July 7, 2022 • 34 mins
New York Times Best Selling author and founder of IF:Gathering, Jennie Allen {@jennieallen}, is back on the podcast to talk about her book Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World. Loneliness has become a major issue and it’s impacting our health and overall well-being. If you’re feeling lonely…you’re not alone and this book is a great tool to help create community in your life. Jennie shares vulnerable stories from her own life, how to overcome the barriers to making new friends, the type of friend you are + the types of friends you need, and so much more! Jennie also shared with us 4 things she is thankful for…she gave us a book recommendation, a tv show, an instagram follow, and a drink that we need to try!
Purchase Find Your People HERE!
4 Things Gratitude Journal:
https://www.theshopforward.com/products/4-things-gratitude-journal-2-0
To send Amy an email: 4ThingsWithAmyBrown@gmail.com
For more info: RadioAmy.com + @RadioAmy on Instagram
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Okay, little food for you. So life. Oh it's pretty Bay,
It's pretty beautiful. Thank you. Laugh a little more kicking
(00:30):
with four all right, sitting here across from my friend
Jenny Allen. She is our guest for today's episode. You're
on the podcast like two years ago, Jenny, when your
last book came out, But now you have another one
which I'm super excited to talk about today because I'm
already obsessed with it. It's called Find Your People, Building
deep Community in a lonely world. But before we get
(00:53):
into talking about the book, I just want to read
a little bio about you, Jenny, which you're the founder
of IF Gathering, which I have gone to before. It's amazing.
And you'all have another one coming up right yes, March
fourth and fifth, and it's online. Everybody can watch it.
Jenny is the host of Made for This podcast and
the book she came on to talk about last time
ended up being a New York Times bestseller and it's
(01:15):
called Get Out of Your Head. And you have a
lot of other amazing things on your resume in addition
to that. You're a mom, you're a wife, you're a friend,
which is fitting because that's what this book is all
about friendships. Yes, And speaking of friends, another friend of
the podcast is actually someone that endorsed your book. And
here's what Annie f Downs had to say about find
(01:37):
your people Deep community is the path to health, joy, success. Connection.
Find your people will inspire you, challenge you, and encourage
you toward the relationships you need and want. Oh that's
so kind. And Jenny, I pulled a quote from the
book that I want to mention just because I do
this podcast so that people don't feel alone. Whatever it is,
(01:59):
maybe just one person listening that needs to hear a
particular episode, and I share things for that same reason.
And I'm just so thankful you wrote this book. And
the quote is, do you ever wonder if maybe you're
the only person who feels this alone? You aren't. You
aren't alone and feeling alone. So I'm just thankful to know.
(02:20):
And I'm sure for others listening, if they happen to
be feeling alone, for them to be reminded that they're
not alone. Well, I think that's the hope in the weird,
weird way. I mean, it's bad news, right, we're all
lonely three and five people. Research says we're lonely prior
to the pandemic. So you can imagine now it's a
good four to five out of five that are feeling lonely,
(02:40):
I would imagine, And so we've got a crisis and
so on one hand, that's really sad. On the other hand,
everybody needs a friend, right, You're going to initiate with
people that are also feeling lonely and that hope to
build this into their lives as well. We seem like
we have the ability to be more connected than ever
because we have phone, we have FaceTime, we have Instagram, Facebook,
(03:03):
like all the things to connect that other people didn't have.
Podcast and that's another perfect example. So why are we
feeling so lonely with all this quote unquote connection. So
the way that we're built is a hundred and fifty
people are kind of our maxive acquaintances. Well, most of
us follow away more than that on Instagram, Facebook. Certainly
(03:25):
our news stories are coming from the ends of the earth.
We're hearing everybody's problems, right, but a hundred and fifties
about what we can handle. And that's just acquaintance. Knowledge.
You know a name, you know a problem, you know, Hey,
this is what's going on. We can handle about fifty
people to be part of our village are deeper community,
which means I would take you a castle role if
I found out your mom had cancer or something to
(03:46):
where I was reaching out to those fifty. I can't
do that for the hundred and fifty, but I can
do that for about fifty people. I can. I can
kind of move into their lives on an occasional basis
and play a role. We only have margin for a
daily relationship with about five. That's that's how many were
able to like keep up with on a weekly daily basis. Well,
what social media has done is is basically made our
(04:08):
acquaintances so large, and we don't have any of the
inner circles. We don't have. We're not taking a cast
role to the neighbor when we find out they're going
through chemo because we're so exhausted from carrying the weight
of the entire earth. So we basically have compassion fatigue.
You know, we care about every problem that comes along,
or we try to, and then we don't have the
margin or the compassion or the time to help the
(04:30):
neighbor that really just needs us. So I think why
we feel disconnected and lonely is we've really broken the
system the way that it's existed since the beginning of time,
which was small villages of people. And ironically, from the research,
those numbers are exactly what would play out in the village.
Most villages are between fifty and a hundred and fifty
people today. If you walk into a little bitty town
(04:51):
in Italy, which I've done, and you go to this
little grocer and this little little bitty town that's not touristy,
me and my husband show up there, you walk in,
the whole grocery store stops and said, who are you?
What are you doing here? You know, because they know
each other, No, no strangers come in from the outside.
That's how eight percent of the world even lives today.
So they were in that is, living very independently from
(05:12):
each other. And I don't even mean that like we
don't have friends. I mean that we don't rub shoulders
with people. We know their names and we care about
and we build a relationship with. My thesis is that
it's time we change that and that we notice the
village that that we've been placed in right around us,
and that might come from the Starbucks, that might come
from a local church. It might come from a soccer team,
(05:34):
that might come from an apartment complex, that might come
from a job coworking situation. But to start to look
at the village that you've been placed in, and how
can you begin to see these people as potential friends.
As you were researching the topic of loneliness, what a
scientist say about what loneliness is doing to our health,
to our well being. I mean, we're starting with all
(05:54):
the bad news. We've got a major problem, not just
in the numbers of people that feel lonely. But they say,
and again, when I say this in rooms full of people,
everybody cocks their head and starts googling to see if
I'm right, because they can't believe it. But I am right.
You can look it up. Basically that doctors are saying
that that loneliness and isolation is worse for your health
than obesity, smoking, or alcoholism and drinking too much. Like
(06:17):
it's worse than all those things. And so it's a
it's a crisis. If everybody is feeling lonely and isolated,
which we all are because of the pandemic, right all
of us, then we've got it affecting our health, not
to mention our mental state. Anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts. Those
are all, I mean, unquestionably at the highest levels people
(06:37):
have seen in this generation, especially the younger generation coming.
So we know there's a problem. What is that problem?
And I truly believe it's that we've given up on
real life connection. And now I'm not talking even about
two to three best friends, although that is the goal
for all of us, and that's certainly a goal in
the book, but it's bigger than that. It's we need
the context of a village. We need older people to
(06:59):
tell us how to parent teenagers. We need younger people
to come into our lives because they are more available
and flexible on a Friday night and can come over
and play games with us, and hang out with us
and help raise our kids and tell our kids, no,
don't do that right in front of us, because it
takes a village. And and then people that are single
need people to be around that have different problems than
(07:20):
them and and yet understand their problems. So I just
think we have been functioning looking for two to five
people that are exactly like us. And if we're married,
our hope is that their spouses then will be best
friends with you know, our husband, And it's just not realistic.
It's it's literally not how anyone has ever lived. So
why do we think this is gonna work when it
obviously isn't. And so my hope is that we open
(07:42):
our eyes and see who's around us. Who's that person
that walks their dog in front of your house every
single day and you've never spoken to, and strike up
a conversation. Uh, some of the people that are reading
the book early one of the girls in this Facebook
group said, you know what I did today? She said,
I was at gymnastics with my little girl. I say
the same people every time, and today, instead of just
nodding and waving and then looking at my phone, I
(08:03):
talked to the woman next to me for thirty minutes.
We had the best conversation. At the end of it,
we decided to have game night with our husbands next week.
She said. We've been sitting next to each other for months,
looking at our phones next to each other. So my
hope is that it's almost like you put on glasses
to see the world differently, and instead of always running
errands by yourself, call a friend and go to Costco.
And split split toilet paper. You know, like, let's take
(08:26):
this technology that we've been given in our generation and
start using it for good and let it be a
spark that starts connection rather than the screen we stare
out for seven seven hours a day, you know, me
looking at you Jenny on Instagram or you know we
I live in Nashville, you live in Dallas, but you know,
and seeing you as the leader of a major organization
(08:48):
and surrounded by all these people and your family, I
would just think, Oh, she's totally got this on lock.
Like she's good. She would never struggle with something like us.
So what was it like for you to deal with loneliness?
I mean, I have different seasons in my life that
have been hard for different reasons. There have been times
(09:10):
that friends have quit me and there's reasons behind that
that are really hard and there were very vulnerable to
write about. It was a lot of times always my fault.
And then there are times that like I just moved
to Dallas about four and a half five years ago,
and I had to start completely from scratch pretty much
and make friends for the for the first time in
a long time. That was incredibly hard. I was a
(09:32):
pastor's wife for many years, and that's a whole lonely
thing where where people are friends with you, but they
also see you as playing a role in their lives
rather than just a friend. So I've had different seasons
where it's been hard for different reasons. But I would
say that the hardest it's been is when I have
people in my life and I get hurt more than
(09:54):
when I've been completely lonely. Um. Somebody said the other day,
you know, I'm perfectly fine if I'm sitting by myself
with Jesus Us, like I don't have any problems, you know,
And it's true, because it's like you're just by yourself
in your house, like life's pretty good. You know, nobody's
bothering you, you're not bothering anybody else. But if you
get into relationships, you will get hurt and you probably
will hurt someone else. And so there's just a real
(10:16):
issue of do I even want this, Like I don't
even know if this is worth it. And I would
say that probably is the biggest temptation and all of
us is just to say, you know what, I have
tried this and it doesn't work for me, And yet
it doesn't work for us not to have this either,
and we are craving it. And so what does it
look like to say, you know what, I'm gonna brave this.
(10:37):
And I would say to someone, what if five times
you get rejected because it does happen where people don't
want this or think they have it, or they just
don't have the capacity for it, and you get rejected
five times, But on that sixth time you make one
of your favorite people that you will be best friends
with till you die. That would be worth it, Like
you would deal with the rejection five times if on
(10:58):
the sixth try it resulted in a life long friendship,
not that it wouldn't be still full of complications, but
you would do it. And so that is my hope,
as though, even though we're all tired, even though it
feels like I've tried this and it's it's gone poorly
for me, that we would we would give it another
shot because we truly were built for this. Our bodies
(11:19):
do not function well, our emotions do not function well,
our minds do not function well without this, and so
we gotta fight for it. Yeah, I mean, yeah, God
designed us for connection. Yes, yes, I find that yeah, isolation.
(11:44):
I like being lone. I mean, I have to recover
because I haven't a very extroverted job, but I tend
to lean more introverted, so I need my recovery time.
But then there's a time where my recovery time begins
to look unhealthy, and I have to check myself because
that isolation will lead down a path where it's not
good for me to have too much of it. And
(12:05):
I'm self aware enough to know now through therapy that
I would lean way too into it and that could
be dangerous for me. And to be fair, I think
what you just described, Amy is what all of us
are feeling. It is easier to get in our robe
and pick Netflix than to even attend the party we
said we were going to attend. Right We are socially tired,
(12:26):
we are emotionally tired. I think something about the pandemic
took something out of us that it's just we're not
quite back, and maybe we never will be in the
same way. I mean, just to speak to that what
I've had to start doing. I believe this enough, and
what I hope the book will cause to happen for
people is that they'll believe it enough. That they'll just
start saying yes to some things, not everything, because you're right,
(12:48):
we definitely still need downtime, not everything. I'm not suggesting
that at all, but I've noticed when it's Netflix or
a few friends where we're gonna grab, you know, a
late night rink and catch up, that I will come
home feeling more rested and energized by those few friends
than I do from just staying at home. And I
think that's what I hope people here is you actually
(13:10):
are craving this, and it actually does even for introverts
some level of connection is You're made for that and
you need it, and so it really does fill you up,
even if you also have to recover from it and
get some downtime. To what qualities do we need to
be looking for in these potential friends well in order
to have like this deep, meaningful friendship that you're speaking about. Well,
(13:33):
so one of the things I did in the book
was I laid out all the different types of friends
there are, right, So there's challenging friends that will tell
you the truth. There's encouraging friends. There's there's foxhole friends
I call them, which is like they'll just get in
there beside you, and and work beside you and clean
out your closet with you, or dream of a new
project with you, like they're just beside they're kind of
sitting next to you friends. And then you have the
(13:55):
fun friend that literally is always initiating something. But the
reason I put all those types of ends in there
is because what we tend to do is we expect
or need or want two to three people to play
all those roles in our lives. So we miss potential
friendships and people that might make us crazy, like our
mother right Like we may feel like my mom makes
me crazy, but really she's actually probably a good friend
(14:16):
to you. Not all moms by any means, but a
lot of moms have been beside you a lot of
your life, have to have great knowledge of you. They
might not be good at this, but they are good
at this and and and so we tend to just
look for three people that are just like us in
the same life stage, and we need them to be fun,
take initiative, They need to organize things well, they need
(14:37):
to do all these things where we're disappointed in them.
And my hope in putting the different categories of people
is to go, you know what, yes, everyone's going to
disappoint you, so let's just all agree. I will disappoint you,
you will disappoint me. We all disappoint each other. But
you know what I'm good at. I'm good at being fun.
I'm really good at creating an experience in a memory.
So I'm going to play that role in my friendship's lives.
(14:59):
I'm not good to remember and your birthday, I'm just not.
I always forget birthdays. So my other friend, she never
forgets a birthday. There is a card first thing in
the morning on my doorstep. But if I get angry
at my fun friend that doesn't remember my birthday because
she doesn't remember my birthday, then I'm gonna be stuck
every single year. I'm gonna either withdrawal, like whatever. I
just think we need to see have a lot more grace,
(15:20):
expect people to disappoint us, and then see that a
lot of those needs and desires we have are being
met by a bigger circle of people than just your
tight us two to three people, and then we end
up with more of a village, which is my goal
of the book, than just two to three besties. Hopefully
you have that too. But we were never meant to
(15:40):
have all of our relational needs met by two to
three people. And so my hope is that we see
the our friendship pool and our relational pool as bigger
than just two to three people in our same life stage.
So we look for all kinds of things and we
appreciate what people bring to the table rather than always
being disappointed. I of that so much, and I think
(16:01):
that's huge. It's something that you know, the friend may
need to hear or you may need to hear for yourself,
and like have that reminder because I think sometimes we
have these expectations on people that are not going to
be never gonna be met. Then there's resentment, yeah, and
you could be sad about it or just go, you
know what, Oh, I'm gonna let everybody down to Right there,
there's that reality of and then when you function in
(16:21):
that kind of grace with each other, it breathes oxygen
into relationships that I think we desperately need right now especially,
And so what about ways to form these friendships or
they're like ways to take relationships to a deeper level,
like once you've got them in their little category of
what type of friend they are, but are there things
we can be doing to be proactive. I'm asking specifically
(16:43):
for myself because I spent many years of my life
up until the last few, realizing I was avoidant in
connection and I just kept most people at a distance
because if they hurt me, then it wouldn't hurt as bad.
But I mean, I had it in the disguise of
guess I'm close with people, I'm so close to them,
but then they felt like not close to me at all.
(17:04):
That was my story. Yes, that was my story, and
and you nailed it. I mean, I think people want
to be needed. Um, When I consistently would ask my
friendships what can I do to be a better friend
to you? I would expect a list. I would expect
call more, text more, and instead they said need me more, Like, say,
what's going really going on in your life? Well, that
is way harder than a list of two does, because
(17:27):
that is a huge risk. For the reasons you're saying,
I have been burned by people and gossiped about and
it's been used against me, and so why would I
continue to do that? It just didn't even feel helpful,
And so I've had to discipline myself to risk vulnerability again.
With my friendships and and in that have just found
it to be the thing that deepens those friendships and
(17:49):
actually heals my heart as well. Right, It's just it
takes such risks, you know. The thing I say is
to not be afraid to be a little needy. And
what I mean by that is have a friend that
she's really good at calling me in the middle of
a cry. She'll call me and she's crying, and I
would never do that. I just my my former self
would never call someone in the middle of the cry.
(18:10):
I would call them the next day or the next day.
After I've stored it all out, I can say it
with great clarity about why I'm down, and I've worked
it all out, and i feel positive about it, and
I've put a little bow on top of it, right,
like I'm not going to call someone while I'm crying.
Yet when she calls me when she's crying, I feel
so loved that she would risk that with me, and
(18:31):
that she would and I feel so happy that she
trusts me with what she's feeling. I don't feel bothered,
but I think in my mind, when I'm doing it
to someone else, I feel needy and like I'm bothering them.
I'm with you on the I want to be needed.
I read that chapter where you shared that very personal story.
I think I even earmarked it. It's chapter six safe.
It's called Safe, where you say I have lost friends
(18:53):
because I haven't done what I'm about to tell you
to do, and you that story. I think I can
be a little bit needy though, even though I wasn't
connecting with them on their level. So I can call
a friend when I'm crying, but then I feel like
they don't feel as though they could call me when
they need me. I wasn't open. I wasn't like somehow
part of me wasn't screaming, even though I thought I was, Hey,
(19:15):
call me when you're crying. I will do that to friends.
But then, for whatever reason, I somehow created a thing
where they didn't feel like they could come to me.
And I I'm just like that, come to me, please,
like I'm begging you please come. Actually, Amy, that is
so precious. And I hope all your friends are listening
to this right now and hearing it, all of them,
because I always say to my kids, use your words
(19:39):
about things right like they're in a fight or they
have a misunderstanding, and I'm like, use your what do
you want? Use your words? And I feel like that's
what we need to do as adults too. It's like,
I think that candid, beautiful conversation of you looking at
a friend and me like, why don't you come to me?
I want you to come to me. I don't want
to hear about this three days later, because that's what
(19:59):
my friend lyn He did for me. She basically said, Hey,
you're going to start telling me when something's wrong, and
you're gonna tell me when it's wrong in the middle
of it, not three days later, and I was like,
I don't want to, and she said, you're gonna do it,
and she would just make me do it, and it
trained me. I mean it literally was coaching to me
of opening up and and seeing the benefit of it.
(20:20):
But I think she had to use her words to
help me do that, and I had to use my
words to actually do it and to process why that
was hard for me. So I think one reason we
all feel so distant and isolated and we think we're
the only ones feeling alone as we aren't using our
words with the people around us. We're not saying, you know,
I mean the awkward things. I genuinely believe the whole
(20:40):
book could have been called Awkward Conversations, because ultimately it's
like that, that's what it takes. I mean, it takes
awkwardly asking someone you barely know to coffee. It takes
awkwardly saying hey, I would love to share with you,
like what's really going on in our marriage. It's say
it takes awkwardly saying hey, I would love for you
to come over. And my house is a mess and
my kids are home, but I'm just kind of feeling
(21:03):
isolated tonight, like I would love it if you came
over tonight. It takes awkwardly inviting people into your life
and and stepping into theirs, you know. And and I
think that nobody taught us in first grade. This is
like we needed a class. This is how you be
a friend. And and I promise you one of the
things that would have taught us is you awkwardly do things.
You awkwardly say things. You you hurt each other, you
(21:24):
work it out, you conflict resolved. But nobody ever taught us.
And so I don't think it's just you. I don't
think it's just me. I think we're all at this
place of like, how do we go deeper? But it
feels so cumbersome and prickly and awkward that we stop
and resist it and just kind of go back and
watch Netflix. And I'm just advocating for doing the awkward
(21:44):
thing and saying, like what you just said, it was
so beautiful and if you are my friend, it would
mean so much to me that you felt that way.
You know, like I hear those words from you, and
I'm like, I love that, and and I think any
person close to you would love to hear that. So, yeah,
why don't we say the hard things? Right? Why don't
we say those things to each other? I don't know. Yeah, well,
because I think instantly there's lies in my head where
(22:07):
at one point in time they may have been true
because for whatever reason, maybe I wasn't available. But either way,
whatever it was, if I'm aware of it now and
I'm actively working on it, it is awkward. That's it.
It's just even me talking about it right now. It
feels awkward because you're so right, But at the end
of the day, it's worth it, and it is friendships.
(22:28):
And you're saying here and you have a whole book
based on that, like, it is what we need, It's
the way God design us, and it's worth it. We
need these connections, so we just have to like forget
about it and be awkward and bring up even with
whether it's a neighbor or a best friend that you've
been friends with for a long time, have the awkward conversations.
(22:58):
Do you remember when Jennifer Lawrence was going up to
take up an award and she was she was she
was kind of new to the scene. I can't remember
if it was like during Hunger Games or what, but
she fell when she was going up to receive her awards.
She literally face planted. Do you remember this. I believe
at that moment was when the world fell in love
with Jennifer Lawrence. She was still really new. She just
got up and like laughed and I kind of brushed
(23:18):
it off. And I think that's got to be our
our mode of operation right here, Like, because what you're
saying is there were times you weren't a good friend.
That's what you just said. Yes, absolutely, And I just
want to say it everybody. If you can't see and
you're just listening, you got all scratchy, like and I'm
just I'm not trying to throw you under the bus,
but you were like itching your neck like that was
hard for you to admit. And I cannot tell you
(23:38):
I was scratching. My friend says, I scratched my face
when I get anxious, And I was scratching my face
the whole time I wrote the book because I'm not
good at this and it's so vulnerable. But that's how
every single person listening fields. No one has this on lockdown.
There are very few people that would say, you know
what I'm good at I'm a great friend. Very very
(24:00):
few people. Okay, Well, that goes back to the lies
that are in my head, which are that that she's
such a good friend or this this friend in my
life is so amazing. I wish I could be a
friend like them. Or if I try to do this now,
they're they're going to think, why is she even doing this? Now?
She's this is not the kind of friend she is.
But I love that we all have the opportunity to
(24:21):
grow and work and change. If if that weren't true,
I would be in so much trouble with this subject.
In fact, my first page of the book originally read
to all the people that I've heard and wounded and
that you can't believe I'm writing a book about friendship.
I'm so sorry, you know. And my my publisher was
wisely like, hey, that's kind of dark and twisty, so
(24:42):
let's not open the whole book that way. You can
be vulnerable about it, but let's not put it in
the first page. But that's how I felt. I was
genuinely embarrassed that I was writing this book because there
would be so many people that would say she is
the worst friend, like I can't believe she's writing a
book about this. But I also would say to those people,
I also have grown in this. I've practiced this, I've
worked hard at this. I've disciplined myself to be someone
(25:05):
who says what I'm going through and who is vulnerable
in the moment. I've disciplined myself to initiate even when
I'd rather stay at home in my robe. I've disciplined
myself to make a new friend and awkwardly asked them
into my life and invite them into my you know,
kids lives. I've done this work, and it is worth it.
It is it is living. What is life if it
(25:26):
is not relationships? There's there's nothing else, like if we
have money, if we have success, if we have everything
else in the world, but we don't have relationships. Those
are the most unhappy people. So it truly is the
greatest thing from God that we have on earth. It
is people. And so we've got to figure this out
and get better at it. But I love what you're saying,
(25:47):
like we get too awkwardly, humbly grow. When I just
read the whole book on audio book, which you do
at the very end. It's the last thing you do.
And I was a little embarrassed about parts of it
because it was so elementary. Nearly it was it was
almost know when, like how to have a deeper conversation,
how to ask a friend to coffee, how to. I
literally put all that in there because I knew that
would be a barrier for some people, and I regretted
(26:09):
that I didn't have the first grade class. I was like,
some of this book is gonna be how to. And
as I'm reading it out loud, the producer and the
other people on the call, I started giggling and I
was like, gosh, I guess this feels kind of elementary.
I was almost embarrassed at my own words, and the
six year old woman that was producing said, Jenny, I'm
telling you, I didn't know these things. It just changed
(26:30):
my perspective and it made me feel one hopeful because
the reason I knew to put them in the book
was I didn't know those things, you know, and that's
why I put it in. So it gave me hope
that none of us know how to do these things,
and maybe if we just all stumble awkwardly into each other,
there will be something likable about it. There will be
something vulnerable about it. And supposedly they say all the
(26:51):
research that that's what makes good friends is being vulnerable.
So that's our hope. So they say, we're all here
for it. Yes, you know, you mentioned recording the audiobook
as the final step. I know in the book you
wrote as you were getting towards the end of completing
it you had a panic attack. Yeah, So can you
expand on that here? Yeah, so the first chapter is
(27:13):
actually the last chapter. I wrote the first chapter just
a few months ago, um as I was finishing edits
on the book, and I got to a place where
I had been writing and editing most of the year,
and and so you know, it's very isolating thing, and
so I hadn't been with my people. They kind of
stopped calling, but yet I was writing about them and
in our close friendships. And then my husband was angry
(27:34):
with me, my sister got angry with me, and I
felt like I don't even know who my people are.
I'm coming out of writing a book about finding your people,
and I think I might have lost all of mine
while I was doing it. And I would say for
weeks this was growing in my mind as as a
truth even though it wasn't. And I ended up on
my closet floor because I had had a dream that
(27:55):
felt so real where they not only had they pulled back,
but they they gossiped about me. They were hateful, and
my mind was just spinning out on You know, I
can do that where you just almost get crazy in
your head. I just don't have anyone. And typically, like
my old self would have felt those things, I would
have done my best to work through those things. I
(28:17):
may have mentioned it to my husband at a very
surface level of what I was actually feeling. But I
woke up the morning after my panic attack and the
phone rang at like eight o'clock, right after drop off
and it was one of my best friends, and you know,
and I remember seeing her name, and you know how
you are after a hard night where you've just wrestled
and cried, and I just kind of wanted to pull
(28:39):
the covers over my head and like go to sleep
that morning and and not deal with life. And I
remember thinking, I have a choice right now to answer
this phone, and I have a choice to tell her
like here's where I am. And so I answered the phone,
and that night I said, I need to tell you
kind of what's been going on in my head. And
she said, okay, let's get together tonight, me and Ashley,
my mother friend, and we go together and talked for
(29:02):
two or three hours, and I just cried to them.
And it was funny that that night I had shared
all of it. It was so painfully hard. I want
to be so honest with everybody and just say like
that is never easy to do, and especially when you're
doubting the friendship. I just felt like the two of
them had kind of seen each other every day and
I had been missing for months, and it was super
(29:23):
vulnerable and went against everything in my body to say it.
And at the end of it, when she was dropping
me off, Lindsay hugged me and said, I want you
to know I've never felt closer to you than right now.
And I think there's something about the hard that actually
makes all the good. You know, it's the fights that
actually deep in a friendship. It's the conflict and the
(29:44):
doubts that bring the security. And when you say those things,
so it's all risky and people could hurt you and
they've hurt me before in doing so. But but I
also think the thing we're craving is on the other
side of that. One of my big takeaways from our
talk right now is for sure well about the book,
which is inside the book so people can get it,
(30:04):
but is the different types of friendships and that you
put labels to them, like the Foxhole friend, because I
think that will be so freeing of any certain expectations
and that you have and and disappointments. Those friends are
still going to disappoint you, for sure, just like you're
going to still disappoint others. But that's just huge, So
(30:24):
I'm thankful that you did that. Well. I go back
amy to what you were saying. You were looking at
other friends saying, oh, they're so good at that and
they're so good. You weren't actually saying there's such a
good friend. You were actually saying they're good at something
I'm not. And so in your head they were a
good friend and you weren't. But the truth is they
could look at your life and say, Amy, so good
at this. And I think that's the freedom we have
(30:45):
with each other, is if we bring our strengths to
the table and let and our weaknesses right and we
be who we can be for each other. It's just
I hope that's the feeling, is that that we realize
we're all good at something, and we're all we all
have something to bring to the table. Even though I'm
not great at being vulnerable, I'm growing in that, but
I'm really good at again creating experiences for people. And
(31:07):
I just planned a trip for a friend for her
fourtieth birthday. And I'm not good with details, but I'm
great at thinking of something fun that we all could
do together, and so I bring that to the table.
And I'm good at counsel and when you need something,
I'll help you figure it out. So I have those
things that I bring to the table, but plenty of
ways that are hard for me that I'm not great
at Well, thank you for getting vulnerable and sharing with us.
(31:30):
Since it is the Four Things podcast. Before you go,
I'd love to do four Things gratitude with you. I
want to get specific this time. You did it the
last time you were on, but just kind of whatever
you were thankful for that day. But if you could
share a book besides Find your People obviously that is
the book recommendation for today's episode, but something that you've
(31:50):
read recently that's encouraged you're inspired you, or just allowed
you to escape for a little bit because there's so
much heaviness in the world. Um Then a TV show,
an Instagram follow, and a drink so fun. Okay. A
book is Atomic Habits. I love it. A lot of
people probably read it. It just reframed for me how
to live in the world, especially after the pandemic. It
(32:14):
just gave me new language for restarting my life and
working out and all these things rather than feeling defeated.
It was just really helpful. And that as far as
an Instagram follow, something beautiful that I love is um
I just in fact, it was just my most recent follow.
It's called Pop Parties and it's in Dallas, and it's
(32:35):
just one of those things. I mean, I literally last
night was just scrolling through all of how they decorate
a tent. It just blows your mind. I've never had
a party like this, but one day maybe I will.
And then okay, TV show, do you know I got
back into Alias? Do you remember Alias? Yeah? I but
I've never watched it to I know me either. I
mean I remember being back on when I was in college.
(32:55):
I think are really young. Anyway, it is the greatest show.
For about one or two seasons. I loved it. Jennifer
Garner is incredible in it. It was like kind of
the original, you know, bad a woman like she just
was amazing in it. Well, speaking of Instagram follows those
and you bring her up? Do you follow her on Instagram?
She's hysterical. I love following her. She does a lot
(33:17):
of cooking and she has a catch. There's a catch
she I was totally influenced by her a couple of
weeks ago and ordered this like hoodie where you put
your cat inside and then your cat can like poke
his head out. And she's great. She'll read stories and
just she and her little cooking. Her awkward cooking in
her kitchen. It's so cute. I know we would all
be her friend, I'm sure. And then oh my drink,
(33:37):
Oh my gosh, brown sugar oat milk at Starbucks shawl
is hard. It's hard to turn that down every day
if I pass the Starbucks shaken brown sugar oat milk, okay,
so shake so isn't iced? Yes, it is so good, okay.
And then that has espresso in it or has two
shots of espresso. It's not too sweet, which I like.
It's the best Starbucks drink there's ever been. They cannot
(33:59):
cancel it special right now. I'm like, you can't take
that one away, so good. Well, I'm glad you shared
that one because that's star Wars srink I have not
had yet, so I will be trying that well. Jenny,
thank you so much. Find your people. It's definitely going
to be something I'm diving into and sort of treating
it like I already have like notes in the margin,
(34:19):
sort of like a little a little workbook, and I
just think that this is a great thing I get
it for. Maybe this is something that you get for
all your girlfriends, or send a link to some girls
that you think would enjoy it and have your own
little mini book club, and y'all can go through the
awkwardness together. Yes, hey, I will help you. I will
start the awkward conversations for you. Okay, bye, Jenny, thanks
(34:42):
for having me. Amy
Okay, little food for you. So life. Oh it's pretty Bay,
It's pretty beautiful. Thank you. Laugh a little more kicking
(00:30):
with four all right, sitting here across from my friend
Jenny Allen. She is our guest for today's episode. You're
on the podcast like two years ago, Jenny, when your
last book came out, But now you have another one
which I'm super excited to talk about today because I'm
already obsessed with it. It's called Find Your People, Building
deep Community in a lonely world. But before we get
(00:53):
into talking about the book, I just want to read
a little bio about you, Jenny, which you're the founder
of IF Gathering, which I have gone to before. It's amazing.
And you'all have another one coming up right yes, March
fourth and fifth, and it's online. Everybody can watch it.
Jenny is the host of Made for This podcast and
the book she came on to talk about last time
ended up being a New York Times bestseller and it's
(01:15):
called Get Out of Your Head. And you have a
lot of other amazing things on your resume in addition
to that. You're a mom, you're a wife, you're a friend,
which is fitting because that's what this book is all
about friendships. Yes, And speaking of friends, another friend of
the podcast is actually someone that endorsed your book. And
here's what Annie f Downs had to say about find
(01:37):
your people Deep community is the path to health, joy, success. Connection.
Find your people will inspire you, challenge you, and encourage
you toward the relationships you need and want. Oh that's
so kind. And Jenny, I pulled a quote from the
book that I want to mention just because I do
this podcast so that people don't feel alone. Whatever it is,
(01:59):
maybe just one person listening that needs to hear a
particular episode, and I share things for that same reason.
And I'm just so thankful you wrote this book. And
the quote is, do you ever wonder if maybe you're
the only person who feels this alone? You aren't. You
aren't alone and feeling alone. So I'm just thankful to know.
(02:20):
And I'm sure for others listening, if they happen to
be feeling alone, for them to be reminded that they're
not alone. Well, I think that's the hope in the weird,
weird way. I mean, it's bad news, right, we're all
lonely three and five people. Research says we're lonely prior
to the pandemic. So you can imagine now it's a
good four to five out of five that are feeling lonely,
(02:40):
I would imagine, And so we've got a crisis and
so on one hand, that's really sad. On the other hand,
everybody needs a friend, right, You're going to initiate with
people that are also feeling lonely and that hope to
build this into their lives as well. We seem like
we have the ability to be more connected than ever
because we have phone, we have FaceTime, we have Instagram, Facebook,
(03:03):
like all the things to connect that other people didn't have.
Podcast and that's another perfect example. So why are we
feeling so lonely with all this quote unquote connection. So
the way that we're built is a hundred and fifty
people are kind of our maxive acquaintances. Well, most of
us follow away more than that on Instagram, Facebook. Certainly
(03:25):
our news stories are coming from the ends of the earth.
We're hearing everybody's problems, right, but a hundred and fifties
about what we can handle. And that's just acquaintance. Knowledge.
You know a name, you know a problem, you know, Hey,
this is what's going on. We can handle about fifty
people to be part of our village are deeper community,
which means I would take you a castle role if
I found out your mom had cancer or something to
(03:46):
where I was reaching out to those fifty. I can't
do that for the hundred and fifty, but I can
do that for about fifty people. I can. I can
kind of move into their lives on an occasional basis
and play a role. We only have margin for a
daily relationship with about five. That's that's how many were
able to like keep up with on a weekly daily basis. Well,
what social media has done is is basically made our
(04:08):
acquaintances so large, and we don't have any of the
inner circles. We don't have. We're not taking a cast
role to the neighbor when we find out they're going
through chemo because we're so exhausted from carrying the weight
of the entire earth. So we basically have compassion fatigue.
You know, we care about every problem that comes along,
or we try to, and then we don't have the
margin or the compassion or the time to help the
(04:30):
neighbor that really just needs us. So I think why
we feel disconnected and lonely is we've really broken the
system the way that it's existed since the beginning of time,
which was small villages of people. And ironically, from the research,
those numbers are exactly what would play out in the village.
Most villages are between fifty and a hundred and fifty
people today. If you walk into a little bitty town
(04:51):
in Italy, which I've done, and you go to this
little grocer and this little little bitty town that's not touristy,
me and my husband show up there, you walk in,
the whole grocery store stops and said, who are you?
What are you doing here? You know, because they know
each other, No, no strangers come in from the outside.
That's how eight percent of the world even lives today.
So they were in that is, living very independently from
(05:12):
each other. And I don't even mean that like we
don't have friends. I mean that we don't rub shoulders
with people. We know their names and we care about
and we build a relationship with. My thesis is that
it's time we change that and that we notice the
village that that we've been placed in right around us,
and that might come from the Starbucks, that might come
from a local church. It might come from a soccer team,
(05:34):
that might come from an apartment complex, that might come
from a job coworking situation. But to start to look
at the village that you've been placed in, and how
can you begin to see these people as potential friends.
As you were researching the topic of loneliness, what a
scientist say about what loneliness is doing to our health,
to our well being. I mean, we're starting with all
(05:54):
the bad news. We've got a major problem, not just
in the numbers of people that feel lonely. But they say,
and again, when I say this in rooms full of people,
everybody cocks their head and starts googling to see if
I'm right, because they can't believe it. But I am right.
You can look it up. Basically that doctors are saying
that that loneliness and isolation is worse for your health
than obesity, smoking, or alcoholism and drinking too much. Like
(06:17):
it's worse than all those things. And so it's a
it's a crisis. If everybody is feeling lonely and isolated,
which we all are because of the pandemic, right all
of us, then we've got it affecting our health, not
to mention our mental state. Anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts. Those
are all, I mean, unquestionably at the highest levels people
(06:37):
have seen in this generation, especially the younger generation coming.
So we know there's a problem. What is that problem?
And I truly believe it's that we've given up on
real life connection. And now I'm not talking even about
two to three best friends, although that is the goal
for all of us, and that's certainly a goal in
the book, but it's bigger than that. It's we need
the context of a village. We need older people to
(06:59):
tell us how to parent teenagers. We need younger people
to come into our lives because they are more available
and flexible on a Friday night and can come over
and play games with us, and hang out with us
and help raise our kids and tell our kids, no,
don't do that right in front of us, because it
takes a village. And and then people that are single
need people to be around that have different problems than
(07:20):
them and and yet understand their problems. So I just
think we have been functioning looking for two to five
people that are exactly like us. And if we're married,
our hope is that their spouses then will be best
friends with you know, our husband, And it's just not realistic.
It's it's literally not how anyone has ever lived. So
why do we think this is gonna work when it
obviously isn't. And so my hope is that we open
(07:42):
our eyes and see who's around us. Who's that person
that walks their dog in front of your house every
single day and you've never spoken to, and strike up
a conversation. Uh, some of the people that are reading
the book early one of the girls in this Facebook
group said, you know what I did today? She said,
I was at gymnastics with my little girl. I say
the same people every time, and today, instead of just
nodding and waving and then looking at my phone, I
(08:03):
talked to the woman next to me for thirty minutes.
We had the best conversation. At the end of it,
we decided to have game night with our husbands next week.
She said. We've been sitting next to each other for months,
looking at our phones next to each other. So my
hope is that it's almost like you put on glasses
to see the world differently, and instead of always running
errands by yourself, call a friend and go to Costco.
And split split toilet paper. You know, like, let's take
(08:26):
this technology that we've been given in our generation and
start using it for good and let it be a
spark that starts connection rather than the screen we stare
out for seven seven hours a day, you know, me
looking at you Jenny on Instagram or you know we
I live in Nashville, you live in Dallas, but you know,
and seeing you as the leader of a major organization
(08:48):
and surrounded by all these people and your family, I
would just think, Oh, she's totally got this on lock.
Like she's good. She would never struggle with something like us.
So what was it like for you to deal with loneliness?
I mean, I have different seasons in my life that
have been hard for different reasons. There have been times
(09:10):
that friends have quit me and there's reasons behind that
that are really hard and there were very vulnerable to
write about. It was a lot of times always my fault.
And then there are times that like I just moved
to Dallas about four and a half five years ago,
and I had to start completely from scratch pretty much
and make friends for the for the first time in
a long time. That was incredibly hard. I was a
(09:32):
pastor's wife for many years, and that's a whole lonely
thing where where people are friends with you, but they
also see you as playing a role in their lives
rather than just a friend. So I've had different seasons
where it's been hard for different reasons. But I would
say that the hardest it's been is when I have
people in my life and I get hurt more than
(09:54):
when I've been completely lonely. Um. Somebody said the other day,
you know, I'm perfectly fine if I'm sitting by myself
with Jesus Us, like I don't have any problems, you know,
And it's true, because it's like you're just by yourself
in your house, like life's pretty good. You know, nobody's
bothering you, you're not bothering anybody else. But if you
get into relationships, you will get hurt and you probably
will hurt someone else. And so there's just a real
(10:16):
issue of do I even want this, Like I don't
even know if this is worth it. And I would
say that probably is the biggest temptation and all of
us is just to say, you know what, I have
tried this and it doesn't work for me, And yet
it doesn't work for us not to have this either,
and we are craving it. And so what does it
look like to say, you know what, I'm gonna brave this.
(10:37):
And I would say to someone, what if five times
you get rejected because it does happen where people don't
want this or think they have it, or they just
don't have the capacity for it, and you get rejected
five times, But on that sixth time you make one
of your favorite people that you will be best friends
with till you die. That would be worth it, Like
you would deal with the rejection five times if on
(10:58):
the sixth try it resulted in a life long friendship,
not that it wouldn't be still full of complications, but
you would do it. And so that is my hope,
as though, even though we're all tired, even though it
feels like I've tried this and it's it's gone poorly
for me, that we would we would give it another
shot because we truly were built for this. Our bodies
(11:19):
do not function well, our emotions do not function well,
our minds do not function well without this, and so
we gotta fight for it. Yeah, I mean, yeah, God
designed us for connection. Yes, yes, I find that yeah, isolation.
(11:44):
I like being lone. I mean, I have to recover
because I haven't a very extroverted job, but I tend
to lean more introverted, so I need my recovery time.
But then there's a time where my recovery time begins
to look unhealthy, and I have to check myself because
that isolation will lead down a path where it's not
good for me to have too much of it. And
(12:05):
I'm self aware enough to know now through therapy that
I would lean way too into it and that could
be dangerous for me. And to be fair, I think
what you just described, Amy is what all of us
are feeling. It is easier to get in our robe
and pick Netflix than to even attend the party we
said we were going to attend. Right We are socially tired,
(12:26):
we are emotionally tired. I think something about the pandemic
took something out of us that it's just we're not
quite back, and maybe we never will be in the
same way. I mean, just to speak to that what
I've had to start doing. I believe this enough, and
what I hope the book will cause to happen for
people is that they'll believe it enough. That they'll just
start saying yes to some things, not everything, because you're right,
(12:48):
we definitely still need downtime, not everything. I'm not suggesting
that at all, but I've noticed when it's Netflix or
a few friends where we're gonna grab, you know, a
late night rink and catch up, that I will come
home feeling more rested and energized by those few friends
than I do from just staying at home. And I
think that's what I hope people here is you actually
(13:10):
are craving this, and it actually does even for introverts
some level of connection is You're made for that and
you need it, and so it really does fill you up,
even if you also have to recover from it and
get some downtime. To what qualities do we need to
be looking for in these potential friends well in order
to have like this deep, meaningful friendship that you're speaking about. Well,
(13:33):
so one of the things I did in the book
was I laid out all the different types of friends
there are, right, So there's challenging friends that will tell
you the truth. There's encouraging friends. There's there's foxhole friends
I call them, which is like they'll just get in
there beside you, and and work beside you and clean
out your closet with you, or dream of a new
project with you, like they're just beside they're kind of
sitting next to you friends. And then you have the
(13:55):
fun friend that literally is always initiating something. But the
reason I put all those types of ends in there
is because what we tend to do is we expect
or need or want two to three people to play
all those roles in our lives. So we miss potential
friendships and people that might make us crazy, like our
mother right Like we may feel like my mom makes
me crazy, but really she's actually probably a good friend
(14:16):
to you. Not all moms by any means, but a
lot of moms have been beside you a lot of
your life, have to have great knowledge of you. They
might not be good at this, but they are good
at this and and and so we tend to just
look for three people that are just like us in
the same life stage, and we need them to be fun,
take initiative, They need to organize things well, they need
(14:37):
to do all these things where we're disappointed in them.
And my hope in putting the different categories of people
is to go, you know what, yes, everyone's going to
disappoint you, so let's just all agree. I will disappoint you,
you will disappoint me. We all disappoint each other. But
you know what I'm good at. I'm good at being fun.
I'm really good at creating an experience in a memory.
So I'm going to play that role in my friendship's lives.
(14:59):
I'm not good to remember and your birthday, I'm just not.
I always forget birthdays. So my other friend, she never
forgets a birthday. There is a card first thing in
the morning on my doorstep. But if I get angry
at my fun friend that doesn't remember my birthday because
she doesn't remember my birthday, then I'm gonna be stuck
every single year. I'm gonna either withdrawal, like whatever. I
just think we need to see have a lot more grace,
(15:20):
expect people to disappoint us, and then see that a
lot of those needs and desires we have are being
met by a bigger circle of people than just your
tight us two to three people, and then we end
up with more of a village, which is my goal
of the book, than just two to three besties. Hopefully
you have that too. But we were never meant to
(15:40):
have all of our relational needs met by two to
three people. And so my hope is that we see
the our friendship pool and our relational pool as bigger
than just two to three people in our same life stage.
So we look for all kinds of things and we
appreciate what people bring to the table rather than always
being disappointed. I of that so much, and I think
(16:01):
that's huge. It's something that you know, the friend may
need to hear or you may need to hear for yourself,
and like have that reminder because I think sometimes we
have these expectations on people that are not going to
be never gonna be met. Then there's resentment, yeah, and
you could be sad about it or just go, you
know what, Oh, I'm gonna let everybody down to Right there,
there's that reality of and then when you function in
(16:21):
that kind of grace with each other, it breathes oxygen
into relationships that I think we desperately need right now especially,
And so what about ways to form these friendships or
they're like ways to take relationships to a deeper level,
like once you've got them in their little category of
what type of friend they are, but are there things
we can be doing to be proactive. I'm asking specifically
(16:43):
for myself because I spent many years of my life
up until the last few, realizing I was avoidant in
connection and I just kept most people at a distance
because if they hurt me, then it wouldn't hurt as bad.
But I mean, I had it in the disguise of
guess I'm close with people, I'm so close to them,
but then they felt like not close to me at all.
(17:04):
That was my story. Yes, that was my story, and
and you nailed it. I mean, I think people want
to be needed. Um, When I consistently would ask my
friendships what can I do to be a better friend
to you? I would expect a list. I would expect
call more, text more, and instead they said need me more, Like, say,
what's going really going on in your life? Well, that
is way harder than a list of two does, because
(17:27):
that is a huge risk. For the reasons you're saying,
I have been burned by people and gossiped about and
it's been used against me, and so why would I
continue to do that? It just didn't even feel helpful,
And so I've had to discipline myself to risk vulnerability again.
With my friendships and and in that have just found
it to be the thing that deepens those friendships and
(17:49):
actually heals my heart as well. Right, It's just it
takes such risks, you know. The thing I say is
to not be afraid to be a little needy. And
what I mean by that is have a friend that
she's really good at calling me in the middle of
a cry. She'll call me and she's crying, and I
would never do that. I just my my former self
would never call someone in the middle of the cry.
(18:10):
I would call them the next day or the next day.
After I've stored it all out, I can say it
with great clarity about why I'm down, and I've worked
it all out, and i feel positive about it, and
I've put a little bow on top of it, right,
like I'm not going to call someone while I'm crying.
Yet when she calls me when she's crying, I feel
so loved that she would risk that with me, and
(18:31):
that she would and I feel so happy that she
trusts me with what she's feeling. I don't feel bothered,
but I think in my mind, when I'm doing it
to someone else, I feel needy and like I'm bothering them.
I'm with you on the I want to be needed.
I read that chapter where you shared that very personal story.
I think I even earmarked it. It's chapter six safe.
It's called Safe, where you say I have lost friends
(18:53):
because I haven't done what I'm about to tell you
to do, and you that story. I think I can
be a little bit needy though, even though I wasn't
connecting with them on their level. So I can call
a friend when I'm crying, but then I feel like
they don't feel as though they could call me when
they need me. I wasn't open. I wasn't like somehow
part of me wasn't screaming, even though I thought I was, Hey,
(19:15):
call me when you're crying. I will do that to friends.
But then, for whatever reason, I somehow created a thing
where they didn't feel like they could come to me.
And I I'm just like that, come to me, please,
like I'm begging you please come. Actually, Amy, that is
so precious. And I hope all your friends are listening
to this right now and hearing it, all of them,
because I always say to my kids, use your words
(19:39):
about things right like they're in a fight or they
have a misunderstanding, and I'm like, use your what do
you want? Use your words? And I feel like that's
what we need to do as adults too. It's like,
I think that candid, beautiful conversation of you looking at
a friend and me like, why don't you come to me?
I want you to come to me. I don't want
to hear about this three days later, because that's what
(19:59):
my friend lyn He did for me. She basically said, Hey,
you're going to start telling me when something's wrong, and
you're gonna tell me when it's wrong in the middle
of it, not three days later, and I was like,
I don't want to, and she said, you're gonna do it,
and she would just make me do it, and it
trained me. I mean it literally was coaching to me
of opening up and and seeing the benefit of it.
(20:20):
But I think she had to use her words to
help me do that, and I had to use my
words to actually do it and to process why that
was hard for me. So I think one reason we
all feel so distant and isolated and we think we're
the only ones feeling alone as we aren't using our
words with the people around us. We're not saying, you know,
I mean the awkward things. I genuinely believe the whole
(20:40):
book could have been called Awkward Conversations, because ultimately it's
like that, that's what it takes. I mean, it takes
awkwardly asking someone you barely know to coffee. It takes
awkwardly saying hey, I would love to share with you,
like what's really going on in our marriage. It's say
it takes awkwardly saying hey, I would love for you
to come over. And my house is a mess and
my kids are home, but I'm just kind of feeling
(21:03):
isolated tonight, like I would love it if you came
over tonight. It takes awkwardly inviting people into your life
and and stepping into theirs, you know. And and I
think that nobody taught us in first grade. This is
like we needed a class. This is how you be
a friend. And and I promise you one of the
things that would have taught us is you awkwardly do things.
You awkwardly say things. You you hurt each other, you
(21:24):
work it out, you conflict resolved. But nobody ever taught us.
And so I don't think it's just you. I don't
think it's just me. I think we're all at this
place of like, how do we go deeper? But it
feels so cumbersome and prickly and awkward that we stop
and resist it and just kind of go back and
watch Netflix. And I'm just advocating for doing the awkward
(21:44):
thing and saying, like what you just said, it was
so beautiful and if you are my friend, it would
mean so much to me that you felt that way.
You know, like I hear those words from you, and
I'm like, I love that, and and I think any
person close to you would love to hear that. So, yeah,
why don't we say the hard things? Right? Why don't
we say those things to each other? I don't know. Yeah, well,
because I think instantly there's lies in my head where
(22:07):
at one point in time they may have been true
because for whatever reason, maybe I wasn't available. But either way,
whatever it was, if I'm aware of it now and
I'm actively working on it, it is awkward. That's it.
It's just even me talking about it right now. It
feels awkward because you're so right, But at the end
of the day, it's worth it, and it is friendships.
(22:28):
And you're saying here and you have a whole book
based on that, like, it is what we need, It's
the way God design us, and it's worth it. We
need these connections, so we just have to like forget
about it and be awkward and bring up even with
whether it's a neighbor or a best friend that you've
been friends with for a long time, have the awkward conversations.
(22:58):
Do you remember when Jennifer Lawrence was going up to
take up an award and she was she was she
was kind of new to the scene. I can't remember
if it was like during Hunger Games or what, but
she fell when she was going up to receive her awards.
She literally face planted. Do you remember this. I believe
at that moment was when the world fell in love
with Jennifer Lawrence. She was still really new. She just
got up and like laughed and I kind of brushed
(23:18):
it off. And I think that's got to be our
our mode of operation right here, Like, because what you're
saying is there were times you weren't a good friend.
That's what you just said. Yes, absolutely, And I just
want to say it everybody. If you can't see and
you're just listening, you got all scratchy, like and I'm
just I'm not trying to throw you under the bus,
but you were like itching your neck like that was
hard for you to admit. And I cannot tell you
(23:38):
I was scratching. My friend says, I scratched my face
when I get anxious, And I was scratching my face
the whole time I wrote the book because I'm not
good at this and it's so vulnerable. But that's how
every single person listening fields. No one has this on lockdown.
There are very few people that would say, you know
what I'm good at I'm a great friend. Very very
(24:00):
few people. Okay, Well, that goes back to the lies
that are in my head, which are that that she's
such a good friend or this this friend in my
life is so amazing. I wish I could be a
friend like them. Or if I try to do this now,
they're they're going to think, why is she even doing this? Now?
She's this is not the kind of friend she is.
But I love that we all have the opportunity to
(24:21):
grow and work and change. If if that weren't true,
I would be in so much trouble with this subject.
In fact, my first page of the book originally read
to all the people that I've heard and wounded and
that you can't believe I'm writing a book about friendship.
I'm so sorry, you know. And my my publisher was
wisely like, hey, that's kind of dark and twisty, so
(24:42):
let's not open the whole book that way. You can
be vulnerable about it, but let's not put it in
the first page. But that's how I felt. I was
genuinely embarrassed that I was writing this book because there
would be so many people that would say she is
the worst friend, like I can't believe she's writing a
book about this. But I also would say to those people,
I also have grown in this. I've practiced this, I've
worked hard at this. I've disciplined myself to be someone
(25:05):
who says what I'm going through and who is vulnerable
in the moment. I've disciplined myself to initiate even when
I'd rather stay at home in my robe. I've disciplined
myself to make a new friend and awkwardly asked them
into my life and invite them into my you know,
kids lives. I've done this work, and it is worth it.
It is it is living. What is life if it
(25:26):
is not relationships? There's there's nothing else, like if we
have money, if we have success, if we have everything
else in the world, but we don't have relationships. Those
are the most unhappy people. So it truly is the
greatest thing from God that we have on earth. It
is people. And so we've got to figure this out
and get better at it. But I love what you're saying,
(25:47):
like we get too awkwardly, humbly grow. When I just
read the whole book on audio book, which you do
at the very end. It's the last thing you do.
And I was a little embarrassed about parts of it
because it was so elementary. Nearly it was it was
almost know when, like how to have a deeper conversation,
how to ask a friend to coffee, how to. I
literally put all that in there because I knew that
would be a barrier for some people, and I regretted
(26:09):
that I didn't have the first grade class. I was like,
some of this book is gonna be how to. And
as I'm reading it out loud, the producer and the
other people on the call, I started giggling and I
was like, gosh, I guess this feels kind of elementary.
I was almost embarrassed at my own words, and the
six year old woman that was producing said, Jenny, I'm
telling you, I didn't know these things. It just changed
(26:30):
my perspective and it made me feel one hopeful because
the reason I knew to put them in the book
was I didn't know those things, you know, and that's
why I put it in. So it gave me hope
that none of us know how to do these things,
and maybe if we just all stumble awkwardly into each other,
there will be something likable about it. There will be
something vulnerable about it. And supposedly they say all the
(26:51):
research that that's what makes good friends is being vulnerable.
So that's our hope. So they say, we're all here
for it. Yes, you know, you mentioned recording the audiobook
as the final step. I know in the book you
wrote as you were getting towards the end of completing
it you had a panic attack. Yeah, So can you
expand on that here? Yeah, so the first chapter is
(27:13):
actually the last chapter. I wrote the first chapter just
a few months ago, um as I was finishing edits
on the book, and I got to a place where
I had been writing and editing most of the year,
and and so you know, it's very isolating thing, and
so I hadn't been with my people. They kind of
stopped calling, but yet I was writing about them and
in our close friendships. And then my husband was angry
(27:34):
with me, my sister got angry with me, and I
felt like I don't even know who my people are.
I'm coming out of writing a book about finding your people,
and I think I might have lost all of mine
while I was doing it. And I would say for
weeks this was growing in my mind as as a
truth even though it wasn't. And I ended up on
my closet floor because I had had a dream that
(27:55):
felt so real where they not only had they pulled back,
but they they gossiped about me. They were hateful, and
my mind was just spinning out on You know, I
can do that where you just almost get crazy in
your head. I just don't have anyone. And typically, like
my old self would have felt those things, I would
have done my best to work through those things. I
(28:17):
may have mentioned it to my husband at a very
surface level of what I was actually feeling. But I
woke up the morning after my panic attack and the
phone rang at like eight o'clock, right after drop off
and it was one of my best friends, and you know,
and I remember seeing her name, and you know how
you are after a hard night where you've just wrestled
and cried, and I just kind of wanted to pull
(28:39):
the covers over my head and like go to sleep
that morning and and not deal with life. And I
remember thinking, I have a choice right now to answer
this phone, and I have a choice to tell her
like here's where I am. And so I answered the phone,
and that night I said, I need to tell you
kind of what's been going on in my head. And
she said, okay, let's get together tonight, me and Ashley,
my mother friend, and we go together and talked for
(29:02):
two or three hours, and I just cried to them.
And it was funny that that night I had shared
all of it. It was so painfully hard. I want
to be so honest with everybody and just say like
that is never easy to do, and especially when you're
doubting the friendship. I just felt like the two of
them had kind of seen each other every day and
I had been missing for months, and it was super
(29:23):
vulnerable and went against everything in my body to say it.
And at the end of it, when she was dropping
me off, Lindsay hugged me and said, I want you
to know I've never felt closer to you than right now.
And I think there's something about the hard that actually
makes all the good. You know, it's the fights that
actually deep in a friendship. It's the conflict and the
(29:44):
doubts that bring the security. And when you say those things,
so it's all risky and people could hurt you and
they've hurt me before in doing so. But but I
also think the thing we're craving is on the other
side of that. One of my big takeaways from our
talk right now is for sure well about the book,
which is inside the book so people can get it,
(30:04):
but is the different types of friendships and that you
put labels to them, like the Foxhole friend, because I
think that will be so freeing of any certain expectations
and that you have and and disappointments. Those friends are
still going to disappoint you, for sure, just like you're
going to still disappoint others. But that's just huge, So
(30:24):
I'm thankful that you did that. Well. I go back
amy to what you were saying. You were looking at
other friends saying, oh, they're so good at that and
they're so good. You weren't actually saying there's such a
good friend. You were actually saying they're good at something
I'm not. And so in your head they were a
good friend and you weren't. But the truth is they
could look at your life and say, Amy, so good
at this. And I think that's the freedom we have
(30:45):
with each other, is if we bring our strengths to
the table and let and our weaknesses right and we
be who we can be for each other. It's just
I hope that's the feeling, is that that we realize
we're all good at something, and we're all we all
have something to bring to the table. Even though I'm
not great at being vulnerable, I'm growing in that, but
I'm really good at again creating experiences for people. And
(31:07):
I just planned a trip for a friend for her
fourtieth birthday. And I'm not good with details, but I'm
great at thinking of something fun that we all could
do together, and so I bring that to the table.
And I'm good at counsel and when you need something,
I'll help you figure it out. So I have those
things that I bring to the table, but plenty of
ways that are hard for me that I'm not great
at Well, thank you for getting vulnerable and sharing with us.
(31:30):
Since it is the Four Things podcast. Before you go,
I'd love to do four Things gratitude with you. I
want to get specific this time. You did it the
last time you were on, but just kind of whatever
you were thankful for that day. But if you could
share a book besides Find your People obviously that is
the book recommendation for today's episode, but something that you've
(31:50):
read recently that's encouraged you're inspired you, or just allowed
you to escape for a little bit because there's so
much heaviness in the world. Um Then a TV show,
an Instagram follow, and a drink so fun. Okay. A
book is Atomic Habits. I love it. A lot of
people probably read it. It just reframed for me how
to live in the world, especially after the pandemic. It
(32:14):
just gave me new language for restarting my life and
working out and all these things rather than feeling defeated.
It was just really helpful. And that as far as
an Instagram follow, something beautiful that I love is um
I just in fact, it was just my most recent follow.
It's called Pop Parties and it's in Dallas, and it's
(32:35):
just one of those things. I mean, I literally last
night was just scrolling through all of how they decorate
a tent. It just blows your mind. I've never had
a party like this, but one day maybe I will.
And then okay, TV show, do you know I got
back into Alias? Do you remember Alias? Yeah? I but
I've never watched it to I know me either. I
mean I remember being back on when I was in college.
(32:55):
I think are really young. Anyway, it is the greatest show.
For about one or two seasons. I loved it. Jennifer
Garner is incredible in it. It was like kind of
the original, you know, bad a woman like she just
was amazing in it. Well, speaking of Instagram follows those
and you bring her up? Do you follow her on Instagram?
She's hysterical. I love following her. She does a lot
(33:17):
of cooking and she has a catch. There's a catch
she I was totally influenced by her a couple of
weeks ago and ordered this like hoodie where you put
your cat inside and then your cat can like poke
his head out. And she's great. She'll read stories and
just she and her little cooking. Her awkward cooking in
her kitchen. It's so cute. I know we would all
be her friend, I'm sure. And then oh my drink,
(33:37):
Oh my gosh, brown sugar oat milk at Starbucks shawl
is hard. It's hard to turn that down every day
if I pass the Starbucks shaken brown sugar oat milk, okay,
so shake so isn't iced? Yes, it is so good, okay.
And then that has espresso in it or has two
shots of espresso. It's not too sweet, which I like.
It's the best Starbucks drink there's ever been. They cannot
(33:59):
cancel it special right now. I'm like, you can't take
that one away, so good. Well, I'm glad you shared
that one because that's star Wars srink I have not
had yet, so I will be trying that well. Jenny,
thank you so much. Find your people. It's definitely going
to be something I'm diving into and sort of treating
it like I already have like notes in the margin,
(34:19):
sort of like a little a little workbook, and I
just think that this is a great thing I get
it for. Maybe this is something that you get for
all your girlfriends, or send a link to some girls
that you think would enjoy it and have your own
little mini book club, and y'all can go through the
awkwardness together. Yes, hey, I will help you. I will
start the awkward conversations for you. Okay, bye, Jenny, thanks
(34:42):
for having me. Amy
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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