain that he knew with perfection what his friend would think and say and value. He wrote of his friend, Etienne de Boëtie, “Not only did I know his mind as well as I knew my own but I would have entrusted myself to him with greater assurance than to myself.”

Against this perfection of understanding between friends, there is George Eliot’s odd excursion into science fiction in her 1859 novel, The Lifted Veil . Her narrator, Latimer, finds he can perceive perfectly clearly the thoughts of all the people around him. He becomes disgusted and deeply disturbed by the petty self-interest he apparently discovers within everyone.

After 40 years of shared history, there was not the disgust Eliot writes of, nor Montaigne’s perfect union of mind and trust between me and my burly friend, but there was, I had thought, a foundation of knowledge whereby we took each other’s differences into ourselves, as well as our common histories of the cafe we had run, and as it happened our common serving of time in semi-monastic seminaries before we’d met — differences and similarities that had given us, I thought, ways of being in sympathy with each other while allowing for each other.

Read more: Guide to the classics: Michel de Montaigne's Essays

Montaigne’s dearest friend, Etienne, had died, and his essay was as much about the meaning of this loss as about friendship. His big idea was loyalty, and I think I understand that, though not in the absolute way Montaigne wrote of it.

Loyalty is only real if it is constantly renewed. I worry that I have not worked enough at some friendships that have come into my life, but have let them happen more passively than the women I know who spend such time, and such complicated time, exploring and testing friendships. The sudden disappearance of my friend left me with an awareness of how patched-together, how improvised, clumsy and tentative even the most secure-seeming friendship can be.

When the philosopher and brilliant essayist, Simone Weil wrote shortly before she died in 1943,

I may lose, at any moment, through the play of circumstances over which I have no control, anything whatsoever that I possess, including things that are so intimately mine that I consider them as myself. There is nothing that I might not lose. It could happen at any moment ….

she seemed to be touching on the difficult truth that we run on luck and hope and chance much of the time. Why haven’t I worked harder at friendships, when I know that they provide the real meaning in my life?

Some years ago, when I was told by a medical specialist that I had a 30% chance of having cancer, as I waited for the results of a biopsy, I remember that in response to these dismal odds I had no desire to go back to work, no desire to even read — all I wanted to do was spend time with friends.

Inner worlds laid waste

To know what it is we care about, this is a gift. It should be straightforward to know this and keep it present in our lives, but it can prove to be difficult. Being the reader that I am, I have always turned to literature and fiction for answers or insights into those questions that seem to need answering.

I realised some time after the ending of my friendship that I had been reading novels dealing with friendship, and was not even sure how consciously I had chosen them.

For instance, I read The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber, a novel about a Christian preacher, Peter Leigh, sent to convert aliens in a galaxy ludicrously far from earth on a planet with an equally unlikely atmosphere benign to its human colonisers.

It is a novel about whether Leigh can be any kind of adequate friend to his wife left behind on Earth, and whether his new feelings for these aliens amounts to friendship. Though my suspension of disbelief was precarious, I found myself caring about these characters and their relationships, even the grotesquely shapeless aliens. Partly I cared about them because the book read like an essay testing ideas of friendship and loyalty that were important and urgent to the writer.

I also read at that time Haruki Murakami’s novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage , a book that came with a little game of coloured cards and stickers, and I found that I cared about Tsukuru Tazaki too, for I felt all along that Murakami’s character was a thin and endearing disguise for himself (what a beautiful word that is, “en-dearing”).

The novel centred on lost friendships. I heard a tone in its voice that was the oddly flat, persistent, vulnerable and sincere searching of a man for connection with others. If Murakami’s novel has a proposition it wishes to test it would be that we only know ourselves in what images of ourselves we receive back from our friends. Without our friends we become invisible, lost.

In both those novels, the friendships are crashing to pieces in slow motion in front of the reader’s helpless eyes. I wanted to shake those characters, tell them to stop and think about what they were doing, but at the same time I saw in them mirrors of myself and my experiences.

I read John Berger too , on the way a human looks across an abyss of incomprehension when looking at another animal. Though language seems to connect us, it might be that language also distracts us from the actual abyss of ignorance and fear between all of us as we look, across, at each other. In his book on the savage mind , Lévi-Strauss quotes a study of Canadian Carrier Indians living on the Bulkley River who were able to cross that abyss between species, believing they knew what animals did and what their needs were because their men had been married to the salmon, the beaver and the bear.

I have read essays by Robin Dunbar on the evolutionary limits to our circles of intimacy , where he suggests that for most of us there needs to be three or maybe five truly close friends. These are the ones we lean towards with tenderness and open ourselves to with endless curiosity — those in whom we seek only the good.

My partner can name quickly four friends who qualify for her as part of this necessary circle. I find I can name two (and she is one of them), then a constellation of individual friends whose closeness to me I can’t easily measure. It is this constellation that sustains me.

Recently I was away from home for three months. After two weeks away I wrote a list in the back of my diary of the friends I was missing. A little more than a dozen of these were the friends, men and women, with whom I need contact, and with whom conversations are always open-ended, surprising, intellectually stimulating, sometimes intimate, and often fun. With each of them I explore a slightly different but always essential version of myself. Graham Little wrote that “ideal soulmates are friends who are fully aware that each has himself as his main life project”.

To live this takes some effort of imagination, and with my friend at dinner that night I might in myself have been refusing to make this effort.

There are also, it occurs to me, the friends who came as couples, with whom my partner and I share time as couples. This is itself another manifestation of friendship, one that crosses over into community, tribe and family — and no less precious than the individual intimacy of a personal friendship. For reasons I can’t properly fathom, the importance of this kind of time with coupled friends has deepened as I have grown through the decades of my fifties and sixties.

Perhaps it is that the dance of conversation and ideas is so much more complex and pleasurable when there are four or more contributing. It could be too that I am absolved from the responsibility of really working at these friendships in the way one must when there are two of us. Or it might be the pang and stimulus of the knowledge that opportunities to be together are brutally diminishing as we grow older.

But to lose an individual friend from one’s closest circle is to have large tracts of one’s inner world laid waste for a time. My feelings over the end of this particular friendship were a kind of grief mixed with bewilderment.

It was not that the friendship was necessary to my existence, but that perhaps through habit and sympathy it had become a fixed part of my identity. Robin Dunbar would say that by stepping away from this friendship I had made room for someone else to slip in to my circle of most intimate friends, but isn’t it the point of such close friends that they are in some important sense irreplaceable? This is the source of much of our distress when such friendships end.

Still learning

When I told people about what had happened in the restaurant that night, they would say, reasonably, “Why don’t you patch things up and resume your friendship?”

As I imagined how a conversation might go if I did meet my friend again, I came to understand that I had been a provocation to him. I had ceased to be the friend he needed, wanted or imagined.

What he did was dramatic. He might have called it merely dramatic. I felt it as threatening. Though I cannot help but think I provoked him. And if we had “patched” a friendship back together, on whose terms would this have been conducted? Would it always be that I would have to agree not to press him on questions that might lead him to throw over some table between us again?

Or worse, would I have to witness his apology, forgive him myself, and put him on his best behaviour for the rest of our friendship?

Neither of those outcomes would have patched much together. I had been hurting too over what I saw as his lack of willingness or interest to understand the situation from my point of view. And so it went inside me as the table and the water and the beer and the glasses came crashing down around me. I had been, in a way, married to my friend, even if he was a salmon or a bear — a creature across an abyss from me. Perhaps this was the only way out of that marriage. Perhaps he had been preparing for (moving towards?) this moment more consciously than I had been.

The ending of this friendship, it is clear, left me looking for its story. It was as if all along there must have been a narrative with a trajectory carrying us in this direction. A story is of course a way of testing whether an experience can take on a shape. Murakami’s and Faber’s novels are not themselves full-blown stories, for there is almost no plot, no shape, to their stumbling episodic structures, and oddly enough in both books the self-doubting lovers might or might not find that close communion with another somewhere well beyond the last page of each novel.

These novels cohere round a series of questions rather than events: what do we know and what can we know about others, what is the nature of the distance that separates one person from another, how provisional is it to know someone anyway, and what does it mean to care about someone, even someone who is a character in a novel?

When an Indian says he is married to a salmon, this can be no stranger than me saying I spent a couple of weeks on a humid planet in another galaxy with an astronaut who is a Christian preacher and an inept husband, or I spent last night in Tokyo with an engineer who builds railway stations and believes himself to be colourless, though at least two women have told him he is full of colour. But do I go to this story-making as a way of keeping my experiences less personal and more cerebral?

When I got home that night eight years ago, I sat at my kitchen table, shaking, hugging myself, talking to my grown-up children about what happened. It was the talking that helped — a narrative taking shape.

Dunbar, like me, like all of us, worries at the question of what makes life so richly present to us, and why friendships seem to be at the core of this meaningfulness. He has been surveying Americans with questions about friendship for several decades, and he concludes that for many of us the small circle of intimate friendships we experience is reducing.

We are apparently lucky now, on average, if there are two people in our lives we can approach with tenderness and curiosity, with that assumption that time will not matter as we talk in a low, murmuring, hive-warm way to a close friend.

My friend cannot be replaced, and it might be that we did not in the end imagine each other fully enough or accurately enough as we approached that last encounter. I don’t know precisely what our failure was. The shock of what happened and the shock of the friendship ending has over the time since that dinner become a part of my history in which I remember feeling grief but am no longer caught in confused anger or guilt over it. The story of it might not have ended but it has subsided.

Perhaps in all friendships we are not only, at our best, agreeing to encountering the unique and endlessly absorbing presence of another person, but unknown to us we’re learning something about how to approach the next friendship in our lives. There is something comically inept and endearing about the possibility that one might still be learning how to be a friend right up to the end of life.

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127 Friendship Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

When you have a good friendship topic, essay writing becomes as easy as it gets. We have some for you!

📝 Friendship Essay Structure

🏆 best friendship topic ideas & essay examples, 💡 good essay topics on friendship, 🎓 simple & easy friendship essay titles, 📌 most interesting friendship topics to write about, ❓ research questions about friendship.

Describing a friend, talking about your relationship and life experiences can be quite fun! So, take a look at our topics on friendship in the list below. Our experts have gathered numerous ideas that can be extremely helpful for you. And don’t forget to check our friendship essay examples via the links.

Writing a friendship essay is an excellent way to reflect on your relationships with other people, show your appreciation for your friends, and explore what friendship means to you. What you include in your paper is entirely up to you, but this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t structure it properly. Here is our advice on structuring an essay on friendship:

• Begin by selecting the right topic. It should be focused and creative so that you can earn a high mark. Think about what friendship means to you and write down your thoughts. Reflect on your relationship with your best friend and see if you can write an essay that incorporates these themes. If these steps didn’t help – don’t worry! Fortunately, there are many web resources that can help you choose. Browse samples of friendship essays online to see if there are any topics that interest you.
• Create a title that reflects your focus. Paper titles are important because they grasp the reader’s attention and make them want to read further. However, many people find it challenging to name their work, so you can search for friendship essay titles online if you need to.
• Once you get the first two steps right, you can start developing the structure of your essay. An outline is a great tool because it presents your ideas in a clear and concise manner and ensures that there are no gaps or irrelevant points. The most basic essay outline has three components: introduction, body, and conclusion. Type these out and move to the next step. Compose an introduction. Your introduction should include a hook, some background information, and a thesis. A friendship essay hook is the first sentence in the introduction, where you draw the reader’s attention. For instance, if you are creating an essay on value of friendship, include a brief description of a situation where your friends helped you or something else that comes to mind. A hook should make the reader want to read the rest of the essay. After the hook, include some background information on your chosen theme and write down a thesis. A thesis statement is the final sentence of the first paragraph that consists of your main argument.
• Write well-structured body paragraphs. Each body paragraph should start with one key point, which is then developed through examples, references to resources, or other content. Make sure that each of the key points relates to your thesis. It might be useful to write out all of your key points first before you write the main body of the paper. This will help you to see if any of them are irrelevant or need to be swapped to establish a logical sequence. If you are composing an essay on the importance of friendship, each point should show how a good friend can make life better and more enjoyable. End each paragraph with a concluding sentence that links it to the next part of the paper.
• Finally, compose a conclusion. A friendship essay conclusion should tie together all your points and show how they support your thesis. For this purpose, you should restate your thesis statement at the beginning of the final paragraph. This will offer your reader a nice, well-balanced closure, leaving a good impression of your work.

We hope that this post has assisted you in understanding the basic structure of a friendship paper. Don’t forget to browse our website for sample papers, essay titles, and other resources!

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• The Confessions of St. Augustine on Friendship: Term Paper Augustine of Hippo believes that the only real source of friendship is God, and he adds that it is only through this God-man relationship that people can understand the ideal meaning of friendship.
• Friendship’s Philosophical Description In order for a friendship to exist, the two parties must demonstrate first and foremost a willingness to ensure that only the best occurs to their counterpart.
• Defining of True Friendship This is the same devotion that my friends and I have toward each other. Another thing that best defines friends is the sacrifices that they are willing to make for each other.
• Effect of Friendship on Students’ Emotional Health The study discovered a significant positive correlation between the quality of new friendships and adjustment to university; this association is more robust for students living in residence than those commuting to university. Friday and Adkins […]
• Greek and Roman Perspectives on Male Friendship in Mythology The reason for such attitude can be found in the patriarchal culture and the dominant role of free adult males in the Greek and Roman social life. However, this was not the only, and probably […]
• The Importance of Friendship in “The Epic of Gilgamesh” At the beginning of the story, Gilgamesh, the king of the Sumerian city of Uruk, despite achievements in the development of the town, causes the dislike of his subjects.
• Gender and Cultural Studies: Intimacy, Love and Friendship Regardless of the driving force, intimacy and sexual connections are common in many happy relationships. Of significance is monogamy whose definition among the heterosexuals and lesbians remains a challenge.
• “Feminism and Modern Friendship” by Marilyn Friedman Individualism denies that the identity and nature of human beings as individuals is a product of the roles of communities as well as social relationships.
• Friendship as Moral Experience One of the things I have realized over the course of the last few years is that while it is possible to experience friendship and have a deep, spiritual connection with another person, it is […]
• Friendship’s meaning around the world Globally it’s very ludicrous today for people to claim that they are in a friendship yet they do not even know the true meaning of friendship.
• Analysis of Internet Friendship Issues Despite the correlation that develops on the internet, the question of whether social media can facilitate and guarantee the establishment of a real friend has remained a key area of discussion.
• Social Media Communication and Friendship According to Maria Konnikova, social media have altered the authenticity of relationships: the world where virtual interactions are predominant is likely to change the next generation in terms of the ability to develop full social […]
• Childhood Friendship and Psychology Based on their research, they have founded a theory, according to which it is assumed that the children consider close relationship, appraisals, and sharing common interests as something very important to them and on the […]
• Faux Friendship and Social Networking The modern-day relationships have dissolved the meaning of the word friendship; as aromatic lovers refer to each other as friends, parents want their children to think of them as friends, teachers, clergymen and bosses have […]
• Friendship Type – Companionship Relationship A friendship is ideally not an obsession since the latter involves a craving for another person that might even lead to violence just to be in site of the other party.
• Friendship and Peer Networking in Middle Childhood Peer networking and friendship have a great impact on the development of a child and their overall well-being. Students in elementary need an opportunity to play and network with their peers.
• Friendship in “The Song of Roland” This phrase sums up Roland’s predicament in the book as it relates to his reluctance to sound the Oliphant horn. In the final horn-blowing episode, Roland is aggressively persuaded to blow the horn for Charlemagne’s […]
• True Friendship from Personal Perspective The perfect understanding of another person’s character and visions is one of the first characteristics of a true friendship. In such a way, true friendship is an inexhaustible source of positive emotions needed for everyone […]
• Trust Aspect of Friendship: Qualitative Study Given the previous research on preserving close communication and terminating it, the authors seek to examine the basics of productive friendship and the circumstances that contribute to the end of the interaction.
• Educator-Student Relationships: Friendship or Authority? Ford and Sassi present the view that the combination of authority and the establishment of interpersonal relations should become the way to improve the performance of learners.
• Friendship in the Film “The Breakfast Club” The main themes which can be identified in the storyline are crisis as a cause and catalyst of friendship, friendship and belonging, and disclosure and intimacy in friendship.
• Friendship Police Department Organizational Change The one that is going to challenge the efforts, which will be aimed at rectifying the situation, is the lack of trust that the employees have for the new leader who they expect to become […]
• Friendship in the Analects and Zhuangzi Texts The author of “The Analects of Confucius” uses the word friend in the first section of the text to emphasize the importance of friendship.
• How to Develop a Friendship: Strategies to Meet New Friends Maintaining a connection with old friends and finding time to share life updates with them is a good strategy not to lose ties a person already has. A person should work hard to form healthy […]
• Is There Friendship Between Women? In conclusion, comparing my idea of women’s friendship discussed in my proposal to the theoretic materials of the course I came to a conclusion that strong friendship between women exists, and this is proved in […]
• Online Friendship Formationby in Mesch’s View The modern world tends to the situation when people develop the greatest empathy towards their online friends because it seems that the ratio and the deepness of these relationships can be controlled; written and posted […]
• Canadian-American Diefenbaker-Eisenhower Friendship In particular, the paper investigates the Mandatory Oil Import Program and the exemption of Canada from this initiative as well as the historical treaty that was officially appended by the two leaders in regard to […]
• Friendship from a Sociological Perspective For example Brazilians studying in Europe and United States were met with the stereotypes that Brazilians are warm people and are easy to establish friendships.
• Friendship Influencing Decisions When on Duty The main stakeholders are the local community, the judge, and the offenders. The right of the society is to receive objective and impartial treatment of its members.
• Friendship: To Stay or to Leave Each member of the group found out who really is a friend and who is not. This implies that the level of trust is high between Eddie and Vic.
• “Understanding Others, and Individual Differences in Friendship Interaction in Young Children”: Article Analysis The aspect of socio-cognitive abilities of small children in the process of interaction was disclosed with the help of psychological theories.
• Friendship: Sociological Term Review But one is not aware of that type of friendship; it is necessary to study it. Friendship is a matter of consciousness; love is absolutely unconscious.
• The Significance of Friendship in Yeonam The paper examines the depth and extent to which Yeonam was ready to go and if he was bound by the norms of the human friendship and association of his era.
• Cicero and Plutarch’s Views on Friendship He believed that befriending a man for sensual pleasures is the ideal of brute beasts; that is weak and uncertain with caprice as its foundation than wisdom. It is this that makes such carelessness in […]
• Friendship: The Meaning and Relevance Although the basic definition of a friendship falls under the category of somebody whom we feel a level of affection and trust for or perhaps a favored companion, the truth of the matter is that […]
• “Is True Friendship Dying Away?” and “The Price We Pay” Then Purpose of the essay is to depict the way social media such as Facebook and Twitter have influenced the lifestyles of every person in the world.
• Fate of Friendship and Contemporary Ethics Is friendship possible in the modern world dominated by pragmatism and will it exist in the future? For instance, Cicero takes the point of view of the social entity, in other words, he defines friendship […]
• Feminism and Modern Friendship While criticizing these individuals, Marilyn asserts that the omission of sex and gender implies that these individuals wanted to affirm that social attachment such as societies, families, and nationalities contribute to identity rather than sex […]
• Creating a Friendship Culture This family will ensure every church member and youth is part of the youth ministry. I will always help every newcomer in the ministry.
• Friendship is in Everyone’s Life Though, different books were written in different times, the descriptions of a friendship have the same essence and estimate that one cannot be completely satisfied with his/her life if one does not have a friend.
• Intimacy, Love and Friendship and how they translate to employability The use of love and its conventions in the NAB campaigns is an illustration of how love as a concept can be used to translate to employability.
• Intimacy, Love and Friendship In the past, women in Australia led a life characterized by a lot of hardships because of the harsh traditions that they were supposed to follow.
• Contemporary Understanding of Intimacy and Friendship The Social Network film discusses how Facebook was developed and the challenges of developing the giant social site. Many people are of the view that Facebook has the effect of enslaving them by making their […]
• Interpretation of Friendship among Confucian and Neo-Confucian writers In his article “The Fifth Relationship; Dangerous Friendships in the Confucian Context”, Norman Kutcher explores the friendship as outlined under the Confucian system. The above writers have different interpretations of friendship of the under the […]
• Why International Students Find It Hard to Make Friends On the other hand, in societies that promote a high power distance, less powerful individuals accept their position in the chain of command and acknowledge the strengths of their superiors in the hierarchy.
• Gender Stereotyping and Friendship: Women Relationships The most interesting about this article is its ending which states that” the core of a friendship has to have more in-person interactions and experience”.
• The Impact of Friendship in the Epic of Gilgamesh The elusive coalition between Enkidu and Gilgamesh, their fateful destinies and eventual epiphanies broaden the societal apprehension of the elements/value of friendship as expounded in the next discussion.
• Woman Intimacy and Friendship with the Appearance of Social Media The anonymity provided by the social media makes this medium very appealing to both women and men as they are able to “reconstruct” themselves to a level they deem “cool” enough to garner more desired […]
• Aristotle’s Ideas on Civic Relationships: Happiness, the Virtues, Deliberation, Justice, and Friendship On building trust at work, employers are required to give minimum supervision to the employees in an effort to make the latter feel a sense of belonging and responsibility.
• Gender Role Development and Friendship As far as the conflict goes, the boy’s main problem is that he is unwilling to change his behavior towards a socially accepted one under the pretext that girls are more beautiful and, therefore, it […]
• Article Study on the Friendship Concept In the critical review article, the views of Norman Kutcher on the formation of friendships are discussed in detail. In this article, the views of other scholars are discussed in order to strengthen the works […]
• Henry Thoreau: The Concept of the Friendship Not every person is able to understand the essence of nature, its uniqueness, and importance. To my mind, his close connection to nature and a kind of isolation from people helped him to understand deeper […]
• Why Honesty Is Important In A Friendship
• The Truth and Friendship in the Movie Camelot
• A Discussion About the Value of Friendship as Portrayed in Damon and Pythias
• What Is the Meaning of True Friendship
• A Literary Analysis of Friendship in Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
• Factors Contributing to the Ups and Downs of Friendship in Knowles’ A Separate Peace
• Friendship and Love in the Little Prince
• Confidantes, Marriage, and Friendship in Pride and Prejudice
• What Makes A Successful Friendship
• Understanding Friendship Through The Staircase Model
• An Analysis of Friendship and Rejection in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
• A Discussion on the Different Types of Friendship
• An Analysis of Friendship in Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• A Literary Analysis of Friendship in a Separate Peace by John Knowles
• An Analysis of the Concept of Friendship in A Separate Piece by John Knowles
• A Separate Peace and Of Mice and Men – Real Friendship
• The Theme of True Friendship in the Book of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• The Value of Friendship in Great Expectations
• What Makes A Good Friendship
• The Theme of Friendship in Separate Ways by Higuchi Ichiyo and Uncanny Stories by SongLing
• Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism
• The Waltz Of Sociability : Intimacy, Dislocation And Friendship
• The True Meaning of the Word Friendship
• A Description of Impartiality, Beneficence and Friendship According to Lawrence Blum
• Aristotle ‘s Views On Friendship
• Friendship and Courage in The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• An Analysis of Friendship and Loyalty in the Film The Deer Hunter
• Turning Away from True Friendship
• Different Types of Friendship and The Need for Friends
• An Analysis of the Dangers of Friendship
• The Victorian Female Friendship and Homosexual References in Emily Dickinson’s Work
• What Is Friendship And How Is God Man ‘s Best Friend?
• The Venerable Kassapa Thera: A Living Symbol of Dedication, Courage, Altruism and Intimate Friendship
• “The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds” by Michael Lewis
• Building from Happiness to Friendship
• What Do You Think Steinbeck Says About the Theme of Friendship in of Mice and Men
• Distributive Justice and the Problem of Friendship
• How Does Shakespeare Demonstrate That Love and Friendship Can Overcome Greed in the Merchant of Venice?
• Does Borrowing Money From Friends Harm Friendship?
• Can Friendship Be Defined by Any Scientific Criteria?
• How Can Enduring Happiness Arise From Friendship?
• Does Campus Diversity Promote Friendship Diversity?
• Is There Any Objection to the Teacher Establishing a Friendship Relationship With the Students?
• How Do Children Cope With Friendship and Death After Reading Charlottes Web?
• Does Ragging Develop Friendship?
• How Does Shakespeare Create Friendship?
• Should Becoming Friends With Benefits Ruin Your Friendship?
• How Does the Nature of Children’s Friendship Change With Age?
• Do Friendships Vary Across Countries?
• What Are Friends for and How Can a Friendship Be Tested?
• How Does the Theme of Loneliness Affect the Friendship and Relationships in “Of Mice and Men”?
• What Are the Elements That Build a Strong Friendship?
• How Does Friendship Help Students Succeed in the University?
• What Does Friendship Mean?
• How Does Friendship Help With Your Mental Health?
• What Does True Friendship Require?
• How Do Friendship Network Characteristics Influence Subjective Well-Being?
• What Was Aristotle’s Thought on Friendship?
• How Do Friendship Networks Work in Online P2P Lending Markets?
• Why Is Friendship Important?
• How Has Friendship Changed Because of the Spread of Social Networking?
• Why Does Friendship End?
• How Do Society and Culture Affect Friendship?
• Can Everything Be Bought for Money?
• How Do Gamers Take the Gaming Experience, Elements Such as Friendships Outside the Game Context?
• Do Friends Generally Have Similar Educational Interests?
• What Individual and Country-Level Factors Might Interact With Friendship Importance to Predict Health and Well-Being?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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What Does It Feel Like To Lose a Best Friend?

What does it feel like to lose a best friend? 

One you thought you couldn’t possibly lose. The best friend who managed to stand the test of time, who was constant even as everyone else walked in and out of your life. The kind of best friend you were proud of having by your side for so long despite everything you’d gone through, because you went through it together. It didn’t matter how much you changed or outgrew your friends at home; they just seemed like they’d always be in your life no matter what. 

A best friend who didn’t even have the same interests as you. They were almost your opposite in a way, at least in every way noticeable to the people around you. But you didn’t need them to like the same things you liked. To listen to the same music you did or hate contact sports with the same burning passion. It wasn’t a deal breaker that they absolutely refused to watch “The Good Place,” despite the fact you had just binge-watched it for days. You didn’t need them to do those things because you had other friends for that. No, this friend — your best friend — just knew you in a way you couldn’t possibly know yourself. You had unspoken rules that no one understood. They knew how to give you tough love and advice without ever attacking you. And when you needed each other you were there, even if it just meant listening to them sob on the phone for hours. Their presence was comforting in a way you couldn’t explain even if you tried. Like you had spent the whole day thrashing against the waves and could finally backfloat to the shore.  

What does it feel like to lose a best friend?

It feels like being ripped apart and not into perfect halves. Like you don’t know who you are without them. It feels like a void eating at you when you least expect it. When you break down in the middle of making plans to go skating, because they were the one who held your hand as you clung to the rink. You trusted them to not let you fall, even though you could already see them slipping on the ice. It’s the unfinished plans and promises; did they ever end up confronting their ex like they said they would?  It’s this sinking feeling in your chest every time you realize they’re not coming back. Every time you realize this was for the best, but just wish you could tell them you finally got that internship you had spent months dreaming about.  It’s the double take you do and the weird mix of apprehension and excitement you feel when you think that random person walking down the street is them. You still haven’t decided yet what you’d do if you ever bumped into them again. Because a hug would feel too fake and ignoring them would immediately fill you with regret. It’s the need to know if they’re okay, but realizing it’s not your place anymore to ask. It’s that strange warmth you feel every time you think about them, quickly replaced with a sense of loss, and then warmth again as you find yourself wishing them the best. 

It’s the disbelief at how things could ever get that bad. The nights you play the blame game and kick yourself for letting it get so toxic. For not realizing sooner that the snowball had started running downhill, and once you did it had already gotten so big everything was crushed in its path. It’s the constant questions. Do they still think about you in those moments when everything’s still and there’s nothing left to distract yourself with? Do they miss hearing you laugh? Do they find themselves opening the chat, only to realize there’s nothing left to say? Maybe they watch your face pop up when you’re online and watch it go back to ‘last active.’ Maybe they’re reading that last conversation and wondering if they had just said this differently or sucked up their pride in this one moment, maybe everything wouldn’t have imploded. Maybe they’re constantly wishing for closure, but they’ve realized that nothing will ever be closure. They’re all ‘maybes’ for them, but they aren’t for me. 

Maybe losing your best friend feels like the tears running down your face as you type this. Maybe these tears contain the unspoken rules you had, the silent hugs and the now tainted, yet wistful memories you share. Maybe losing your best friend feels like knowing this is your way of letting go. 

A version of this article appeared in the Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2020, e-print edition. Email Vaishnavi Naidu at [email protected] .

Comments (2)

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J M • Jan 6, 2021 at 10:27 pm

Thank you for sharing. 🙂 Was feeling very hopeless from having lost my best friend… and having someone who understands the pain… really helped. … It’ll get better and better. I believe all wounds will heal… as long as we keep letting go, and moving on, and living our lives. Wish you the best.

Dana de vries • Jan 4, 2021 at 4:33 am

thank u for saying this..

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Personal Experience — Personal Narrative: a Day I Lost My Best Friend

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Being the Floater Friend Is Not the End of Your Social Life, Actually

By Aiyana Ishmael

In this reported essay, associate editor Aiyana Ishmael explores the phenomenon of being the floater friend, and argues that, despite the position being deemed undesirable by pop culture’s depictions of friendships, it may not be as bad as it seems.

Angela Wei attended four different schools between elementary and middle school while living in Ottawa, Ontario. “I never really had the time to establish a permanent friend group,” says the 23-year-old.

Before starting high school, Wei moved to Vancouver. For the first time, she would be able to plant roots at a new school, on the same playing field as other incoming freshmen; she hoped to form that group connection she had always dreamt about.

“I thought, ‘Finally, I am going to be at this school for all five years,’” she recalls. “I wanted that big friend group — like the ones you see in movies. That idealized friend group seemed like the only way friendships were allowed to operate, it was the only way to have fun.”

At 13, she entered her new all-girl school hoping to propel into the world of inseparable bonds and group chats , reminiscent of the experiences depicted in our favorite young-adult coming-of-age stories. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Instead of sleepover invites and outfit coordination she was met with pre-existing groups no longer taking friendship applications.

“There were already these different friend groups established,” she says. “It then became [a question of] which one do I want to insert myself into? For the first few years of high school, I tried to test out different groups, but no matter how close I got to individual people within them, it always felt like I couldn't get into the core friend group.”

Sex and the City: The Movie (2008)

For decades, popular culture has portrayed big friendship groups as a rite of passage, your one chance to be a part of something larger than yourself. There’s Khadijah James and her squad from Living Single . The Central Perk gang from Friends. Massie Block’s Pretty Committee in The Clique novels. John B and his Pogues in Outer Banks . For better or for worse, we’ve been trained to believe that the only right way to experience life in your teens and twenties is with a semi-large, eclectic, and slightly codependent friend group guiding you through it all. It’s something we have all chased — some more than others — and sometimes we never make it to the finish line. Many of us exist along the perimeters of those clusters, between the lines or above the invisible entry point of intimacy, floating from group to group, never fully landing on a homebase.

“I feel like it's so easy to compare everything to shows like Sex in the City ,” Margaret Moran, 29, says. “Seeing that representation of people having this core friend group is difficult. Everything centers around that dynamic. They're always hanging out. Then in real life to not necessarily have that, sometimes it makes you feel like you're doing something wrong, even if you're not.”

For as long as friend groups have formed, floater friends have roamed, being forced to exist more as a secondary character to the plot of a larger story, rather than a key player amidst the ensemble. The “invited to the dinner, but not the sleepover” friend. The “come to the party, but not in the same car” friend. The “maybe we’ll invite them to tag along” friend. For many floaters, it’s easy to feel like an afterthought.

“I'm a satellite friend, or sometimes I say I'm a little electron or I'm a moon, not a sun,” Kiki O'Keeffe, 38, says. O'Keeffe describes “sun” friends as those who are effortlessly able to exist as the social gravity of multiple people. They’re equipped with the special skill of bringing large groups of people together.

Dr. Marisa G. Franco is a psychologist, friendship expert, and professor at the University of Maryland who teaches a class on loneliness. At the end of her two courses, she noticed there was a group that was really close and another that wasn’t.

“I was analyzing the difference between these two classes and I saw that in one of my classes, I had a student [named] Savannah who I call an igniter because she would say to everyone at the end of each class, ‘Anyone want to get lunch?’ The igniter creates the group, and now everyone else is more connected because the igniter was able to form that bond.”

The cast of Living Single

Franco notes that if you’re constantly finding yourself on the fringe of friendships, you might have to be the one to create the group. Oftentimes floater friends have a more passive way of navigating their connections. People who experience this ongoing battle sometimes even manage to compartmentalize their friendships , which leaves them with more individual relationships over friend groups.

“And maybe that’s why you end up becoming a floater friend because you have these very bespoke ways of interacting with people that doesn't really lend itself to forming a group,” O’Keeffe says. “Maybe I’m not the type to say ‘Let’s all buy a cake, coordinate schedules and get together, and have something big and fun.’ It's amazing when those things can happen. I think I've definitely felt envious of that growing up. At different points you're just like ‘Does this mean I don't have as much love in my life? Does that mean my friends do not care about me in the same way?’”

The famous friend group many of us aspire to isn’t always that aspirational, though. While it can get lonely existing as a party of one , for many floater friends, being forced into a governing body with ratified laws of friendship-land can be overwhelming.

“My school was very cliquey and people stayed within their friend groups,” Wei says. “It was also very hierarchical, in the sense that there was always one girl who was the leader and then everyone else had to listen to her and I didn't really vibe with that. I didn't really understand why things were so predetermined.”

O’Keeffe would even go as far to call friend groups tiny “societies.” “Some social sciences probably know what the threshold is, but when you’re in a group at a certain point it becomes a little society, which means you just naturally start to form rules and etiquette,” O’Keeffe says. “Those things you don't need when you're just two or three people. And as you scale, it's very hard to govern and adjudicate things, and it does become a little bit suffocating.”

As an igniter of friend groups myself, I have seen firsthand how draining friend groups can become — especially when you’re 17 and everything feels more momentous than it actually is. It starts with naming the group. You must settle on an acronym that identifies everyone in the squad, even though someone's name will always be last. You must establish rules and parameters surrounding hangouts and invites, as no two members of the larger group can hang out solo without being reprimanded. Back then, it was all for one and one for all. Now, years later, that same high school friend group and I laugh about the system we built to tightly uphold our friendships, and how it isn’t quite realistic as growing adults.

“My best friend today, we don't even live in the same state, but we've been friends for so long and there's no politics,” Wuraola Adeniji, 23, says. “We can hang out whenever we have the time. With my personality I have to create time or space for people that align with me at the moment. Having a friend group, sometimes I'm not in alignment with that. I might be in a different mindset and the expectations of me in that friend group might be too much.”

Rupal Banerjee, 24, remembers the pivotal moment in her childhood where she was shunned to the edges of the group. She was in the eighth grade and her entire class of about 15 students went to Knott’s Berry Farm, the amusement park in California. She agreed that the majority of the group somewhat enjoyed her presence, but the group “leader” didn’t. At the end of the trip, the group leader invited every single person besides Banerjee to go to dinner after their day at the park.

The cast of Friends

“She looked me in my eyes, didn’t say anything and kept walking down, inviting everyone else behind me,” she recalls. “For me it was, I guess, when you're younger, you chase things that are not meant for you because you don't know any better. You just want to feel loved, essentially. And eventually I realized that my absolute best friend in the world was one person and not a whole group of people.”

The schooling years are always the time in which being a floater feels the most detrimental. Who we grab lunch with in between school and work, who we spend time with on the weekends, and who we attend parties and events with can all trigger the stress of belonging. Searching for a sense of community is something we will always pursue as humans, at any age — but, as many of us learn as we grow, we should never force ourselves to fit in a social ecosystem that isn’t also working to make space for us.

“Rather than trying to fit myself into a certain group, I decided to just make friends with people I really liked individually,” Wei says. “By the end of high school, I felt my core group of friends were just people in different friend groups.”

But what do you do if you’ve given your all to a group that still seems to put you on the back burner? You redirect your energy.

“Turn your efforts elsewhere,” Franco says. “I think some of the issues that people have is they don't know when to walk away. They work harder when they find that they're being excluded. When we do that we're then inviting these less reciprocal, less affirming relationships into our lives because we're investing all of our energy into the people that aren't invested in us.”

As we leave our high school hallways behind and start to navigate college, full-time jobs, and the many other social environments life will throw us in, a herd might seem less attractive than impactful and fulfilling individual relationships. Wei says her “floater friend” lifestyle growing up was difficult, but now as a young adult living in New York City, she feels better equipped to keep her individual relationships healthy and strong as opposed to existing in a group in which she never really fosters true, deep connection with each member.

“In high school, having that ‘perfect’ group felt so important,” Wei says. “It was like, ‘I either have this friend group or I don't.’ The moment you get a bit older and start working or going into the world, you meet people, your type of people, and you realize there are so many other people that are better suited to you. Just because the group of a hundred people in your grade in high school aren't necessarily your people, it doesn't mean that you're not going to be able to find them eventually.”

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How She Lost Her Longtime Friend To Trump

NPR's Michel Martin talks with writer Felicia Sullivan, who parted ways with her friend of 26 years after learning she supports President Trump.

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The Book of Lost Friends

48 pages • 1 hour read

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Research the 1969 Loren Eiseley essay “The Star Thrower.” How does it help understand the novel’s definition of a teacher, a mother, and a storyteller/historian?

The secondary characters of LaJuna and Juneau Jane parallel each other beyond the similarity in their names. How does each character contribute to the emotional growth of the primary character, Benny, in one case, and Hannie in the other. How do these two feisty characters themselves grow as a result of their experience?

Research the Lost Friends database. Read the ads selected for inclusion in this novel. What does the archive of these ads reveal about the human cost of slavery?

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Healing From the Loss of a Friend to Suicide

Navigate your personal journey of healing..

Posted July 1, 2018

During the past several weeks, there has been a great deal of attention in the news media to the tragic deaths by suicide of fashion designer Kate Spade and journalist Anthony Bourdain. Sometimes when we learn of such tragic news, it may remind us of the losses of our friends or loved ones who may have died by suicide in the past, making our own journey of healing and hope all the more challenging. After media attention to these tragic losses dies down, it may feel as if we have been left to deal with our own feelings alone, and we may wonder if anyone really understands us or if what we are experiencing is normal.

While there is no easy way to grieve, it is often helpful to know that attention to suicides in the news media may, at times, trigger thoughts of the losses of our own friends or loved ones and may result in our re-experiencing the grief and other feelings we encountered immediately subsequent to the loss once again; such reactions may last for several hours, days, weeks, or months. During these times, it is helpful to understand that such feelings and memories are normal and to know where to find information and resources for support during these stressful times.

Grief Is a Process

No two people respond to loss in the same way. Some may experience physical symptoms such as headaches or changes in appetite and/or sleeping patterns, while others may experience emotions such as anger , depression , or other feelings. Some reactions which individuals experience during the grieving process may include:

Shock Disbelief Sadness

Guilt Denial Pain

Despair Anger Hopelessness

Stress Anxiety Grief

Confusion Numbness Abandonment

Loneliness Rejection Self-blame

The shock and grief that consumes us after we lose someone to suicide can be overwhelming. It can feel like we have fallen into a deep hole and will never be able to get out. These are natural feelings which will likely change as we move through the grieving process and allow the time we need to heal from our loss.

Some Difficult Questions

Will I ever get over this, and if so, how long will it take?

While there is no erasing the loss of a friend or loved one to suicide, over time and with focused attention to the work of grieving, we come to the point in our lives where it feels that the time is right to enjoy life and to move forward with our own interests, plans, and relationships. For many, the entire first year, including the first anniversary of the loss, is difficult, while others grieve for shorter or longer periods of time.

Is it disrespectful to my friend or loved one to laugh or enjoy my life?

For some, there may be a period during which it may not “feel” okay to enjoy your life. This is only natural. But over time, your capacity to enjoy the pleasures of ordinary life will, and should, re-emerge. This in no way trivializes your loss or disrespects the friend or loved one you have lost.

Taking Care of Yourself

This week of increased media attention on suicide is also a reminder that all of us need to take care of our own mental health and the well-being of those around us. If you are struggling, take the time you need for self-care and help seeking, and be sure to reach out to someone you trust or connect with someone you are concerned about. Ask those in your life how they are doing. Listen intently, and seek professional help if needed.

Helping Yourself

Recognize and acknowledge your feelings and reactions.

Take care of yourself emotionally and physically.

Talk to others about what you are feeling or experiencing, which may include making an appointment with a counselor or mental health professional.

Spend time with others.

Balance out emotions related to loss by living the other aspects of your life fully.

Distract yourself as needed.

Honor the anniversary of the loss of a friend or loved one with a meaningful ritual or tradition.

Express your emotions through writing, art, poetry, cooking, or any other way which gives voice to your feelings.

Create a self-care toolbox. Make a list of things that relax you and keep it in a convenient place during this time. Mindfully use one or two every day as a way to keep grounded. Some ideas may include walking, taking a hot bath/shower, reading a fiction book, watching a funny movie, and playing a board game.

Supporting Others

Know the power of your presence and empathy.

Acknowledge the loss of your friend or loved one in some way.

Listen to others' thoughts and feelings.

Encourage others to seek professional help if needed.

And Remember . . . You Are Not Alone

There are many resources available to provide support to those affected by suicide. Do not hesitate to reach out for support as you move forward in your journey of personal healing.

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK or text "Talk" to 741741.
• Crisis Text Line — Text START to 741741
• TREVOR Project — 866-488-7386
• Trans Lifeline — 877-565-8860

Dolores Cimini, Ph.D., is the Director of University at Albany’s Center for Behavioral Health Promotion and Applied Research.

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Essay on My Best Friend for Students and Children

500+ words essay on my best friend.

Friendship is one of the greatest blessings that not everyone is lucky enough to have. We meet a lot of people in the journey of life but there are only a few who leave a mark on us. My best friend is one such person who has been able to make a positive impact on my life. We have been a part of each other’s lives for the longest time and our friendship is still developing. She has been with me through all the thicks and thins. Most importantly, I feel extremely fortunate to have someone as a best friend in my life. In this essay on my best friend, I will tell you about how we became friends and about her best qualities.

Our Friendship

Our friendship started when my best friend came in as a new admission to our class. Both of us were hesitant to talk to each other at first, but gradually we developed a bond. I remember the first time my best friend tried to talk to me; I rolled my eyes because I thought there was no use and we wouldn’t hit it off. However, to my surprise, we became best friends by the end of the session year.

We learned so many things about each other and found out that our taste in music and fashion was so similar. Since then, there was no stopping us. We spent all our time together and our friendship became the talk of the class. We used to help each other out in studies and visited each other’s homes as well. We made sure to have lunch together on Sundays. We also used to watch movies and cartoons together.

On our summer break, we even went to summer camp together and made a lot of memories. Once during the summer holidays, she also accompanied me to my maternal grandparents’ home. We had a fabulous time there. Moreover, we even invented our own handshake which only both of us knew. Through this bond, I learned that family doesn’t end with blood because my best friend was no less than my family. Friendship is one relationship that you choose, unlike all other relationships.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Qualities of My Best Friend

I feel one of the main reasons why I formed such a bond with my best friend was because of the qualities she possesses. Her courage always inspired me to raise my voice against injustice as she always stood up to her bullies. She is also one of the smartest minds in class who doesn’t only excel academically but also in life. I have never seen a dancer as good as my best friend, the accolades she has won are proof of her talent.

Above all, I feel the quality that appeals to me the most is her compassion . Whether it’s towards humans or animals, she always keeps the same approach. For instance, there was an injured stray dog that was wailing in pain, my best friend did not only get him treated but she also adopted him.

Similarly, she saw a poor old woman on the streets one day and she only had money for her lunch. My best friend did not hesitate once before giving all of it to the poor lady. That incident made me respect her even more and inspired me to help the underprivileged more often.

Get English Important Questions here

In short, the bond I share with my best friend is one of my most prized possessions. Both of us inspire each other to become better humans. We push each other to do our best and we are always there in need. A best friend is indeed a precious gem and I am fortunate to have found that gem of my life.

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FAQs on Essay on My Best Friend

Q.1 Why is it important to have a best friend?

A.1 It is important for everyone to have a best friend as they are our well-wishers with whom one can share everything. In other words, it gets tough to share things with your parents or siblings, but with a best friend, we never hesitate. Additionally, they always support us and boost our confidence.

Q.2 What are the essential qualities of a best friend?

A.2 A best friend should be understanding. One must be able to share anything with them without the fear of being judged. They should be supportive and encouraging of one another. Subsequently, one must always look out for their best friends in times of need.

Q.3. Should you consider all your friends on various Social media as true friends?

A.3  You may have a number of friends on Social media, but they cannot be considered as true friends. Most of them are mere acquaintances. People with whom you talk only occasionally because they are in the same school, college, colony or workplace, but there is no bond of a true friend are acquaintances. A true friend is a person to whom you would go during your hard time seeking help. However, some acquaintances may become friends as time passes by. Thus, we can say that all friends on Social media are not your true friends.

Q.4. Can you have a negative influence on your life due to friends?

A.4  Friends greatly influence one’s life. It is always said that your company defines your character. Friends with good qualities have a positive influence on your life. They motivate you and guide you. Similarly, friends who have bad qualities can negatively influence your life.

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John McWhorter

Why was this treasure of musical theater all but lost to the ages.

By John McWhorter

Opinion Writer

Three Black book musicals were Broadway hits in the 1970s: “Purlie” in 1970, “The Wiz” in 1975 and “Raisin” in 1973, based on Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun.” That was Blacker than Broadway had been since 50 years earlier, when the 1921 hit “Shuffle Along” inaugurated a string of jolly all-Black shows that petered out during the Depression.

“Purlie” and “The Wiz” — along with “Dreamgirls,” which landed just past the decade divider in 1981 — have been well attended since the 1970s. “Purlie” was filmed for a video that got around a lot in the 1980s, and City Center’s Encores series revived it in 2005. “The Wiz” was made into a film that many Black people regard as iconic, and a revival is playing on Broadway now. “Dreamgirls” was also successfully filmed, in 2006, was revived on Broadway in 1987 and has had various touring versions; its original cast recording won two Grammys.

“Raisin” was a hit in its day. It is a faithful rendition of the play, the script written by Hansberry’s ex-husband, Robert Nemiroff (with Charlotte Zaltzberg), with music by Judd Woldin and lyrics by Robert Brittan. It ran for over two years, won the Tony for best musical and best actress (Virginia Capers) and Theatre World awards for three other leads. Its cast album, too, got a Grammy.

And yet you may never have heard of it. Even if you are old enough to have seen it back in the day, you probably have not thought about it in a very long time and might be hard pressed to hum even a few bars of any of the songs. Musical theater historians tend to blow by it with a couple of respectful sentences. That’s because “Raisin” basically dropped from sight after it closed. It’s had a regional revival or three, but compared with “Purlie,” “The Wiz” and “Dreamgirls,” it is a dead property.

I first encountered “Raisin” in 1986, by way of its cast album. I found it weak and wondered how the show had run so long. This was when I was first becoming interested in musicals (a bug that didn’t bite me until the end of my senior year in college). Compared with the Sondheim and Porter and Kander and Ebb stuff I was drinking in, the music of “Raisin” sounded to me like just the R&B on the radio from 10 or 15 years before, except with fewer hooks and stretched beyond what it could support.

Recently, however, a friend asked me what I thought of it, so I pulled out my LP and gave the score a listen. Now I am better equipped to hear what in 1986 sounded too recent in style for me to assess. Now I can see that the “Raisin” score was golden work, and it deserves more attention. ( Encores , are you listening?)

Even the overture music is so infectiously gritty — roughly, the “Shaft” soundtrack meets Duke Ellington’s “Far East Suite” — that I suspect the most determined hater of musicals would hearken to it. In “Man Say,” Walter and Ruth’s early disagreement over his ambitions, each time Walter sarcastically imitates Ruth, the arrangement jabs in a high, dissonant sting of a chord from muted brass, perfectly conveying the mocking irony in Walter’s words. The score is full of unexpected touches like that, such as Ruth’s affectionate tribute to her son. An ordinary orchestration would have started it with violins purring long notes and some comments by a solo flute. But in the beginning of “Whose Little Angry Men,” Ruth is accompanied only by an acoustic guitar, which sounds more intimate, vernacular, down to earth — that is, like a mother talking to her son. I might still rate the “Dreamgirls” score higher, but “Raisin” is a close second.

I knew the composer, Judd Woldin, for a bit when I played a role in an early pre-professional tryout of “The Prince and the Pauper” that he scored. He borrowed a musical theater history book of mine and for some reason left a piece of duct tape on the spine. I still have it on my shelves. He was a sterling mensch. I think it was only chance that kept him from making a bigger mark. Had “The Prince and the Pauper” ever made it to Broadway, two of the ballads, “Mother Is Here” and “Kiss Away,” could have become audition staples. His musical adaptation of Langston Hughes’s play “Little Ham,” which did make it to Off Broadway for a bit in 2002, had a smart, plangent R&B lament, “Big Ideas,” that has never left my hippocampus.

So why are “Dreamgirls,” “Purlie” and “The Wiz” remembered and revived, while “Raisin” is all but forgotten?

Lack of authenticity is not the reason. Its score was written by white men but so were the scores of “Purlie” and “Dreamgirls.” A lack of flash may have been a factor: “The Wiz” and “Dreamgirls” are spectacles, as much about costumes and dancing as how they sound. But “Purlie” is about a few people in a couple of rooms talking about problems, just like “Raisin.”

A likely reason “Raisin” isn’t much revived is a sense that a play as important as Lorraine Hansberry’s should be preserved as it was, that setting it to music is intrusive or at least unnecessary. Ethan Mordden, a historian of musical theater whom I hold in the very highest esteem, wrote: “The songs are finely judged. But they add nothing to what Hansberry wrote. They are what Hansberry wrote; that’s the trouble.”

People said the same about turning “Pygmalion” into “My Fair Lady.” I myself view Hansberry’s play as something close to scripture, but the musical pulls off some things that the play cannot. In the play, the little boy, Travis, can usually make only so much of an impression because the acting ability of kids that age is often limited (although the first person to play that role was Glynn Thurman, the now celebrated veteran actor, and he was probably excellent). In the musical, however, Travis gets a captivating little song called “Sidewalk Tree” and comes across to us vividly. “He Come Down This Morning” gives us the Younger family singing in church, a central aspect of their weekly existence that the play, without music, can’t deliver. And while “A Raisin in the Sun” unwittingly initiated a genre that George C. Wolfe affectionately dissed, in “The Colored Museum,” as the “Mama-on-the-couch play,” “Raisin”’s music for the mother, Lena, — especially the unjustly neglected ballad “Measure the Valleys” — transcends any cliché.

“Raisin” is also special in being about Black people just having conversations. Clearing the table, standing around, answering the doorbell. Most Black musicals are about performers, flash, funk, scarecrows, witches, the Supremes or something like them, silvery gleaming, yellow brick, bluesy numbers that raise the roof. All great. But in the warm duet “Sweet Time,” “Raisin” has what may be the first Broadway song in which a Black couple simply converse with each other rather than proclaim and prance for the audience.

“A Raisin in the Sun” is certainly one of the best plays ever written in the English language. There is a reason it has been revived on Broadway not once but twice in the 21st century alone, as well as once Off Broadway, and is often done by regional and community theater groups. (I think I have seen it seven times.) However, it is increasingly distant from us in time. It was valued in 1959 as giving white theatergoers their first sustained look into Black life, but they have had many more such looks since. Housing segregation still exists, but not in the overt form of the covenants that the play so searingly depicts. Ambivalence about assimilation to white ways persists among many Black people, but the color line is not what it was. Today if Black people assimilate, it’s to a whiteness that is no longer as pure as it was in the 1950s, having been transformed by the “ browning ” of the culture.

This all means that “A Raisin in the Sun,” mythic though it is, is a look at history. Space opens up for new approaches, including Bruce Norris’s hit 2012 play, “Clybourne Park,” which revisited the mise-en-scène both before the play’s events and 50 years after them. Meanwhile, music has a universalizing essence, leavening characters who might otherwise seem like people of another time and making them more archetypal. “Raisin” complements “Clybourne Park” as an expansion upon the original material, keeping it alive as part of an ongoing artistic conversation.

“Raisin” is a property that audiences of all races can relate to just as they did 51 years ago. Its obscurity is accidental and undeserved, and a theater company that gives it a chance is likely to find itself with a smart, happy hit that sheds new light on a classic work of art.

John McWhorter ( @JohnHMcWhorter ) is an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He is the author of “ Nine Nasty Words : English in the Gutter: Then, Now and Forever” and, most recently, “ Woke Racism : How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.” @ JohnHMcWhorter

Grieving the loss of your mom: How to cope with grief on Mother's Day

Grief is normal. it is a part of life and it's ok to sit and feel these emotions, experts say..

Mother's Day is on Sunday May 12, but those grieving the loss of their mother or child may feel a lot of dread around this time of year.

"Mother's Day is not a universal celebration for everyone," said Sherry Cormier, an author and psychologist who specializes in bereavement.

She encourages people going through grief to be kind to themselves and provide what they need to make themselves feel comfortable this weekend.

She adds that feeling that loss and sorrow while others might be celebrating is okay.

"People move forward, they don't really move on," she said. "The grief is always part of you. That loss of your mom or your child always stays with you in your heart."

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Mother's Day is a 'trigger day'

According to the psychologist, Mother's Day can be a "trigger day."

These kinds of holidays or special occasions can be a trigger, meaning they cause an intense emotion that is usually negative.

"Things like Mother's Day or birthdays or anniversaries or holidays, for example, are hard," said Cormier.

She adds that it's best to have a plan on these kinds of days. Plan a day and schedule that will work best to help you cope and deal with your emotions, but be flexible.

The plan can include anything from a self-care day to spending time with friends and family to exercising and moving your body, but she recommends tuning in with yourself and staying flexible. The plan doesn't have to be the end-all-be-all for that day if it is no longer needed.

"I can't tell you how many people I've spoken with that have a plan for a trigger day, and then the day comes and they end up saying, 'You know what? I felt the worst the day before," she said.

Cormier suggests staying away from social media to avoid seeing posts about Mother's Day. She said it can help with trigger days because people are posting pictures with their moms or children and seeing that may do more harm than good.

"If you're already sitting there longing for your child who's passed or your mom who passed, and then you see all these pictures, that may make you feel worse," said Cormier.

Journal about your grief

Journaling for 10 to 15 minutes about your grief a few times a week is another helpful exercise, said Cormier.

"This can be very therapeutic just sitting down and writing," she said. "Just not even thinking, letting your body flow and writing about how you're feeling."

She adds that all one needs is a piece of paper and a writing utensil. However, it can also be done on a phone, computer or tablet. Cormier even said folks could draw their grief, but the point of the exercise is to sit with the grief and acknowledge it.

"If you're dreading Mother's Day, the first thing is to feel what you feel," said Cormier. "Feel what you feel, and that's dread, that's sadness, that's sorrow. That may be anger in some cases, so feel what you feel."

However, she warns that going over the time and writing about it for too long may cause the grief to become "all consuming."

Journaling validates the grief, but "you don't want the grief to take over your life," said Cormier.

Don't force someone to grieve in a certain way

Sometimes, people might try to help, but they do it by forcing their own beliefs and habits onto the person they're trying to help.

"Helping is a form of control" is a quote from Anne Lamott that Cormier said she loved.

Cormier said she does not, "under any circumstance," recommend people force those mourning a loss to grieve in a specific way.

"So often when we think we should 'help' one with grief, what we really mean by that is that we're trying to control the way that they grieve," said Cormier.

Everyone goes through loss differently, and how someone grieves, vents and gets support is entirely up to them, she said. What might work for one person may not work for another and forcing someone to grieve in a specific way is a form of coercion.

"We all find comfort and solace from different people," she said.

At the end of the day, grief is a normal feeling

Now, there are exceptions to this rule. If someone who is mourning says they are contemplating suicide or can possibly be a danger to themselves, it is ok to get involved and recommend calling the crisis hotline, a grief therapist or suicide counselor.

"If you feel like you're ever going to be in a crisis, go to your emergency room," said Cormier.

Helping a child grieve

Just like with adults, a grown-up can not force a child to grieve in a specific way or ignore the day to help them cope with their feelings.

"There are people who would rather avoid the day than acknowledge it, and they do it for good reason," said Vicki Jay, the CEO of the National Alliance for Children’s Grief . "They're trying to protect the child from having difficult feelings where we know that you can't hide it from them, so the best thing is to acknowledge the day and open conversation so that the child feels free to talk or not talk."

According to Jay, it's best to let the child take the lead in this situation.

 "Let the child help determine what that day looks like," said Jay.

The only one who really knows how the child is feeling is the child themself, and Jay advised that the grown-ups in their life give them the space to express their feelings.

"You may assume that it's really difficult for them, and that may or may not be true, and so what you wanna do is learn from them," said Jay.

She adds that children might start to deal with difficult feelings before Mother's Day.

"It starts when the child is at school, and everybody else is talking about Mother's Day or making Mother's Day cards or whatever it is," she said. "And so just holding that opportunity open to have discussions, you know and even just [asking] what was the best and worst thing that happened at school today may open the door."

She adds that enrolling a child into a peer support group may also help them cope with their feelings about death.

"We found that peer support is amazing because kids don't want to be different than any other kids," said Jay. "To find out you're not the only one, in this case, who doesn't have a mom is so, so very supportive."

Remember the people in between

Not everyone who is grieving their mom is doing so because she died.

"There are a lot of other situations that need to be recognized where kids, in particular, don't have moms for various reasons," said Vicki Jay, the CEO of the National Alliance for Children’s Grief.

Whether it is because the person is estranged from their parent or child or simply can't be with them because of other circumstances, they may be grieving on this day, too.

And this is not only true for children, but adults too.

"Maybe they never had a chance to be with their birth mom or know their mom," said Jay. "Maybe you know they live in separate situations where they never get to see their mom, and I think those kids often get overlooked because it's not in our face that somebody died, but that loss is huge to those kids."

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Crashes and disasters, crashes and disasters | hiker disappears after text from summit of colorado’s famed longs peak, search for lucas macaj underway in rocky mountain national park.

He failed to return home and was reported overdue that night, and his car was found at the trailhead.

Search efforts Monday included air and ground teams. On Tuesday they were hampered by whiteout conditions and strong winds that prevented searchers from reaching the higher elevations of the peak. Wednesday’s forecast said snow showers were likely, with overnight lows near 20 degrees.

Macaj is stationed at Schriever Space Force Base near Colorado Springs, TV station KOAA reported . A 2023 Space Force transfer roster said he was previously with the Marine Corps, stationed at California’s Camp Pendleton.

Macaj reportedly set out early Sunday, planning a solo day hike of the 15-mile round trip on the Keyhole Route to Longs’ 14,259-foot summit.

Longs Peak is a landmark on Colorado’s Front Range, and the Keyhole Route is one of the most heavily traveled routes of Colorado’s 58 fourteeners. Though it does not require technical equipment, Rocky Mountain National Park warns that it is “ not a hike!” but a challenging Class 3 climb that involves scrambling and route-finding and includes “narrow ledges, loose rock and steep cliffs.” The park advises day hikers to start by 3 a.m. and expect the round trip to take 10 to 15 hours.

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