Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Friends vs. Followers with Lyndsey Ribble and Mallory Redmond
179 Plays1 year ago
In a world of reels, posts, likes and comments, what marks a true friendship? And how do we recognize the difference between friends who hold us in our vulnerability and followers who engage us more casually? This week, join in the delightful candor of Lyndsey Ribble and Mallory Redmond as they share stories of imperfection and the beauty of being really seen, known, and loved by deep friends. Discover how these friends, and the boldness of Lyndsey and Mallory's own kids, have called them to be better women in a way no follower ever could.
For more stories from brave, ordinary women, join us at Red Tent Living.
Recommended
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. This season, we tackle the messy truths of friendship. I'm excited for you to join us. Welcome to our table.
Friends vs. Followers: Social Media and Real Friendships
00:00:18
Speaker
This week's episode is called friends versus followers. All of us engage at some level with social media and Facebook or Instagram and our actual friends that we see face to face. Those two things often intermingle. I think you're going to really enjoy listening to Lindsay Ribble and Mallory Redman talk about their relationships with friends and with followers and social media.
00:00:46
Speaker
It was fun for me to listen to them. I know Lindsay well. I have been in the same room with her many, many times. We share friendship and relationship that goes back over a decade. And I've known Mallory since 2015 when she first started writing for Red Tent Living. I have come to call her a friend and I have come to know a lot about her. But the reality is Mallory and I have never been in the same room. In fact, we've never even had a conversation on the phone.
Writing Reflections and Personal Insights
00:01:14
Speaker
So listening to them talk back and forth and share their thoughts and their experiences with friends versus followers hit a particularly tender place in my heart based on my relationship with the two of them. I think you're really going to enjoy it. So sit back, listen, and here's Lindsay and Mallory. Hey. Hey, it's good to be with you. It's good to be with you.
00:01:38
Speaker
So we were assigned friends versus followers. How did that go for you? I wrote it like four times. I had the hardest time with this topic. I feel like I've had a working version of this for like six weeks. And I actually completely yesterday rewrote the whole thing because I was like, Oh, I hate it. Yeah.
00:01:58
Speaker
And I read it to my husband and he's the sweetest. He was like, I think you can, you can go deeper. There's like another layer that you're not addressing. And I was like, Oh, that is it.
Walking with Friends: A Path to Deeper Connections
00:02:10
Speaker
It was, when I first saw friends versus followers, I was like, okay, I've got this. And then I started really like sitting with it. It feels layered. We'll see where it takes us. I'm going to read my piece to you and we'll go from there.
00:02:27
Speaker
I am, to put it plainly, a pretty chaotic person to walk beside. Regardless of whether a person is on my right or left, I will inevitably and unintentionally begin veering towards them as we walk, eventually running into their shoulder before quickly course correcting back to my own personal space. I have yet to determine a remedy for my invasive walking habits, but despite the chaos, I've managed to find people who still agree to walk with me.
00:02:55
Speaker
I love going on walks, and in my years as a city dweller, I do it often. One friend, my dearest in so many ways, became a regular walking partner. We would stroll down the sidewalks of downtown Seattle to get coffee, pick up groceries, or simply digest dinner. Multitasking at its finest, we'd get our steps in while processing our day. She, of course, occasionally giving me a gentle push away when I'd veer towards her. Some of these walks became sacred.
00:03:25
Speaker
as if the ground beneath us turned holier with each step. And on some walks, I'd wish the ground beneath me would open up and swallow me whole. Our walks became the exercise that moved our bodies and strengthened our friendship.
Navigating Conflict and Reconciliation in Friendships
00:03:40
Speaker
I remember the tear field walk in early February when my grandma had passed away and I spent each step reflecting on her life to my friend. She didn't nudge me away when I'd walk into her. She just took my hand and held it tight.
00:03:54
Speaker
I remember our silent walk after a deadly mass shooting took place at my friend's place of work when she didn't want to talk, but needed some fresh air. Sitting still was maddening and words were futile. So we walked with our grief, horror, and anger. I didn't care about walking into her because I couldn't get close enough to the still beating heart of my precious friend on that day. And then months later, the walk to the nail salon for afternoon pedicures
00:04:21
Speaker
when she shared with me something I'd done that led her to feel deeply hurt and dismissed. I remember being stopped at a crosswalk, the silence acting as a megaphone for my shame, discomfort, and defensiveness. I didn't want to veer in her direction. I wanted to run in the opposite one. But I knew that would be a devastating choice in light of all of the life that we had lived together one step at a time. As the light signaled that we could cross the street, we continued walking and soon after continued talking.
00:04:52
Speaker
We shared about the experience she was referencing and the larger dynamics at play in our friendship that had made it easy for this kind of conflict to take shape between us. I apologize for my ignorance and learned so much because she had the courage to call me out. And then we sat side by side in oversized chairs and had our toenails painted. It feels good, especially as a content creator, to have followers. In fact, the size of someone's following is often one of the measures for success.
00:05:20
Speaker
And while there's nothing easy about leading people, no matter how big or small the crowd, there's usually some inherent protection from vulnerability that you're afforded when everyone is just walking behind you, following your steps from a safe distance. You might feel their eyes piercing your back, but there's not necessarily a genuine connection or relationship at risk if they believe you've made a misstep. They don't get a firsthand experience of your chaos when you walk into them or worse, personally offend them within the context of a cultivated relationship.
00:05:51
Speaker
A friend is who I walk unevenly beside in so many ways. She's the one I bump into amidst the verbal processing, the tears, the silence, or the raw and painful confrontations. She's the one who sees the fullness of my face, not just the back of my head.
The Impact of Social Media on Genuine Relationships
00:06:06
Speaker
It never feels good to lose followers, but because they can slip away behind me unnoticed, I may not know they've left until they're gone. I love the idea of low stakes confrontations or waiting at a crosswalk without an awkward silence.
00:06:21
Speaker
I'm much more comfortable with people seeing the back of my head than the lines, tears, or shame on my face. It feels like pure terror and pure beauty to be both seen and met in my chaos. But while I'm sure we all hope to be creating a path worthy of following, what we really need is someone to walk beside. That was beautiful. Oh. I'm going to cry. I'm sorry. I love it. The one thing I forgot was tissues.
00:06:49
Speaker
I think what was so beautiful about that is it's so relatable. I felt like I was right there next to you guys on your walks. You really took us along. I think the mind naturally goes to those similar conversations that I've had with dear, dear friends that are willing to have that uncomfortable crosswalk conversation. I felt it in your voice and in the words.
00:07:12
Speaker
it's so uncomfortable and it's so necessary. And I loved and then we went and got our toenails painted because that is like the crux of it when there's actual relationship and vulnerability that's been established with one another that you can have these moments of discomfort and pain and like, oh, right. And then we can go grab lunch or get our toenails painted and it's still there. And there's that safety.
00:07:38
Speaker
contrasted with the fact that on social media, I think so often that conflict is so easy because there's so much to hide behind. When I have your face, there's no way that I'm going to come at this from the same angle or from the same chaos. I'm going to want to dive in and just actually come to a place of mutual understanding. The heart of my struggle with this topic is I didn't want to dismiss the responsibility of
00:08:08
Speaker
being a leader who has followers because the
Challenges of Maintaining True Friendships
00:08:12
Speaker
followers are real people with real feelings. And so I didn't want to be dismissive of like, well, oh, well, you said something that offended them or hurt them. And so now they're gone and you'll find more elsewhere that I didn't, I didn't want to be dismissive of that. But to me, the difference between a friend and a follower is that real vulnerability. There's not a whole lot to hide behind or there shouldn't be.
00:08:37
Speaker
in a real genuine friendship. Followers matter as people, but there is something
00:08:44
Speaker
so much deeper in a friendship. What's so bizarre about social media is that the natural seasonality of friendship is gone now. So when you and I were growing up before social media, you had your reason, your season, and your lifetime friends. The most awkward point would be maybe running into them in a grocery store. You never saw them again when a natural separation happened in a relationship.
00:09:07
Speaker
And now with the advent of social media, you know, I've got my best friend that's cohabitating with the person I bought cookies from that one time with like my ex coworker.
00:09:18
Speaker
It's just this weird mixture of relational tearing almost for lack of a better term. And so I just really liked that you addressed the fact that when this has been established, it's okay to go really deep. Yeah. Social media has added so much murkiness unintentionally, I think, and maybe subconsciously to the idea of friendship because it's like, well, because I see what you're doing in your daily life, we're friends when
00:09:46
Speaker
Oftentimes when it comes to social media, there's not that dynamic like I had at the crosswalk. You're just liking people's photos. And so you start to get this sense of like, well, we're really good friends because I know that your kids started school today and what you had for lunch and all of these things. There is a form of connection there, but I don't know that it's a deep friendship.
00:10:07
Speaker
Well, I feel like what you wrote kind of set it up really well for what I'm gonna talk about because I don't talk about a specific relationship, but I talk a lot about how, well, I'll just read it. Yeah, please do. I have this black t-shirt that I wear so often, it's starting to have small holes in it. On it are the words, seen, known, loved, in big block type. If I were to say in a nutshell what I desire most in life, it's those three words, to be seen, known, and loved.
00:10:37
Speaker
I think there's something subtle but important in the way those steps are ordered. To feel loved, I have to be truly seen and truly known first. You have to see the imperfections, the flaws, the mess that is me and say, yes, that version of you, that's the version I want and love, the real version. I want to belong. We want to belong. Renee Brown describes belonging this way.
00:11:08
Speaker
Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. We often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging but often barriers to it. True belonging only happens when we present our authentic and perfect selves to the world. Our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.
00:11:32
Speaker
I'm grateful to say that I have that true acceptance and sense of belonging with a rare and beautiful set of forever friends and with my husband. I'll also say I still seek artificial acceptance and approval through social media far more often than I'd like to admit. I am willing, oh so willing, to bypass being known completely and instead replace it with being seen as I want to be seen, preferably with a filter of please and thank you, and being
00:12:02
Speaker
liked slash loved. Tim Keller says it this way, to be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is what we need more than anything. But that willingness to be known requires a level of vulnerability and risk that I've not been willing to share on the internet.
00:12:30
Speaker
And I feel all of the ways that fear holds me back, all the ways it keeps me from becoming, all of the ways it keeps me from braving my wilderness. It keeps me safe, but it also holds my best gift hostage, my voice. When I write a social post, it's not that I'm actively being inauthentic or that I'm not willing to be vulnerable. It's that I choose the safer and more relatable vulnerabilities and I hide the rest.
00:13:00
Speaker
I'm not being fake, but I'm teetering on the edge of just real enough to elicit praise and avoid criticism. And that nuance, the ambivalent space of not fake, but also not real, is such a dangerous place to camp because it's there that I lose myself. It's in this no man's land that other people's voices drown out mine and I let them.
00:13:25
Speaker
I felt the most in this no man's land during the pandemic and its aftermath. As someone with friends on polar opposite sides of the political, religious, and socioeconomic spectrums, I'd love to say I created a suspension bridge between these worlds. That would make for a redemptive story. In reality, I built a dinghy that I used to traverse the chasm of difference and dissonance, and I was truly lost at sea. I was so afraid to speak up that I was silent.
00:13:55
Speaker
The concept of polarization isn't new, but for those of us who are in the middle, we are left with no place to find rest and reprieve ourselves. It felt like factions were formed, and because I could hold space for both sides, but not for myself, because I dared to wonder if there was still an end in the middle of the mess, I felt silenced. The truth, of course, is that no one was holding a gun to my head and asking me to choose a side. No one except me.
00:14:25
Speaker
In the absence of self-acceptance, of truly belonging to myself, I could belong to nothing and no one.
Expressing Identity: Lessons from Children
00:14:34
Speaker
The pandemic, social media, and political polarization didn't cause this, but they shed a bright light on it, and for a while, I was able to blame them. They shed a light on my desperate need to belong somewhere, on the fact that I don't feel like I belong to myself. They show that I don't accept myself,
00:14:54
Speaker
with all of my flaws and issues and mess. And therefore, I don't trust others to accept me. They show that I don't fully see, know, and love myself, yet. Cool, that's so brave. Thank you. Those words were so brave. I love version four. Thank you. I think the
00:15:22
Speaker
Courage to name that has got to be, because I can completely relate with what you're saying, and the courage to name it has got to be half the battle. I mean, please.
00:15:36
Speaker
I felt like it was a therapy session. Like I was like, oh, I could hear Tracy Johnson and Brene Brown's voice. And they were like, there's another layer. You can get there. And you went there. That's how you transform is having the willingness to go there. There are so many divisions and so many opinions. And I resonate with wanting to be able to hold space for everybody's opinions and not to just like
00:16:05
Speaker
squelch them. But your voice then gets so lost in that because you're holding so much space for others that you don't have any space left for yourself. And it gets really disorienting for me to even know like, where I land on anything, what deserves my time and energy to figure out where I land on it. And what is just like, a lot of smoke, you know, being blown. And it just gets really it gets really disorienting to try to be like a peacemaker.
00:16:32
Speaker
The image that I got when you were talking about belonging is my kids. So I have two girls. They're three and five. And when they came into the world, I had all of these big ideas about how they would dress.
00:16:48
Speaker
I'm like, oh, I get to dress. They're like my dolls. Like, this is going to be so fun. And then as they've grown older and have opinions, they have thoughts about how they will dress. And it has been like actual labor for me to put to rest my like little J Crew child image that I had in my in my head and let them choose what they're going to wear. I mean, some of the things that they leave the house and it's like,
00:17:17
Speaker
okay like so many patterns so many colors so like just so much like lace and tulle and I think I'm just really jealous of them that they can like pick these wild things to wear and not question
00:17:34
Speaker
their sense of self or belonging when they go out into the world. Because I've now been conditioned to look a certain way based on who I am, where I live, all of that. And they don't have that. And they don't question that they're going to be welcomed in the spaces that they exist right now. And, wow, I just wish that they could hold on to that. And I know that they won't or that it will be such a fight.
00:18:02
Speaker
to do so. And so a lot of the work that I feel like I'm doing as a mom is how do I not only find my sense of self and belonging, but help them hold on to theirs. I love that because as I was writing this, like I thought so much, I have four boys and they are very much their own people too.
00:18:26
Speaker
And they're seven, six, three, and eight months. And they are just, they're wild, but they also, my three-year-old specifically, has this very wild sense of style. He wears different shoes. They're not even the same size. And he loves pajamas. That's his jam. And he'll wear a sweater in 107-degree weather. And he's like, this is my look.
00:18:51
Speaker
But just that sense of ownership and my oldest is the same, just the sense of I know who I am and no one can tell me differently and I'm going to present myself the way I want to, not the way the world has told me to. And I'm going to say what I want to say and I'm going to do what I want to do. You put it so eloquently, like it gets learned out of us at some point. And man, it would be so much easier if we could just stay in that childlike state. If we stay
00:19:20
Speaker
as like people pleasers or kind of living into who we think other people want us to be, we never test the limits or the boundaries of maybe I can leave the house looking exactly how ever wild I want to, and maybe I will find belonging. What you said made me feel so relieved of like, okay, there's another one. She gets it. She feels it too. She's struggling with it too. And if we all continue kind of playing the game, we don't get to experience that
00:19:50
Speaker
None of us want to be playing the
Carrying Lessons Forward: Valuing Genuine Connections
00:19:52
Speaker
game. There is belonging outside of the game if we would just stop playing it. I love that description. I'm so, so tired of the game. So tired. Yeah. I want to wear pajamas and mismatch shoes everywhere. I do too. Pajamas are way more comfortable. So what do you feel like you are carrying into the rest of this week based on what we've talked about? I think the willingness
00:20:20
Speaker
and the knowledge that the people that walk alongside me that really do walk with me in my day-to-day life and can see and take the vulnerabilities, those are the only people that I want to care about in terms of opinion and even maybe more so than their opinion of myself. What about you? There's a couple of things that are resonating right now. One is
00:20:49
Speaker
this real sense of freedom. And so even just trying to move, make little movements towards a grander sense of freedom with how I move about in the world is one thing, keeping like our kids as my motivation or inspiration. But I'm also just so struck by hearing, and I often feel this when reading blog posts from Red Tent Living, but just the power in
00:21:19
Speaker
speaking up and telling someone of your experience.
Courage and Vulnerability in Friendships
00:21:23
Speaker
And so I feel like I want to be more intentional about.
00:21:27
Speaker
having conversations like this with the people that are walking alongside of me. Hey, this is how I'm experiencing social media or the pressures of trying to keep peace in an unpeaceful time. What are you experiencing? Because there's just so much resonance and belonging that is available, I think, when we actually take the time and have the courage to speak. That is what I'm going to carry with me this week. I love that. Well, thank you.
00:21:57
Speaker
This is great, yeah. Oh, that was so good. I'm sure you guys loved it as much as I did. I think I will forever remember Mallory's description of that uncomfortable crosswalk conversation. That feels like one I'm just gonna tuck away and remind myself about.
00:22:22
Speaker
when there's the choice for me to lean in with a friend or lean out and leave the crosswalk. I just I loved that. I know another thing that really resonated for me was when Lindsay talked about holding space for others leaves me not holding space for myself and that really resonated for me and the work I do I hold a lot of space for others and
00:22:51
Speaker
And I know that to be true, that it can make it difficult for me to hold space for myself and then make it difficult for me to feel like I really belonged to myself. So I will be taking that with me. I wonder about you. There were a lot of just really beautiful sound bites from that conversation.
Podcast Closure and Personal Reflections
00:23:13
Speaker
How do we find our sense of belonging and hold on to it? How do we test the limits? What if we stop playing the game? Who gets to have an opinion for you in your life? And I loved what Maori said, the freedom of how to move into her world just with more possibility. So many good nuggets. I hope you found some for you and we'll see you again here next week.
00:23:44
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. 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.