05/05/2024
Normalize telling your friends you love them.
Normalize cheering your friends on and being a place that celebrates each other’s achievements on a regular basis. Normalize checking on each other. Normalize saying hey “this happened, and I’m kind of upset by it, but I want to come to you first instead of letting it mess our relationship up.”
Normalize creating circles of complete trust, and normalize listening more than you speak.
Normalize appreciating your friends. Normalize compliments. Normalize text threads that legit look like a fan page where everyone gushes over each other and encourages each other like crazy. Make it awkward. Let them know you care (because if you aren’t saying it—they probably don’t know.)
Normalize giving more than you take. Normalize running errands together, and hanging out in sweatpants for the chillest, cheapest, most spontaneous girls nights ever.
Normalize having so much fun that you forget to take a picture, and you don’t care whether everyone on Instagram knows about your night out or not, because you were there. You lived it. You know it was amazing, and that’s enough.
Normalize talking about ideas, goals, fears, struggles and the real stuff significantly more than you talk about other people, gossip or shallow nonsense.
Normalize bragging about your friends behind their back.
Normalize including more people and building bigger tables.
Normalize grace, and forgiveness, and believing the best. Normalize giving everyone the space to be themselves. Let your friendships be the one place where you can relax, breathe deep and not stress about having to suck in, hide your flaws, or pretending to be somebody you’re not.
Normalize praying for each other, helping each other and dropping off Diet Cokes for no real reason.
Normalize friendship. Authentic. True. Long-lasting, sturdy and safe friendship. The world needs more of it. We need more of it and we need more of each other.
Love,
Amy
