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Broken Friendships with Haley Wiggers and Katy Stafford
216 Plays1 year ago
There are few things more painful, or disorienting, than a broken friendship. Together, Haley Wiggers and Katy Stafford walk us into the tender and difficult spaces of relationships lost. Listen in as these women reflect on friendships that have fallen away in their lives and the forgiveness they have needed to uncover along the way for those lost friendships and for themselves.
For more stories from brave, ordinary women, join us at Red Tent Living.
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Transcript
Introduction to Red Tent Living Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
I'm Tracy Johnson, and this is the Red Tent Living Podcast, where brave women host honest conversations about our beautiful and hard ordinary.
Exploring the Messy Truths of Friendship
00:00:10
Speaker
This season, we tackle the messy truths of friendship. I'm excited for you to join us. Welcome to our table. This episode features a conversation between Hailey Wiggers and Katie Stafford. Hailey and Katie met during seminary years ago. Their friendship and care for one another is palpable in this episode.
The Nature of Broken Friendships
00:00:30
Speaker
Saying yes to sharing their stories of broken friendship was generous and brave of them both. Katie's metaphor for how she holds her own broken places in friendship will invite you to a gentle and spacious place within yourself. And Hailey's tenderness and kindness to herself and for Katie's story will leave you wishing that she was your pastor.
00:00:55
Speaker
Hello, Hailey. Hello. I was preparing for this conversation and it felt really hard to write a story for this. So I was rereading what I'd written and just like, oh, okay. Yeah. Broken friendships are tricky. It feels like a big phrase. It's like, is that the truest thing? Is it true now? Is it something from the past?
Gardening as a Metaphor for Friendships
00:01:21
Speaker
I was very acutely aware of my role. Yeah.
00:01:24
Speaker
in my own story something that felt broken and that really deeply wounded me. This didn't feel like the space to talk about all the ways this person sort of hurt necessarily like I didn't think that would do the person I was talking to that would respect them well and honor them but to also be real and honest. Totally.
00:01:45
Speaker
Do you want to go first or should I go first? You can go first. All right. I called this piece Tending to Friendships. And I was mindful of lots of different friendships. So it's a little bit of like an overview of everything. And we can get into it after I read.
Symbolism of Flowers in Friendships
00:02:05
Speaker
But that's my preface.
00:02:08
Speaker
It's late summer, and I found myself captivated by gardening. What started out as a couple of pots of tomato and pepper seedlings has grown to include an herb garden, a bright eruption of zinnias, and a stack of gardening books I read on my back deck with my morning coffee.
00:02:29
Speaker
My thoughts drift toward the dream of blooms. I plot the possibilities for what this home's garden could hold next year, even though I can't know the full length of time we will extend our lease. What are the odds I'll even be around to love the fully established peony bushes? All that effort and no assurance.
00:02:52
Speaker
Still, I dream, and more and more, I grow tired of holding back my dreams for a sure thing or a forever commitment. The garden is here, I'm here, and I long to grow things. Lately, the garden has felt like a fertile space for more than just flowers. Its metaphors have enchanted my thinking about friendship as well.
00:03:17
Speaker
My 30s began with an almost magical assurance and delight when it came to friends. I considered myself very fortunate for the number of women with whom I shared rich and meaningful relationship. Today, that shared space has grown a little more complicated. Moves have carried some friends across the country.
00:03:42
Speaker
The unfolding of marriage and motherhood, career or divorce has left its mark upon the women I hold dear and upon me as well. Family health scares, mental health journeys and time with all of its gentle building up and wearing away has done its work upon us.
00:04:03
Speaker
The distance we crossed for one another four years ago has only continued to extend in many more ways than just miles. Sometimes that distance feels insurmountable.
Complexities of Emotional Distance
00:04:17
Speaker
On my loneliest days, I've wondered if the word that best fits some of my friendships is broken. Did I give up on trying to close the distance? Did she?
00:04:32
Speaker
Are we too far apart now in how we see and experience the world to meet in the middle? Have we lost our imagination for the beauty and hopes and needs of one another? But when I think about the landscape of my soul and the relationships of give and take that have sustained me over years and seasons, the terrain of my friendships begins to reveal itself differently.
00:05:01
Speaker
You see, I have a lot of different types of friends who've taken up residence in my garden. I have the friend who is a double ruffled tulip, defiant and winsome and wonderful. She's tied to the melancholy of winter, but also proud to pop out before anyone else and herald the arrival of new life. I have the friend who is a peony and needs to establish herself well before she blooms.
00:05:30
Speaker
But once she does, goodness, it's an extravagant showering of the most gorgeous flowers. She is for parties and weddings. She is for savoring and sharing. And she also asks that I give her something strong to rely and lean upon. I also have the wisteria vine, spindly, climbing, and wistful.
00:05:55
Speaker
She drips with the most achingly exquisite teardrops of blooms, wrapping me up in spaces of dreaming and yearning.
Tending Friendships Like a Garden
00:06:04
Speaker
To receive her and her beauty and to tender her well is to remember that wisteria are invasive and they must be watched and pruned with vigilance to keep both the vine and the structure healthy.
00:06:20
Speaker
I have difficult and dramatic roses. I have carefree and faithful zinnias. I have withdrawn but bloom anywhere cosmos. All of these flowers I have planted in my heart. And my heart is not always in the right season for all of these flowers to bloom. I currently have no pole to safely wrap my wisteria around and have chosen to keep her tightly pruned for now.
00:06:49
Speaker
I do not always have the energy to dig for the heart of my Dahlia, nor do I faithfully stake the ground for my peony. I have at times been a forgetful friend, and I have at times been forgotten. But I don't believe the ground I've failed to till in my past disqualifies me from a future of gardening. So as I work to hold each flower's memory and place dear,
00:07:17
Speaker
I continue to till the soil with my hope and love, eager to discover which blooms may return this season and which new bulbs are only waiting to be planted.
Abrupt Endings in Friendships
00:07:32
Speaker
Oh, so good. Yeah, that was so, I don't have the word to describe it, poetic. I would say the thing that moved me and I think we don't
00:07:47
Speaker
We're not given permission often. It's just sort of name the different types of friends that reach our hearts in different places in a different time. And I think that you named permission for that to be so. But then also the like complicated nature.
00:08:07
Speaker
of that. Totally. I don't know if you're like this. I have a really hard time with a new friend if I've experienced a particularly beautiful and sweet friendship and it's changed for whatever reason.
00:08:23
Speaker
I can have a really hard time not bringing all of my longing for what was with that friend to the next potential friendship. That is a lot of weight for a new person to hold, right? That's a lot of expectation and I feel like I'm still
00:08:43
Speaker
learning how to enjoy each friendship for what it is and engage it with the right hope and intimacy and that's a process for me for sure.
00:08:56
Speaker
What was it like for you to name them as a type of plant or flower? I am a novice in gardening. So if there are gardeners listening, I'm sure they even have some eye rolls for me where they're like, oh, that girl doesn't even get it yet. I have some favorite flowers, but I'm like learning what does it take to tend to them. So I was envisioning very specific people as I was writing. And what I found was
00:09:23
Speaker
It did connect me in a really lovely way to gratitude for each of those friends. There have been times where I have had more spaciousness inside or more sunshine to bring or more time to offer that really let these friendships thrive.
00:09:44
Speaker
And then there have been other times where I am depleted and I need low maintenance friends because I just don't have the extra to bring and being grateful for the friends who've been kind when maybe I haven't had as much to bring to the friendship.
Emotional Turmoil and Unresolved Feelings
00:10:01
Speaker
I can picture different seasons and different people thinking about that differently instead of looking back at this is way too harsh a phrase but like a graveyard of friendships right like that is not the truest thing. Yeah but it's such a more it is a more compassionate way of processing friendships that have maybe sort of had their season for ourselves and for those friends
00:10:30
Speaker
there's a line that's like, you know who your true friends are when, dot, dot, dot. And I think that's like really harsh. And that makes me think of the permission you gave in your story to help people think through, well, what have been sort of the gifts of these relationships? What was the word for fire that means to till that soil and to help them sort of bless it and move on? Yeah.
00:11:00
Speaker
I remember when I had had a broken engagement, my best friend was supposed to get married two months to the day after me. And I was in therapy at the time because
00:11:15
Speaker
I needed to be in therapy at the time. And I was so anxious about showing up for her with what she deserved for her wedding when everything that was happening for her felt like a trauma to me. And as I was sitting with my therapist, he asked, why are you putting this pressure on yourself?
00:11:43
Speaker
mercy know you enough to know that it's a gift that you're present and sad. And I was like, Oh, and so I showed up at her wedding, present and sad. And her sisters noticed me, her mother noticed me, she noticed me, they like, nestled me in. And there was space for mercy's joy. And for my grief,
00:12:12
Speaker
in a not distracting way. And it made me acutely aware friendships are two humans traversing really different space. And sometimes you don't have a lot to bring to the friendship. If the story had been, you know, your true friends because they show up and they're happy for you at your wedding.
Learning and Self-Forgiveness
00:12:33
Speaker
Well, would I have fit that mold? Like I was so happy for her, but I was also really sad. And
00:12:41
Speaker
Can you bless that a friend shows up with what she's got? Not to say that there's not room to be disappointed in a friend, right? That's super important to be honest about if a friend has hurt you or there's a failure. But that season for me, I think it sort of reframed even what I expect of my friends. Of course I want them to see me. Of course I want us to be close.
00:13:10
Speaker
But I also know that like sometimes you're in a really hard season and you show up with what you've got. And that doesn't mean I'm less loved as your friend. Things just kind of get complicated too. And it's not that we're not trying. It's just that sometimes they're faster than just use my bestie for life.
00:13:37
Speaker
I know nothing about gardening, but you don't have to just sort of resonate with just the work that it takes to tend to and to water your people, but then also like monitoring what else what's going on in your own experience. Pay attention to is my heart fertile ground for this really?
Lasting Impact of Unresolved Emotions
00:13:56
Speaker
Thank you. Beautiful. Thank you for your eyes on my story and your questions. You ready to go? Yeah.
00:14:05
Speaker
This piece is called To Bless the Friends We Spam. It's early January on a Sunday night. I'm standing at the base of the stairs in my current house about to hit the road a 70-minute drive back to campus. It's dark outside, but it's only 4 p.m. and my car is stuffed to the brim with extra cost-filled groceries and all the things I bring back from a few weeks at home the holidays. I'm ready to greet my friends, hallmates, and teammates
00:14:35
Speaker
for the start of the second semester of top three years of college. As I turned to leave, I noticed the red bubble next to my Facebook Messenger app, so I clicked on it. I'm concerned that it was something immensely important and had just planned to read it as I walked out the door. When I saw who the message was from, I saw it was from my roommate's dad. He has since blocked me from Messenger, so I can no longer see the message, but it went in something like Kaylee,
00:15:04
Speaker
Our daughter will not be returning to campus. She's going to live at school. It's been evident that you don't have time for her, and just ditch her for a person. Please don't contact our family again. My heart dropped. I plopped all that I was holding onto the foyer floor, and immediately filled the message. Mom and sisters were watching me walk up the floor. I was devastated, shocked, dumbfounded, and everything in between.
00:15:33
Speaker
Besides just passing a few notes to talk through some sadness and frustration in the last semester, I didn't think things were that bad. I started to second guess my every move over the past six months. Was I gone too much from the room? Did I spend too much time with my volleyball teammates that she felt jealous? Did I check in with her more often? Was I a bully for her? Did I make her feel less than? The truth was, we decided to be roommates after our first
00:16:02
Speaker
rooming situations didn't go so well and we found each other two floors over. She was local so she would invite me for her clearance for Sunday lunch, do laundry and homework over her mom's fresh baked muffins. We were both tall and athletic, modeling our way through the first few years of college athletics. We got along fine to even introduce me to some of her childhood friends who I had apparently grown to love too much. We were both trying to find our friends.
00:16:30
Speaker
who would navigate the next three years with, and we hoped it would be each other. I know the end of the semester was harder on a relationship, but I never imagined things would sour this quickly or this badly. After a few minutes of tears, my sister's thing, helpful sister things, ready to take on anyone who declared me as an enemy and being held in my mom's arms. I picked up my things, and for the second time,
00:16:57
Speaker
headed into the dark winter day only to return to a half empty dorm room. She and I never spoke again until years later. She expressed her sorrow at the death of my dad and occasional comments on each other's successes over social media. That time was so intense though. So many hurt feelings and emotions and trying to figure everything out as young college students just searching for belonging. I've had so many questions that have remained unanswered.
00:17:27
Speaker
so much anger and hurt at her and her dad for the words said and at myself for the ways I failed to uphold and nurture a once really beautiful friendship. I could probably go on about all the things I noticed or felt that she did to hurt me, but that doesn't really matter anymore. Well, there was no resolution to that time or that damaged friendship that will never be healed or ended. I blessed that time. I blessed my young college sophomore self.
00:17:55
Speaker
I've left her as the dad and all the ways we struggled. Honestly, I don't think I really knew who I was or who I wanted to be, or let alone who I wanted to spend my time with as a sophomore in college. I'm sure I've made mistakes and more than just one friendship. I've evaluated that first semester over and over again to figure out what I did wrong. And I've moved on.
Healing and Forgiveness in Friendships
00:18:18
Speaker
I look back on that time still with a level of confusion. There doesn't seem to be a ribbon tied all together.
00:18:24
Speaker
But I'm convinced that we have to have fulfilled friendship, invite us to see what it takes for friendship to truly thrive. We have to accept that we are not perfect, really civil beings. Lord knows we are far from perfect in college and forgive ourselves for the friendships we've spent and choose with ones we will nurture, tend to, and grow in the future. Such a brave and generous story to share.
00:18:54
Speaker
I remember being a freshman in college. I remember how insecure and unmoored I felt like trying desperately just to grasp on to relationships. And up until you're 18 or 19 years old, you've had a lot of people mirroring back to you.
00:19:17
Speaker
your identity. So you're attached to your family, you're attached often to your church, you're attached to your team at school, like whatever sports you play or choir you sing in. And that all
00:19:32
Speaker
just completely shifts when you go to school. And it knocked the wind out of my chest when I thought about the impact of your friend's dad. And I hear a man protective of his daughter and she's had a negative experience, but I'm also acutely aware he's watching his daughter. She's still in the context of home.
00:19:58
Speaker
She still has a support system. And you are the one who's making this journey isolated from family, from context. And you're young. You're 19 years old, trying to find your way in Sunday lunches and new interactions. And he brought a lot of harshness in his words that I think maybe felt appropriate to him.
00:20:27
Speaker
But striking to me when I remember how vulnerable and alone I felt as a 19-year-old attempting to just find a connection. It's a lot. Yeah, I remember the stinking in my chest and like my stomach. I felt shame. I think hearing an adult speak this way, which like you said, I think you're protecting your own.
00:20:57
Speaker
to sort of receive that and kind of be like, okay. Yeah, I remember our freshman year, we were like, these are going to be my people. The start of college, the people you hang out with. And so I think people, everyone goes through that season. And you think, you're like, okay, these are going to be the people I'm going to spend the rest of college with. And things just
00:21:23
Speaker
And it's like those people in your freshman orientation group, your connections are so thin, right? All of my friends freshman year were like, we're in chemistry together. Let's bond. Those deeper things that like actually help a friendship really grow. You don't find those people for a little bit. And it's not that anybody that you've met is not nice and lovely, but it's different when you click deep.
00:21:49
Speaker
The way that your friend's dad interacted with you, it made me think of in scripture where it talks about welcoming the stranger. How often do we feel like we're protecting the vulnerable one, but we're lashing out against somebody who is more vulnerable and more exposed and a stranger in a foreign land. And I guarantee that never entered his head. But as I hear the story, I'm like,
00:22:19
Speaker
You're the stranger. You're the one with no home to go to and opening up that dorm room and it being completely empty and you being completely alone. That brought tears to my eyes. Oh, that's a lot of weight to carry on your shoulders where it's like, I'm just trying to belong, trying to find a place, not acting with malicious intent at all.
00:22:45
Speaker
I'm curious and aware of the dynamic of not having your friends' words. You're experiencing her hurt through the words of her dad. What was that like? I think it was hard. There's really no other word I really have for what it felt like. She didn't stop coming to college, so I would see her across campus. We may have been in a couple of classes together. We'd be eating at the cafeteria.
00:23:11
Speaker
and feel like it was just so icy between us. The 19 year old in me wanted to be like, did you know what your dad said to me? Did you know he said this? And I think I wanted to be like, how could he do that to me? I said in the story, like I know I've moved on, but what would it have been like?
00:23:31
Speaker
we would have got to talk about things. I experienced a little bit of a breath of relief as you read the part where you opened up that message knowing that your sister and your mom were right there because they
00:23:47
Speaker
know you. And that was so palpable in the story that you were known as a person who cares, who thinks deeply, who reflects on her impact, who's intentional. For them, there's zero doubt in all protection. And
00:24:04
Speaker
it felt like it contrasted with these heavy words, these weighty words from someone who I don't think fully knew your heart and your person. Because if he did, he could not in good conscience have spoken those words in that way. Yeah, that's good. I didn't even really do that intentionally. Remember my mom, remember my sister, you know, in big sister fashion, like,
00:24:30
Speaker
What are we going to take down? I love it. I was matching her energy. I was like, yes. She's like, I'm going to bat for you here. She would have probably come with me to college. So I'm grateful for, yeah, like you said, to be seen and be known. And my mom was just a minor piece of that story, but to sort of remember that I turned to her and she just held me and just
00:24:54
Speaker
That is a experience that I have experienced a lot this season, like just being held by her. Yeah, when you've experienced a broken relationship, I feel like the thing that has to be done immediately is run to the arms of someone who will re-clothe you and remind you.
00:25:14
Speaker
of who they know you to be. And that's not always a guilt-free moment. Maybe we have done something that's a real shortcoming, right? And I think we all have those people in our lives who are like, I know who you
Conclusion and Teaser for Mended Friendships
00:25:29
Speaker
are. And I will mirror that back to you, even as you feel shame and confusion right now. And it has not made my love waver at all. Yeah, it's a gift to have those people. What do you feel like
00:25:45
Speaker
you're carrying forward into next week through the process of writing your story and this conversation. I think for me, it's been the Lord allowing me to heal and forgive others and to be able to write in a way that honors people who really wounded me too. And so that kind of as a spiritual practice in and of itself, I loved what you said.
00:26:14
Speaker
at the very beginning of your teeth. The garden is here, I am here, and I long to grow things. It made a reality that is really resonating with me about just like, this is what is true about me. This is what is true about what I long for. And I'm going to show up and try to grow something. I love that. I really admired
00:26:41
Speaker
the story that you picked. And as you talked about that wrestling, I think it impressed upon me and reminded me our darker moments, moments where we don't have the answers and we maybe feel like we could have been a better version of ourselves. There is goodness and strength to be found in returning to those moments. And maybe the shame of them
00:27:05
Speaker
dissipates when we put words to what happened. I really loved how you walked into that story and that felt like an invitation to me. Listening to Hailey, I felt taken back to my own college self when my roommate decided to move out partway through our freshman year.
00:27:25
Speaker
was nearly 40 years ago, which is a lifetime. But I remember walking into that empty dorm room feeling like something must be profoundly wrong with me. I loved her words where she stated that we're not perfect relational beings and that we have to forgive ourselves for friendships we've lost.
00:27:45
Speaker
Both Katie and Hailey named how hard this prompt was and how difficult it felt to share stories and be honoring to the people who have wounded them and the reality of still feeling a wrestling in some of these places years later.
00:28:01
Speaker
For me, broken friendships remind me of the ongoing reality that forgiveness is a road we walk, not a moment in time. And sometimes it can feel like we're walking the road alone, carrying that brokenness of a failed friendship. As we learn to forgive our own failures of love and learn to forgive the failures of another, we stay on that road.
00:28:25
Speaker
a wise friend once told me, there's a lot to forgive. And I think that's true for most of us. As I walk into this week, I am going to be thinking about Haley's words about forgiving ourselves. I'm going to be holding the kindness and the goodness exchanged between Katie and Haley and their bravery and being honest about their own broken friendships.
00:28:50
Speaker
and I'm going to be looking for ways that I can honor where I have felt wounded by another and a failure of love and also forgive myself in the places where I have failed to love well. I hope you'll find similar space for yourself as you walk into this week.
00:29:08
Speaker
And you might want to go back and listen to episode five with Christy Bauman and I as we talk about mended friendships, which also touches on this idea of forgiveness.
Podcast Credits and Community Info
00:29:23
Speaker
The Red Tent Living podcast is produced by Katie Stafford. Our cover art is designed by Libby Johnson and our guests are all part of the Red Tent Living community. You can find us all at redtentliving.com as well as on Facebook and Instagram.
00:29:38
Speaker
If you love the stories shared here, we would be thrilled if you left us a review. Until next week, love to you, dear ones.