When you're in the middle of becoming yourself, some friendships don't make the cut. In this episode, Shay gets real about the friendship breakup that shocked everyone and why losing a friend group that felt like family became the catalyst for finding the ones that actually see her. She's sharing how to tell which friendships are meant to evolve with you, how to grieve the ones that complete, and why midlife friendships built on honesty hit different.

Episode 2: The Friendships That Survive the Shift

Shownotes for Captivate.fm

EPISODE SUMMARY

When you're in the middle of becoming yourself, some friendships don't make the cut. In this episode, Shay gets real about the friendship breakup that shocked everyone and why losing a friend group that felt like family became the catalyst for finding the ones that actually see her. She's sharing how to tell which friendships are meant to evolve with you, how to grieve the ones that complete, and why midlife friendships built on honesty hit different.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

00:00 - The Fight That Ended a Friendship The trigger was small and petty. The real issue was years of slow drift and performing a version of herself she'd forgotten she was even performing. Shay sets the stage for a story that's about so much more than the surface conflict.

01:00 - Loss as a Turning Point Two major deaths in three months: her aunt (who was like a mother figure) and her dad's best friend from his religious community. These losses gave Shay permission to think differently about life being too short and about which relationships actually deserved her energy.

02:00 - Religious Trauma as Context Shay's backstory: at 16, she left her parents' Jehovah's Witness religion and was essentially disfellowshipped (disowned). For six years, her parents couldn't talk to her directly. They spoke through her husband. This shaped how she moved through the friendship breakup that came later.

05:00 - The Mechanics of a Friend Group Breakup What it meant to lose a friendship group that was woven into everything: kids in sports together, group trips, texting, social geography. The hardest part wasn't just losing the friends. It was the ripple effect on her kids and the residual emotional work they're still processing.

08:00 - The Six Months of Paralysis That dream where you're aware but can't move? That's what it felt like. She questioned whether she should reach out, should say something, should do something. But she also knew she had to go through it because there was so much more underneath than just the fight.

10:00 - Reframing Loss as Completion She was grieving the version of herself that needed those friendships to feel okay. But internally, that version was already saying "no more." This wasn't a tragedy. It was life. And it was also the icing on a cake of growth that had to happen.

11:00 - Friendship Shifts Don't Come with a Notice Nobody sends you a calendar invite telling you a friendship has an expiration date. Instead, it's slow drift. Conversations that feel slightly off. Jokes that don't land the same way anymore. And the realization that you're evolving while they're staying still.

13:00 - The Turning Point: Recognizing Your Own Wholeness What started as loss became the beginning of a growth journey. Shay realized she had to work on getting back to wholeness, not by clinging to the friendships that didn't fit, but by becoming the person she actually was underneath all that performance.

14:00 - The 1% Mindset You don't need perfection. You need sustainable evolution. If you can just do 1% better each day in your relationships, your growth, your honesty, that's what makes things feel like home instead of just functional.

15:00 - Three Types of Friendship Evolution The friendships that don't survive your shift. The friendships that come back even stronger after the break. And the friendships that evolve with you as you grow. All three are valid.

16:00 - What Happens When You Stop Performing When you get honest instead of "fine," some people won't like that version of you. That's information, not a failure. But other people, the right people, will lean in and say "Thank God, I thought it was just me."

17:00 - The Best Friendships Are Built Differently Now Girl trips. Soup contests. Game nights. Just sitting and chatting. Hanging out at the bookstore just to talk. These friendships feel like the best, funniest, most relieving conversations she's had in years because they're with people who get who she actually is now.

18:00 - Perimenopause Burns Away Small Talk Shay's 4/6 Projector Human Design already made small talk rough. But perimenopause has taken it further. She wants to know your life story, your goals, your plan. She has no patience for surface-level stuff because life is too short.

19:00 - The Practical Way to Tell Which Friendships Are "Yours" Not all small talk is a bad sign. But she's learned to recognize: is this just polite distance, or is this leading to real connection? Either way, it's information and now you can adjust your energy accordingly.

20:00 - Making Friends in Midlife Is Easier Than the Story We Tell The belief that everyone already has their people and the window is closed? Not true. Women in this season are hungrier for real connection than they've ever been. When you find another woman in the messy, clarifying process of figuring out who she actually is, something clicks.

21:00 - How to Tell If a Friendship Is Worth Fighting For The ones that survive are the ones where you feel more like yourself, not less. Where you can say "I'm not okay today" and have that be completely fine. Where you can be goofy, real, a little messy, and still feel 100% accepted.

23:00 - The Permission You're Being Given You're allowed to outgrow people. You're allowed to need different things than you used to. You're allowed to let friendships complete themselves without deciding something is wrong with you, them, or the situation.

24:00 - What's Really Being Grieved Sometimes what you're grieving isn't the people. It's the version of yourself that fit in that. That version was doing the best she could with what she had. But maybe she's ready to be done. And the friendships waiting on the other side are built on who you actually are.

25:00 - The Invitation Reach out to one friendship that makes you feel more like yourself. Tell them something real. Not "we should get together soon" (which means nothing). Tend to the friendships that survive the shift because they deserve it, and so do you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Friendship breakups often aren't about what they're about on the surface. They're about years of slow drift, performing yourself, and not being fully seen.
• Major life events (loss, grief, crisis) can be the catalyst that finally gives you permission to let go of relationships that aren't serving you anymore.
• Your body knows before your brain does. Pay attention to how you feel after spending time with someone: depleted or energized? Seen or managed? That's your answer.
• Perimenopause strips away your tolerance for small talk and surface-level friendships. It's not cruelty; it's clarity.
• The friendships worth keeping are the ones where you can be the current version of yourself, not the version they want you to stay as.
• When you stop performing "fine," you attract people who are also tired of that performance. The friendships that form then are built on something real.
• Completing a friendship isn't a failure. It's a transition. And the friendships waiting on the other side are worth the loss.
• Making friends in midlife is actually easier than we think because there's a whole generation of women hungry for real connection and done with bullshit.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR YOUR AUDIENCE

• Which friendship in your life makes you feel more like yourself? When did you last tell them so?
• Are you going through a friendship shift right now? What would it feel like to reframe it as completion instead of failure?
• How has your tolerance for small talk changed as you've gotten older? What does real connection look like for you now?
• What version of yourself were you performing in the friendships that didn't survive?

Let me tell you about a fight that ended a friendship, and truthfully, it wasn't really about what the fight was really about, if that makes sense. It never really is the thing that it is. On the surface, it looked like something small, like, you know the kind of thing that if you describe it out loud to someone outside the situation, they're like, "Wait, what?

And it just doesn't make sense. So then you have to go in and explain that it wasn't really about that, and you try to explain what it actually was about, and realize that you are gonna be standing there for a while. What it actually was about, at least from my perspective, was about years of slow drift, of showing up and feeling slightly off, slightly excluded of laughing at the right moments and saying the right things, and then getting in the car and driving home and wondering, why I felt so disconnected after being so connected with people that I truly loved as friends like family, you know?

And it just felt like there was a version of me that I had been performing for so long that I forgot I was even performing, and it took me... it actually took death. I had two deaths of really important people in my family within a three-month span, and a part of that kind of set me off, on top of which, this is going to be a whole different podcast episode.

So my parents are Jehovah's Witnesses, and so one of the people who passed away was my dad's best friend from their religion. Even though I'm not in the religion anymore, I essentially grew up with him as my uncle, and with how he passed, it triggered me in a way that I did not realize I would be triggered, and it really messed with my head.

And then the couple months before, we had lost my aunt on my mom's side. This aunt was one of my mom's closest sisters, and so we would drive down to, I'm in Wisconsin, she was, Aunt Cheryl was in Illinois, and I'm getting emotional about this right now just because she was like a mother figure to me, and I knew no matter what, she was there.

She was not in my parents' religion but she was family. And so losing those two people so close together, on top of having it be the holidays and my parents with their religion don't celebrate it, and us having two kids all of the emotions were high. Everything was just extra. So let me just put that context there so you can say, "Oh, yep, it really wasn't about what it was about," because hindsight is always 20/20, but when you're in it, everything feels heightened.

And so the loss of my aunt and then my dad's best friend who was like an uncle gave me a different perspective, and I really honestly believe that it helped me to think about things differently around life being too short. And I needed that, I think, to push me through what I needed to go through

I didn't know what I didn't know until I took the time to really reflect back. So let me go back into what happened, where I am now, and why it's important, and maybe you're going through something similar, and it doesn't have to be as serious as this, but I know that this was one of the major shifts, losing the people who I thought I would be best friends with forever.

Like that sounds very teenager-esque, although I guess we're going, now that I'm in my 40s, I'm going back into the teenage era. And I feel just hindsight's always 20/20. Let me just say that. So the thing that set it off, actually, it really doesn't even matter because it was so dumb, so petty, but I had been through so much.

I was not thinking clearly. But a part of me internally had finally said, "Enough is enough." I was just done. And then everything got so uncomfortable and very necessary all at the same time. It's that duality of "Hell yeah, I know I need to do this," and also, "Oh my God, why am I, why does this have to happen now?"

So honestly, here's what nobody tells you. When you leave a friend group that has been part of your life for years, where your kids have spent the weekends together, sports together, you travel as, a group, and then you're just done. I felt like I was going through- In my parents' religion, I moved out of my house when I was 16.

I graduated high school at 16. I started college at 17. But with my parents' religion, I knew that was not for me, and my mother and I butted heads, and I just couldn't anymore. And so when I left the religion, I essentially got disfellowshipped, disowned, and so nobody in the religion could talk to me. My parents couldn't even talk to me.

And so when my husband and I met, which was years down the road, I met my husband when I was 22, 23. So this had been six or seven years, and it had been kinda tumultuous with my parents, but even meeting my parents and then my husband and I having children, my parents wouldn't talk to me. They would only talk to my husband and then connect with me.

They would talk to me through my husband, which that again, this is going to be a whole different episode on healing and what I had to do in order to get through that. But let me tell you, friends, that is a whole different ballgame. But I say this because I had already gone through that phase of being disfellowshipped, of being essentially saying, you...

This is what I felt at the time, so now I know for me it wasn't that, and maybe it was for other people, but it wasn't for me. So with being disfellowshipped from my parents' religion, it just felt very like you're no longer good enough because you made a mistake, and we don't want you as a part of our religion until you beg for our forgiveness.

And that's what it felt like with my friendship group. It felt like it wasn't just a breakup because our kids were still in the same sports and activities together, so I still saw them everywhere. And so it felt more of, a disownment of you're not worthy of us, and so I'm not going to talk to you, and you're just going to have to deal with it.

So it was just very different. Like, our whole social geography shifted, like the plans, the group texts, the kids who hung out. It was really hard on our kids, and I still think there's some residual stuff that we're working through with new friendships that I am trying to say not everything is like this.

Again, hindsight and how you would react, looking back is always different. And so that was the hardest part for me because I, knowing what I had gone through with my religion, with my parents' religion, not my religion, I knew that it wasn't just going to be like a friendship that's at stake.

I knew it was going to be my kids' emotions, and that's what made it 10 times heavier for me, and about five times more complicated. And I'm not gonna sit here and sugarcoat it and say that it was easy, because it was not. It was really fucking hard. So fucking hard. And it literally was the kind of hard that, would sit in your chest.

Or do you remember when you would have those dreams and you are, paralyzed. You can see and you're aware, and you know what's going on, but you cannot move? And you feel it in your chest, the stress, the anxiety, the sadness, the whatever it is, you feel it, and you still can't do anything about it.

And that's what it felt like for probably six months after everything had happened. It made me question whether I should say something, whether I should reach out, whether I should do something. But at the same time, I knew I had to go through it because it wasn't just about that. It was about what had gone on with the death, it was just, I feel like five or six years of other stuff that I needed to deal with, and this was just the icing on the cake. It was hard, and here's what I didn't expect. I knew that it was going to be hard. I just didn't know that it was also going to feel like the right thing once I was out of it.

'Cause I'd had been essentially grieving this version of myself that had needed those friendships to be okay. But she internally said, "No, you're repeating a habit or a pattern from before where you need to shift and be you." And if you can relate, please let me know.

This is real life, y'all. So anyway, the thing about friendship shifts, especially as you're getting older is that it doesn't really come with a notice. Nobody sends you a calendar invite that says, "Hey, just so you know, this friendship has an expiration date, and it's coming up. Just giving you a little heads-up."

Nobody sits you down to say that. Nobody says, "I think we've both been growing in different directions, and maybe we should acknowledge that. Instead, it's really just a slow drift. It's like a gradual cooling- It's like a series of some conversations that feel slightly off, and the jokes that you once had, you know they don't quite sit and land the same way that they used to because you realize that you're evolving and outgrowing this piece of you from before.

And it really changed a bit of me because I noticed that after I had done the healing, after I'd done the therapy,

I realized that even in the moment, I subconsciously knew. I remember just saying, "Oh my gosh, I'm so busy. Everyone's schedule's full. It really doesn't mean anything." I'm... I feel like I'm being ignored, but I'm not, and, oh, it's just in my head. Except it kinda did mean something, and internally, my body had already known.

My I subconsciously already knew, but I didn't let it come to fruition yet. One thing that I wanna share about this is that it's not a failure to have that. It's a completion. And sometimes the friendships come back after you've evolved. Some friendships are built for specific versions of you that needed that sort of connection in that season of your life, and then when you start to become somebody new, some of those friendships simply don't have the architecture for it.

And I had gone through so much loss, and we had the two losses then, and then we had previous things going on before from sickness. I think that was either the summer before or after I took off, like, had to help my father. It's just it was a lot. And what I realized and what I'm sharing this with you for, if you've gone through something like this, if it's been worse, I'm sorry.

But I had to tell myself it's not a tragedy. It is life. It can feel like a tragedy in the moment, though. Just to be clear, I'm not skipping that. I'm not trying to breeze over it or anything, because I felt like I had lost a piece of me. And at that point, after I'd felt that, for me, for my kids, for my husband, I also realized I had to work on being, getting back to the wholeness of myself, and that actually is what started this journey of my growth, which is really nice.

As you're thinking about this, I want you to really just say, "Maybe I have great friends, and maybe we'll grow together," or maybe I've, now that I am mid-life and I'm older, I have friendships that I know serve different purposes, and that's okay, too. But I want you to just recognize that you're doing what works for you, and that it's okay for you to evolve.

It's okay for you to take that time for yourself. It's okay for you to grow because you have to. If we're not growing and we're staying stagnant, what a boring life that is, that we are not taking the time to evolve and become a little better. I tell my husband with us cleaning our house, I'm like, "If we can just do 1% every day," I said, "I don't want perfection."

We have two children, two dogs, a dusty house. We live right in front of, a little mini forest farm area and, dust and stuff is everywhere. I said, "I don't want perfection. I don't expect it." But if we can just do 1% better each day, that makes our house feel like a home. That is the truly sustainable part.

And I think when it comes to this sort of thing as well, having that 1% mindset and approach to evolving, to being of service to the friendships that are important really will move you forward. Okay, so now I wanna talk a little bit about the good part. So there are friendships that don't necessarily survive as you shift.

There are friendships that come back, and you're even better than before, and maybe it was the break that helped. And there are friendships that evolve as you grow, or they come about as you're in your evolution and they evolve with you, and they get better in ways you, don't even see coming.

There really is something as you get older that something happens when you start being more honest, more yourself, less willing to perform to just be fine, and more willing to say what's actually true, but not from a point of, like, assholery, but just saying what is true for you in a kind tone. Some people are gonna look at that and be like, "Oof, that is not the version of you that I want," and that's okay.

Let's take a step back. It's information. Like, there's no emotion to it. It's just information. And then there are going to be people who listen to you, listen to the honestness- Love this version of you, and they're going to be the people that actually lean in. They're going to say, "Oh, thank God, I thought it was just me."

Honey, those are your people. Those are my people, and I have the best group of them. These women are incredible. And the really interesting thing that I realized is that these people have been my people all along, and I just couldn't fully access that they were my people until I stopped performing the being fine, the disconnected from myself, and I got to reconnect.

And now we're going on girls trips, and we have soup contests and we have game nights, and we literally sit and chat. We have gone to the bookstore to just talk. We have hung out and just been with each other and present, and it is the most beautiful thing, and I am so grateful for it. Perimenopause, for all of its chaos, does have this funny side.

Like it has this funny side effect of burning away the small talk, and I... If you know me, if you've seen me in real life, you know I do not like small talk. I'm the person who wants to know your life story, and I want to help you fix whatever you need to fix, and I can feel your energy from a mile away.

It's who I am. That's the 4/6 Projector in me for my human design. And now that I'm older, I'm realizing that perimenopause has really, burnt away my ability to small talk even more, and I already had very little of it. Like, I want to dig into, why are you doing this? What are your goals? What is your life plan like?

But I realize not everybody can do that. However, I don't have energy for the small talk anymore. Life is too short for that shit. I want to connect, and of course, I will do the small talk if I have to because we just do, but I really love- When small talk leads to real connection, or it gives me information where it shows that I just need to have a polite distance with somebody.

And again, it's just information. Either way is fine, either the real connection or the polite distance. You do you, but at least now you know what you're working with, and now you get to be in that container with whoever and decide, "Okay, I know this is only small talk, and I can give the least amount of energy," whereas with the people that want the real connection, you can put more effort in.

So with that said, I wanna talk about the friendships that appeared out of nowhere, except it wasn't really out of nowhere, because some of these women were in my life already. I just wasn't expecting it in the way that it came. I really do think that there's a story that we tell ourselves that make making friends feel hard, but I don't think that's true.

I think the story that we have is that everyone already has their people and their social landscape, and everything is locked down. You missed the window, it's closing time. And that could not be farther from the truth for me. What I found is that women in this season of life are hungrier for real connection, maybe in a way that it wasn't before.

The tolerance for surface level shit is low. The appetite for actual honesty, for actual connection is high. It's beautifully high. And a part of that, I think, is because of social media, and everybody posting their picture-perfect life. And I think a part of it is getting older and realizing, A, life is short.

I want to be with other people who want to be in this with me. And when I find other women who they're in the same messy, clarifying, occasionally hilarious process of figuring out who she actually is, something clicks into place, and it feels really, really good, let me tell you. It's like you skip that small step entirely, like the small step of small talk because neither of you really has the patience for it.

So you go straight to the real stuff, and then you're friends, and it's like this level of comfort that you did not know you could have with somebody. It's pretty darn great. Okay, so I want to share how you can tell the difference. So here's the practical part, I wanna share this with you because I know you're trying to figure out what to do with all of this.

How can you tell which friendships are meant to come with you and which ones are safe for completion? Honestly, as I mentioned previously, my body knew, like my subconscious knew, that I needed to go through that in order to move on. So I want you to pay attention to how you feel after you've spent some time with the person or people.

Not during it, because during it you can perform anything, you can feel anything. I am an empath. I feel your emotions. And because I am also a 4/6 projector, I'm able to, step into what you're feeling and connect with that. So if I'm in it with you, I am feeling your feelings.

So don't do it while you are in that moment. Wait until you are after, wait until you have some time alone, and then I want you to ask yourself these questions. Do you feel more like yourself or less like yourself? Are you more energized or are you depleted? Do you feel like you are actually seen by the person you are with, or like you just spent hours managing somebody else's perception of you?

When you go through these questions, you will have your answer. And honestly, the friendships that are worth fighting for are the ones where you can be in the middle of what you're going through, the middle of the shift, the middle of the mess, and still feel like yourself. The ones where you can tell them, "I am not okay today," and have that be completely fine because

They'll feel it with you. The friendships where you can kind of be goofy and real and a little bit of a mess and still feel 100% accepted. You will know. Those are the ones that grow with you. The ones that you actually have to always show up, are already assembled, you always have to reach out to, those are the ones that want you to stay who you were because it benefits them.

And they might not be aware of it because they haven't evolved, and that's okay, too. But this is a cost that you're no longer willing to pay, so how do you allow yourself to move forward a little bit? I am gonna give you permission now, and I want you to know, if you are in the middle of a friendship shift right now and it feels like a loss, I did feel very lost when I was going through that But you are allowed to outgrow people.

I want to give you permission. You are allowed to need different things than you used to. You are allowed to let friendships complete themselves without deciding that it means something is wrong with you, that something is wrong with them, that something is wrong with the situation. Losing a friend group that feels like family is pretty damn hard, and of course it deserves to be grieved.

We went through a process, and also sometimes things that I'm grieving or you're grieving is less about the people and more about the version of yourself that fit in that. And that version of me, was doing the best I could with what I had, and you were, too. I know it.

But maybe she's ready to be done. I know I was. And the friendships waiting on the other side, ooh, girl, let me tell you, the ones that are built around who you actually are, what your vision is, and the real stuff, they're worth it. I promise you, they are so worth it. So I'm gonna give you this invitation before we go.

This week, I want you to think about one friendship in your life that makes you feel more like yourself, not less. Think about a person who gets the current version of you, not just the version that you used to be, and reach out. Tell them something real, and not like the We should get together soon.

Ha ha," which means nothing, and honestly, you both know it. Do something that's real because if I'm being honest, the friendships that survive the shift deserve to be tended to. They deserve to be watered so they can grow more, and so do you. Thank you for coming to my friendship TED Talk today. It has been a journey, and I cannot wait to hear more from you.

Thank you for listening today, and before I go, I want you to share if you are going through this, if you've been through this, what your thoughts are around this, because friendship and our future, especially now that we have n- no more time for stuff like this, is really important. So share with me your thoughts, what you are doing, if you've had a hard time.

I want to hear from you and hold space for you. So thank you so much for being here, and I will chat with you soon. Bye, friend!