I was driving home today from a fabulous weekend away in Vancouver and I was struck by how good I felt to have spent time with some great friends.
The weekend started with going to Vancouver to support Sharon, my friend and client in her first Figure Competition. The way we chatted on the drive down and in the hotel room was more than just surface conversation about weather or kids. It was meaningful and thought provoking.
While Sharon was at her athlete’s meeting on Friday night, I ventured out to Robson Street. Of all the people in Vancouver, I saw an old friend and his girlfriend having drinks on a patio. I stopped and caught up on his life and in that moment that we hugged goodbye, I was grateful for the part he played in my life as a friend years ago.
As luck or fate would have it, I then ran into two of my favorite girlfriends who were doing an impromptu getaway from Abbotsford and their hotel just happened to be right around the block from ours. The three of us decided to go get a drink and catch up.
You know those friends that you can just go from zero to crying in a split second? Well that was the three of us…telling stories of where we were at, what our kids were up to, reliving fragile moments and what we learned from those moments that we were all a part of. It was REALLY good for my soul.
The next day I got to spend the entire afternoon and evening with one of my best friends, my sister Dianna. Shopping, coffee, makeovers, walking 20,000 steps in high heel boots (me, not her!), cocktails and dinner gave us so many moments to have…well, really great moments!
Looking back over the weekend I am grateful for my friendships. They are good for my soul and they increase my wellness. As I look to see what it is that has deepened these relationships one of the biggest contributors is how well we listen, and the questions we ask.
So…cool story: Dianna and I went to Mac to get a makeover. My makeup artist, as I soon found out by asking, was from Rwanda, Africa. Through the course of my makeover I kept asking her questions about her life. She told me that she was 11 years old when the genocide started. She said one morning they were sitting eating lunch and the next moment the killing began. She and her two siblings survived the horror but her parents did not. I was welling up with tears as she was trying to put on my eyeliner!
Then I asked her, “So, where do you land today with all that you went through? How do you view humanity? How does that experience change you?” She paused for a while, then I grabbed her hand and said that she didn’t have to tell me if she didn’t want to and she looked at me and smiled and said, “No, it’s ok, it’s just that no one has asked me that before.”
Wow.
So, here we were in the Mac store…I’m a total stranger and yet because of empathy (which we talked about last week -read it here: Blog on Empathy), a listening ear, and a desire to know her story, she told me. I asked her if her work mates in the store knew her story, she said no.
When I look at my friendships that are deep and connected and that mean something, it is because we have this mutual desire to know each other’s stories. It is incredibly powerful.
Ask questions, listen well, and be vulnerable with your own story. Deep connection and increased wellness is the reward.
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