A little note on friendships

Hey you! Welcome to day 7 of Blogmas. I hope you have had a good day? I will tell you one thing for free. I am very excited about it being Friday tomorrow!! 🎉  For today's post I had a couple of things I was flipping between.  I have spent my evening taking a long trek down memory lane scrolling through endless photos and videos of the past few years and it has brought up so many strong and quite overwhelming emotions. I have started pouring my thoughts into a post but I am not quite ready to share tonight.  That may be tomorrow or Saturday's post. Before I closed my first blog, I saved all of my posts so that I could share them with you one day if the moment felt right and I think today might be one of thoses days.  Whilst I work on tomorrow's post I wanted to share this little nugget of a post I wrote a good few years ago now,  feeling like we could all learn a thing or two from younger me. Anyway for today I thought we could have a chat about friendships. I feel like over the past few years I have really found out who my real friends are and I have learned things that I really wish I had got my head round sooner in life but oh well maybe as you read this. It might be able to help you, maybe you won’t make the mistakes I made. I’ve taken one for the team. You are all welcome 😂

We go about our daily lives meeting people along the way. Some people become lifelong friends, others will just remain acquaintances. And that is perfectly ok. I don’t know about you but I have often found I have met some of the best people when I least expected it.

One of the most important lessons I think I have learnt over the years is that some friends will be by your side and stick with you through thick and thin, but others won’t and that’s really not a bad thing.

I feel very lucky to be able to call my family my best mates. We all get on so well we are a team. Team Davies. We’ve always got each other's back. I feel very lucky to know that I have always got 3 best friends by my side no matter what. (Love you all so much).

Growing up I was always very lucky and got on with everyone and had lots of friends. I think looking back now that was partly because I felt the need to make everyone happy. I was always the peacemaker, the shoulder to cry on. I was one of those people that was friends with lots of different friendship groups and had my fingers in lots of different friendship pies if you will 😂! I have always loved being friends with lots of different people. You learn a lot and you are so much more open minded. I have friends of all ages, from all different walks of life. I love it. A variety of people to have conversations with, lots of opinions and lots of different people to seek advice from.

When I was in school I enjoyed knowing lots of people and loved always having friends around. I thought it was great. The older I have got though I’d much rather favour quality over quantity. Unfortunately when you are one of the nice friends in a group maybe you're sensitive or just like me you hated the thought of ever upsetting anyone you would end up getting walked all over.

If I retrace my friendship history at any point of my life I have alway had friends that have been more confident than me, bolder than me or had a larger presence in a group than me. I would always be that one friend that would bend over backwards and change my plans to fit in with others. If you are in school right now I know friendships aren’t always easy. You get bundled up with a bunch of people that you are just supposed to get along with. It’s not always easy. And yes you may make some great friendships but it also means you are going to have to spend your whole year with some people you really don’t get on with. But that is just a part of life I suppose.

Until a few years ago I always thought I had to be friends with everyone. The thought of ending a friendship to me was very alien. I would always much rather swallow my feelings than stand up and make a scene. Which I really would not recommend. If you feel you are being walked all over or you think something is wrong in a friendship try and open up about it. I know it is hard and sometimes you may not even realise it is happening. But honestly they are no better than you. You have your own voice and let that shine don’t let other people over power you. If I could have a chat with my 12 year old self right now I would tell her to realise her worth and that those overpowering friends should not belittle her. I wish I would have stood up to people sooner and stood my ground but oh well you live and you learn. It personally took me a couple of friendships to turn sour and toxic for me to wake up and smell the coffee. I have only ever ended and walked away from a couple of friendships in my life and it wasn’t easy. I am sure we have all heard the saying “love is blind'' but I honestly believe friendships can have the same effect on us. 

I hope this post made some sense. I just wanted to say don’t change yourself to suit other people. Don’t let yourself be walked all over and be manipulated. All friendships don’t have to be for life. There are plenty more fish in the sea I promise. Be you, be true to yourself and let people love you for that and if they don’t then their loss. They will be the ones missing out on your amazing friendship. Also if you notice one of your quieter friends being taken for granted or being walked all over and maybe struggling to voice their opinions and say what's on their minds. Help them don’t speak for them but hold their hand through it. Be there to listen to them and do what you think is right. You never know what a difference you may have just made to their daily life.

So there we have a little snippet from a younger, maybe 20 year old me!  I hope you have enjoyed reading today's post. 

I am going to say bye for now and see you tomorrow for day number 8!!.

Bye ❤️