Friendships are not static; they evolve, fade, and sometimes end. In this first episode of a two-part series, host, Wendy Green, delves into the transitions that impact our friendships throughout various life stages, starting with childhood and extending into young adulthood.

She explores the fundamental lessons learned by early friendships regarding trust, belonging, and self-worth, and questions why certain connections fade away while others endure.

Through reflection on these experiences, we can cultivate compassion for friendships that have reached their conclusion, recognizing their significance in shaping our identities. This episode serves as a poignant reminder that the arc of friendship can be both a source of profound insight and healing.

The episode begins with a heartfelt recounting of a friendship that has endured for three decades, only to dissolve due to unforeseen changes and misunderstandings. This personal anecdote serves as a catalyst for a broader discussion on the nature of friendships—how they evolve, shift, and sometimes, sadly, end. Green posits that the understanding of these transitions is not merely an academic exercise; it is a pathway to healing.

By reflecting on our past connections, we are invited to uncover the lessons embedded within them, fostering a sense of gratitude for the experiences shared, irrespective of their duration.

The episode weaves together personal reflection and universal truths about the impermanence of relationships, ultimately guiding us towards self-compassion and acceptance of the transient yet impactful nature of friendships.

Takeaways:

• Friendships experience transitions that can profoundly impact our sense of self-worth and belonging.
• Understanding the evolution of friendships from childhood through adulthood can be both enlightening and healing.
• It is imperative to recognize that not all friendships are meant to endure indefinitely; some serve a specific purpose in our lives.
• Reflecting on past friendships allows us to appreciate their significance while also releasing guilt over their endings.
• The lessons learned from early friendships influence our future relationships and how we navigate emotional connections.
• Gratitude for past friendships can help us reframe our experiences and honor their impact on our lives.

Links referenced in this episode:

Learn more about Greenwood Capital or find resources at www.GreenwoodCapital.com.

Boomer Banter is sponsored in part by Greenwood Capital Associates, LLC. Greenwood Capital Associates, LLC is an SEC Registered Investment Advisory firm with offices in Greenville and Greenwood, SC. As a fiduciary firm, Greenwood Capital is obligated to disclose any potential conflicts of interest with this arrangement. The host of “Boomer Banter”, Wendy Green, is a client of Greenwood Capital, and her show “Boomer Banter”

has been compensated for her testimonial through Greenwood Capital’s sponsorship. Greenwood Capital is a Legacy sponsor at the stated rate of $2,600 for the 2025 calendar year.

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Hello and welcome to Boomer Banter. My name is Wendy Greene and I am your host. And today I'm kicking off a two part series on something that's both tender and and universal. Friendships.

Specifically, the transitions that we face in friendships. Because here's the truth. Friendships aren't static. They shift, they fade, they deepen, they end. And understanding those changes isn't just helpful.

It can also be healing. So this week in part one, we're going to talk through the arc of friendships and relationships.

Starting in childhood and continuing through young adulthood. We're going to talk about what early friendship teaches us about trust, belonging and self worth.

Why some friendships vanish and others they leave a lasting imprint. And how reflecting on these stages can help us reframe friendships we have lost with compassion.

And then next week we'll dig into part two, the friendships we have now as older adults. We'll talk about loneliness, making new connections, and keeping friendships alive when energy and time feel limited.

But let's start with why I decided to do this series. About three years ago, I lost my best friend of 30 years. Not through death, but because we had changed. We had a misunderstanding.

She hung up on me and has chosen not to answer any of my attempts to connect with her. So I gave up. Also. The friendship began when we were single parents living in Asheville. We did everything together.

We had met when our children were at the summer day camp in between, you know, school sessions. And it felt like the perfect friendship. The truth is we only lived in the same town for a couple of years.

Then I moved on to follow a career path and she stayed behind in Asheville. But we talked about regularly on the phone. At first, you know, every. Every couple of months, then about every six months, maybe every eight months.

But still, it still felt like we could pick up where we left off. You know, we, we had our kids in common, we had all of that to talk about. And of course we were single women.

So we talked about some of our challenges with trying to find somebody nice to go out with. I guess it was easy to think of her as a best friend for 30 years when all we really had was phone conversations.

But we did try to find time together. And when we did, we usually had a good time. But it Was obvious, I think, to both of us that our lives had moved in different directions.

I still think about her and. And I miss the friendship we had. And I realized that the friendship really served a need when we were single moms, but that that was the common bond.

And I imagine you all have had similar experiences with a friend you thought you would have forever. So let's get into this. Let me take you back for a minute. Can you remember your best friend? Your first best friend? What did you guys do together?

Who were they? What did you learn from them? The best friend I remember is Mona. She was a couple of years older than me. I was six, she was eight.

We would walk to school together. And one day after an early morning rain, there was a rainbow. And Mona and I decided to follow the rainbow to find that pot of gold at the end.

After traversing through several backyards where we were sure the rainbow had touched down, we ended up at school wet, with no pot of gold. But as I wrote this story and as I thought about it, I realized that Mona and I liked adventure.

And she encouraged me to be curious and even brave, you know, to go walking into people's backyards. So in childhood, friendships are simple and incredibly powerful. They're often based on proximity.

Who lives next door, who sits next to you in class, who likes the same snacks or likes to play on the swings. It's not about shared values yet. It's about shared moments. But even in that simplicity, we're learning the fundamentals of how relationships work.

You remember Deborah Tannen, Dr. Deborah Tannen. She's a linguist, a researcher. She studied communication across friendships and age groups.

Childhood friendships form their earliest templates for emotional safety, loyalty, and social belonging. And what we absorb at that stage when we're children is how we're treated, how conflict is handled, whether we feel chosen or excluded.

That starts to build our internal friendship script. The other part of this time of your life is the family that you grew up in. If you were encouraged to share, apologize, and include others, you.

You probably brought that into your early friendships. But if you came from a family with a lot of chaos, unpredictability, emotional distance, you might have gone one of two ways.

You might have clung tighter to your friends because you were afraid of losing them, or you learned to keep people at an arm's length. So now that you've had a couple minutes to think about those questions, who was your best friend? What did you do together?

And what did they teach you? Have you come up with some answers?

I would encourage you to take a little time after this podcast to think about that, really dig in, you know, because it doesn't come to you right away. I had to think about it a while, but it can really be insightful. You might even want to write about it. What did you learn? Who were they?

What did you enjoy doing together? As I was growing up, we moved several times during my elementary school years.

After first grade, we moved into a new neighborhood and Mona was no longer close by, so I didn't see her again. I made several good friendships in my new neighborhood. Probably most of them were like bike riding friends. We explored the neighborhood.

But then after fourth grade, we moved again. So maybe I was getting the idea that friendships don't last or you just have to move on and try to make new friends.

That's a whole other insight that I need to explore. But not now. For now, I want to do a little bit fast forwarding to go to middle school, high school, where friendships get complicated.

Middle school was horrible for me. How about for you? People who were your friends in the neighborhood, they suddenly stopped being your friends. Why?

Well, maybe they thought they were too cool for you or you were too cool for them. In middle school. It becomes an emotional roller coaster for most of us. And you are spending a lot of time trying to figure out who you are.

This stage is no longer just about playing together. It's about your identity. You're trying to figure out, who am I? And just as importantly, where do I belong? The need to belong is hardwired.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow put it right in the middle of his hierarchy of needs. Above food and shelter and below self actualization. And during adolescence, the need to belong intensifies.

Our friend groups, they become our social currency. Popularity starts to matter. Clicks form, labels stick. I certainly experienced this, and I suspect you did as well.

But sometimes your friendships start to revolve around who you think you're supposed to be, not who you truly are. Can you relate to that? So what do I mean by that? Well, in high school, we really start to identify with our labels.

Were you a jock, one of the smart kids, a drama queen, a cheerleader, a druggie, a student leader, a loner? Or any other number of labels that were assigned to you once you were labeled. You kind of carried that label all through high school, didn't you?

And our friends are also part of the group we are part of. So that's where we find our friends in that group that's labeled. Whatever. It's no wonder these years are some of the most Emotionally intense.

When it comes to friendships, we cling to the confirmation of who we are by the friends we associate with. One day, your best friend is no longer speaking to you, right? And then the next day, you cannot imagine ever not being best friends.

It's an emotional roller coaster. And yet many of the friendships during our teen years, they don't last.

We move on to college and then first jobs, and we move away, have new relationships. All of those things start to pull people apart. Some friends stick, many don't. And here's the thing, that's okay, but it doesn't always feel okay.

You might think to yourself, why did we stop talking? How did we drift apart? I thought we'd be close forever. But friendship isn't a failure if it ends. It was still real. It still mattered.

There's a phrase I love, and I know you've heard it before. People come into your life for a reason. A season or a lifetime. And that's not just poetic, it's true.

And recognizing this truth is helpful in understanding our friendships. I think many of our young adult friendships come into our lives for a reason. My 30 year friends, friendship. We needed each other.

As two single women in a new town, raising our kids, we needed each other. We were there for a reason. And I think we find those reasons when we're young adults.

The raising the kids together, navigating new jobs, moving away from home. The friends we make during this time are in similar situations. So there's a camaraderie of the familiar.

How many of your young adult friendships, though, are still Facebook friends? But probably not much more than that. A season could be like your college roommate.

You know, they knew you better than anyone else ever knew you, and you knew them better. Although I know many people who have maintained friendships with their roommates, many of us have drifted apart.

A season could also be friends at work. Until you move to a new company or an organization or retire. Then you kind of drift away. But a lifetime, that's the rare gem.

The person who knew your siblings and parents and still remembers your favorite dessert. I just heard from someone, a fellow podcaster, actually. Last week she emailed. She has a friend that she has known for 54 years, since she was little.

That's unusual. I have lost touch with all of my high school friends, other than connecting with them on Facebook. I grew up in Miami. Some of them stayed.

I moved away at 19 and I never moved back. My sister moved away also, but she's maintained a friendship with at least one of her high school friends. That I know of.

But that's one of the interesting things about friendship. We all have a different need and a different description of what a friendship is. I was always the type of person who had one or two close friends.

My sister always seemed to have a group of friends. And in either situation, we learned life lessons from our friends and we learned what worked for us.

I'm grateful to be connected through Facebook with many friends from high school. It's fun to watch what they're doing. And, you know, sometimes I wonder, what if I had stayed in Miami? Would I still be friends with any of them?

Who knows? Before we get into the next thing I want to talk about, I want to mention our sponsor, Greenwood Capital this month.

As you can tell, we're talking about relationships.

And having a relationship with your trusted financial advisor will give you a comfort level that they understand your needs and your goals and will keep you on a path to achieving them. I am so grateful and fortunate to have such a relationship with my advisor at Greenwood Capital.

As an independent registered advisory firm, Greenwood Capital is a fiduciary. They must place your interests above their own. And I want to share that.

As a sponsor, Greenwood Capital has compensated my business for this testimonial.

For more information about hey how they can help you make a financial plan, go to greenwood capital.com okay, back to our discussion about friendship transitions. When we're young, we expect that our best friend will always be our best friend. But not all good friendships are meant to last a lifetime.

And letting go of that expectation, it's one of the most freeing things you can do. Not always easy, because for a long time we were told the opposite. We grew up on stories of best friends forever.

And if a friendship did fade, we assumed that maybe we failed or they did, or probably both of us. But here's what I want you to hear. The end of a friendship doesn't erase its value. Let me say that again.

The end of a friendship does not erase its value. A seasonal or short lived friendship can still shape you, support you, even save you, without being permanent.

When we release the pressure that all friendships must go, the distance, we open ourselves up to seeing them for what they really are. Moments of connection that fit who we were and where we were at the time that we came together. And this is where the deeper reflection begins.

Because when we look back at our friendship history not from a place of regret or loss, but from a place of curiosity, we gain something powerful. We gain clarity. We begin to see patterns. We recognize the friends who helped us Grow the ones who met us in a moment of need.

The times that we clung too tightly, or maybe we let go too soon. That clarity helps us understand why a friendship felt important and why it may have ended.

And maybe you've carried guilt about a friendship that faded. I know I have carried some guilt over letting go of my 30 year friendship. Maybe you still wonder what happened.

But when you understand that some friendships are built for reasons or seasons, not lifetimes, you can stop blaming yourself or them. You can start to see the ending not as a failure, but as a natural part of the relationship's arc.

It's like reading a great book that changed you, right? You. You read the book, you put it back on the shelf, and you don't love the book any less because you finished it.

You appreciate it for what it was, and that's the way you can reframe and start to feel about some of these friendships that were so beneficial to you at one time and then you moved on. The final piece is gratitude, and this piece can be surprising when you reflect from a place of gratitude.

You might find yourself saying, wow, I forgot how much I laughed with that friend. Or oh, she really helped me through a very tough year. And you might even think, well, we're not in touch all the time. Or maybe not at all.

But I am so glad that we had the time that we did have. It really helped me. And you probably really helped her or him too. So that shift from grief or confusion to gratitude, incredibly powerful.

It means you're no longer measuring the worth of a relationship by its length. You're honoring it for its impact.

We all think our transitions flow from elementary school friends to middle and high school friends, college friends. Young adult friends are unique, and for us, they are. But the truth is, transitions are messy, and they are times when we learn about ourselves.

As I was putting together this episode, I was reliving some of those early experiences of the laughs and fun times, along with the awkward times of feeling like I did not fit in middle school again. All of these times have been part of the seasoning, though, that make us who we are. And we're not done.

In two weeks, we'll talk about the friendships we hold in this stage of our life right now. We will talk about the loneliness epidemic among older adults and why making new friends feels harder in our 60s, 70s, and beyond.

And we'll talk about how to build meaningful connection, even if you're short on energy, mobility, or time.

Because the story of friendship doesn't end just because you're getting older, there are new chapters to write and new people waiting to meet the real whole you. You have something to offer them too.

So next week we'll be talking with Rabbi Richard Address about aging and acceptance or of ourselves and others again, a relationship with ourselves and our aging selves.

Rabbi Address has a podcast called Seekers of Meaning, and on his show he hosts religious leaders along with authors, coaches and aging experts to reflect on the ways we age. I know you'll enjoy meeting him and hearing his perspectives. Thanks for being here today.

If this episode resonated with you, send it to a friend or reach out and tell me what friendship transitions have meant in your life. I would love to hear from you.

And if you'd like to stay connected, I'd love to send you a weekly email that includes information about what we're doing every week, some thoughts and ideas that I have, and links to recent episodes. So just visit heyboomer Biz and click on Age. Well, with us, it's simple, it's free, and it's the best way to stay in the loop.

And thank you again to Greenwood Capital for hosting this podcast. We appreciate their support.

Greenwood Capital is an independent registered advisory firm providing wealth management, investment solutions and financial planning to clients in 23 states. So check them out@greenwoodcapital.com until next time, take care of yourself, take care of others, and I'll see you next week.