I had some great conversations about friendships this week with a couple of my friends, and it inspired me to delve into this topic a bit deeper.
Growing up in the northern English town of Barnsley, I was usually the only brown kid in a group of white people, so my friendships were mostly based on my unconscious assimilation to whiteness. I didn’t discuss my culture or my difference, and if it came up, it was usually an exoticized comment on their part which made me feel quite exposed. Despite this, however, I found it pretty easy to make friends and it was an element of my life that felt relatively smooth.
When my mum died, I was sent to live with my grandparents in Bedford; a town with a lot of Indian inhabitants. My new school was full of people who looked like me, and I made my first Indian friends. It was refreshing to go to their house and inherently feel understood, seen and at home, as well as eat the food I was so accustomed to.
Within just a few months of my mother dying, however, my father had started a serious relationship with my school friend’s mum, and I was sent back to live with them all in a blended, multiracial stepfamily. My friend became my stepsister and I went back to my all-white life and school.
It had all changed, very quickly. My relationship to friendship became very complicated as the lines had become blurred. Our years together were very painful, and I learned about the betrayal that can exist within friendships.
Fast forward to my teen years, and despite having one amazing friend of colour, I remained deeply assimilated to both whiteness and people-pleasing. I realize now that I had unconsciously become friends with girls who were popular and outgoing so that I could feel accepted and valued, and to mask my deep shame about feeling hideously different. This pattern continued well into my twenties, working in high fashion and partying with people who didn’t really know who I was.
‘Friends’ came and went. I say this because I had confused friends with mere acquaintances; people who I could banter with or go out with, but couldn’t sit and have a deep conversation with. It was either that, or I was used for my empathic nature and listening skills; I walked away from conversations feeling spent and drained, often dreading their phone calls.
Over the years, I started to learn what true friendship was (and what it wasn’t) through trial and error. And what I learned was that friendship - and my definition of friendship - could change over time, and weren’t necessarily permanent. And that this was OK.
These past few years, I have had some amazing friendships which have got me through really hard times, and then as we all changed and grew, they naturally fizzled out as we went our separate ways.
I’ve also had friendships with white people which abruptly ended last year after I started talking about racism, as they didn’t have the capacity to even talk about it with me. That was an incredibly difficult time and there was a huge amount of people lost who I truly believed cared about me. The feeling of betrayal was something that took a while to heal, and even now I am very careful about who I let into my life; if they’re white, they absolutely need to be doing the active anti-racism work. Sadly, there aren’t enough people doing that.
The good news, however, is that when I let go of the people who weren’t supporting me, new people entered who could. This past year, I’ve felt lucky to meet so many people of colour who I can feel held and supported by, as they truly understand my experience on a variety of different levels. Friendship has also become rooted in comradery and solidarity as we support each other doing the work to heal and make a difference in the world.
Lessons I’ve learned about friendship:
1) Acquaintances and friendships are not the same thing. The former are just people I knew, who I could maybe have a laugh with. The latter were people who I could bare my soul to and still feel held and safe.
2) Just because someone is ‘nice’, doesn’t mean I should be friends with them. There needs to be an energetic resonance.
3) True friends are people who you can go to if they have hurt you and have a healthy, conscious conversation with them where you both seek to resolve it.
4) If I’m letting someone white into my life, they have to be actively and openly anti-racist, otherwise I feel unsafe and, quite frankly, used.
5) If I walk away feeling drained from a conversation with a friend, I need to ask myself why and check that I’m not giving too much energy away without enough reciprocation.
6) I’m much more interested in having a smaller friendship group, where I can go deep with every one of them, rather than a larger one where I don’t feel truly seen, understood or valued.
7) If they’re not encouraging me to be me, and celebrating my wins, then are they even my friend?
8) What’s important for me is having friends who want to grow, evolve and do the inner work. We all have our priorities and I believe our friendships can reflect these.
9) There are often inner circles and outer circles, and that is OK. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to why, and that’s also OK. Friends also have different qualities, strengths and perspectives, which is wonderful.
10) For me, true friendships aren’t hugely demanding. For example, either of us could disappear for a few months and that wouldn’t be a problem - we’d just pick up where we left off.
11) This is often seen as controversial, but friendships can come and go, and they’re allowed to end. Forcing a friendship to remain, just because we’re conditioned to be friends for life, can end up being a drain on both people. We all change and grow, and so do our relationships with others.
My Offerings
I’m an astrologer who combines natal, horary and evolutionary astrology to provide 1:1 readings. My approach is intuitive and deep, bringing light to the darker corners of our chart so we can start to heal and integrate those areas.
Last year I published my first book; a collection of poetry about death, grief, rage, trauma, mysticism and, ultimately, healing. It’s called Half Woman Half Grief and it mirrors the mythological heroine’s journey through the underworld of loss and darkness.
And lastly I’m a decolonial and anti-racism activist who co-hosts The Decolonial Podcast, where we explore the harmful impact of British colonialism, as well as the healing and reconciliation of it, through our identities as Indian and Pakistani women.
To find out more about me and my work, visit www.mayakalaria.com.
This is amazing!