the friendship massacre happening with our day ones
you cannot outrun the devastating friction of your own evolution.
i’ve had more friend breakups in the last four years than i’ve had in my whole life. and this week Instagram served up someone to me that i deeply loved, released out of my life, and unfollowed. (i’ve unfollowed everyone, btw). and i took the bait and went down the rabbit hole of her page. she looks happy. she looks free. she looks in expression.
it feels like everyone, everywhere all at once is having the realization that work isn’t working anymore. it’s both beautiful and brutal. the beauty in new possibilities, the brutality of the practical reality of what it costs to get there. and the deep grief that the path we were told to follow didn’t work out the way we thought.
i wasn’t prepared for the massacre that would take place in some of my longest running friendships.
we work with corporate athletes who are transforming into visionary creators. one of our primary assignments is to build a safe space where they can finally stop performing and tell the truth about their exhaustion, their pain, their grief, their desires, and their wild and wonderful dreams.
these are people who checked every box. they went to the good schools, collected the advanced degrees, and climbed the corporate ladder, chasing a title and a salary they were promised would bring fulfillment. instead, they are waking up to a crushing reality that the game isn’t working.
what makes this shift so brutal is the isolation. they are surrounded by family, lifelong best friends, and massive professional networks, yet they confess they’ve never whispered these truths to anyone. not even to their therapists. it is a profound, heavy loneliness. they feel entirely unknown, locked away by the terrifying awareness that sharing their evolution usually means being misunderstood by the people who claim to love them most.
a feeling i know a little too well…
day one since day one
it was election night November 2020, where the idea of moving to Atlanta first entered my awareness. i was sitting inside my deafening hollow Sherman Oaks house. my ex-husband and i had split a few months prior. we had purchased this roomy 5 bedroom house in 2019 in the hopes that our family would expand and grow into it. i never considered that i would be locked inside as a single mom again in the midst of a ravaging pandemic. i was grateful for the space because we couldn’t go anywhere. and i resented the space because it reminded me that all the things i had fought to acquire left me feeling more empty than before I acquired them.
another Black woman swooped in and carried America on her back. Stacey Abrams had just done the unthinkable and led the Georgia electorate into turning blue for the first time in 28 years. two of my older brothers had just moved near Atlanta. and one of my lifelong best friends, Day One, had relocated there with her family. we were the grew up together, traveled together, talk on the phone for hours, in each other weddings, know where the bodies are buried kind of friends. we were always there for each other through everything. she stayed on my recent call log in the midst of the divorce.
we met when we were young. we were both raised with a similar tape. climb the corporate ladder and hustle to build successful lives. from childhood, we were told that our execution had to be excellent, that whatever we were called to do, we had to perform at the highest levels possible. we were standing on the shoulders of giants. work wasn’t merely a matter of personal ambition, it was a debt of gratitude. it was responsibility in action for the people who had broken through doors so we could inherit unprecedented access and opportunity.
we had choice and agency, but within a specific, curated perimeter of what was defined as success. between the two of us, we possessed a literal collection of infinity stones: the Ivy League pedigree, the corporate accolades, the prestigious titles, and the soaring salaries. we were reminded that we are the sum of the people you spend the most time with, and we needed friends who mirrored the high-achieving lives we were destined for. in each other, we found the realest, most authentic version of that vision.
won the game, lost myself
in the midst of my marriage falling apart and broader disillusionment with life, one of the homies had hooked me up with the opportunity to go to Usher’s first residency show in Vegas. it was the perfect feeling of thrilling nostalgia. i reminisced back to times when me and Day One used to listen to U Don’t Have to Call on repeat when it first came out in 2002. screaming our 17-year-old hormone induced brains out on our family vacations. going to the concert reminded me of a simpler time when we were young, wild and free. hopeful about what was ahead for our lives.
i went to the show with some of my new coworkers from my new CMO gig i had just started. i was 3 rows back, wearing a Covid mask and shaking a** as a newly single woman. i loved how Usher created this immersive world and celebrated the culture of Atlanta. that night, in my drunken haze, i took a call from my divorce attorney who told me i was going to have to sell the house in the settlement. i had less than a month to decide if i was going to stay in LA or move cities. that sobered me up real quick.
i knew i wanted to get out of LA, a city engineered around appearances, and the transactional question of what do you do so i can see if who you are can benefit me?’ i had checked every single box on that tape we were handed: the good schools, the executive titles, the money, the marriage and the five-bedroom house. i had achieved everything everyone taught me to want, and yet, sitting in that hollow house, I was utterly miserable. i had won the game, but I had lost myself.
Atlanta felt like hope and possibility. i wanted to be around more Black people and around people who really knew me and who were my safe places. me and Day One hadn’t lived in the same city since we were young, and the idea of moving to ATL and being down the street from her like exactly what i needed. at this point i was hanging on to God for dear life and i was praying about everything. and i got confirmation that it was time to head South. Ursher, baby, here i come.
the city in the forest
as soon as i got to the city in the forest i felt like i could breathe. the fresh air pumping out of all the trees produced an exhale i needed badly. the warmth and sunshine made room for new visions. new possibilities and new imaginations about what life could like. it’s when i first started to hear the whisper that maybe it was time to leave corporate and explore something else. i was starting to get clear about the problems i saw in the world and what could be done about them. my broken heart was starting to slowly soften to receive the new revelation of what could come next and i felt a hope and excitement for the first time in a long time. i was grateful to be closer to my family and i felt calm knowing that one of my Day Ones was a 20 min drive away.
one hot, sticky Atlanta day, me and Day One were talking on the phone. after a couple months of being there, we still hadn’t seen each other in person. i chalked it up to our busy schedules. life was lif’ing. but that day, we were in our groove. in our pocket. talking about everything. laughing about nothing. having a this isn’t what i thought life would be like kind of conversation.
because she held all my history, my guard was entirely down. i felt the rare freedom of being fully seen, so i let down the dam of my secrets. i naturally just started sharing what i was feeling and what i was experiencing. i said something like:
this isn’t it. i can’t keep living like this. it’s like nothing is working anymore. i feel like i’m being called into something new. i see something. i see how broken our workplaces are and how it’s impacting us. and how everything is out of context…i think my life is falling apart for a reason. all of this is for a greater purpose… i can see a company that changes the culture of work…and i believe God is calling me to go see what this could be and i think i’m seriously gonna do it. i think it’s time. i think i’m gonna go for it…
she went silent. and there was a long pause that felt uncomfortable.
then she said, are you sure about this? are you being serious right now?
i understood her line of questions because as much as we talked on the phone there were so many times when i brought up my life kind of ideas to her and then just kept going like nothing happened.
i replied with deeper conviction, no, i’m really serious this time. i can’t keep living like this anymore. i don’t think i have it in me to keep going. and i really think it’s time.
and then she said, you’ve worked so hard to get to the place you’ve gotten to. are you really just going to leave all that money on the table? i mean, entrepreneurship isn’t a sure thing.
and with that question, doubt masquerading as concern, my heart started racing. i felt a pit in my stomach. it instantly made me pull back, protect myself and shrink. the very thing that i was fighting so hard to escape everywhere else.
oh. i’m not safe here either.
we got off the phone and i looked out at the thick, green Atlanta canopy. i had moved across the country to find a safe harbor, to be down the street from Day One, to finally catch my breath in a city surrounded by people that felt like home. but as the sticky southern heat pressed against the window, the silence in my tiny apartment felt familiarly deafening. the realization settled in: you can change your zip code, but you cannot outrun the devastating friction of your own evolution.
the inevitable friction of becoming
it’s been my experience that when you are in the radically vulnerable act of sharing a vision of your future, a piece of your raw, unfiltered hope, and you are met with questions that evoke doubt, your brain processes it as a deep emotional betrayal. because it is.
what makes these moments so devastating right now is that we are all starting to unravel from the tapes we were given at the exact same time. deconstructing from that conditioning is already terrifying. but when u are called to step off the ledge first and the people closest to you panic, it’s damn near unbearable.
when you are on the journey of transforming into a visionary creator, some people will still be your people. they will recognize what’s happening in you and honor it, even if they don’t fully understand it. but some won’t. your transformation threatens the old agreement you had with them. they knew how to relate to the smaller, compliant, performing version of you, the high-achieving corporate athlete who needed their approval because you were both chasing the same infinity stones.
when you stop performing, you break the mirror. your freedom becomes an unintended accusation against their continued endurance. they don’t know how to relate or hold you in that moment because celebrating your exit would mean admitting that the tape they are still running is a lie. so instead, the tape gets weaponized to dismantle your confidence and have you questioning your own judgement and what you heard from God.
this is the true weight of the Day One friendship massacre. the collateral damage of a collective awakening.
so if you’re standing at this ledge terrified of what it might cost to say it out loud...
1. we are all on different timelines. when you leave a prestigious job to pursue your assignment, they may not understand. when you take a pay cut to align with your calling, some will think you’re being irresponsible. when you walk away from opportunities that look good on paper, they’ll question it. your life won’t make sense to them because you’re operating from a logic they haven’t been given access to yet.
2. your job is not to convince them. your job is to keep walking, to stay in relationship where you can, and to trust that over time, your life will become the explanation your words couldn’t be. don’t slow down for the friends around you. pray that they catch up and their eyes be opened.
3. grieve what the calling costs. because it does cost something. following the calling doesn’t just cost you your job, or your stability. it costs you people you love… and often the people you loved most. the isolation is real. feeling misunderstood is real. the loneliness of knowing that the people who love you can’t always see what you see is one of the hardest parts of the ride. you can hold that grief while still walking. both are allowed.
but the only way to know if the Day Ones can make it to the other side is to speak your truth. what i now know is that everything has to be broken down to be rebuilt. you’ve got to say it out loud and know that whatever the outcome, you will be ok. if it doesn’t work out, trust new and amazing relationships will show up. and if it does work out, how fortunate and blessed you are to get to hold on to each other on the other side of the ride.
releasing of agreements
there were a series of events after that moment that ultimately led to us releasing ourselves from each other. the seasons changed. we changed. we both had to go on our own journeys of becoming away from each other. seeing her happy and free on her Instagram made me realize she jumped off the ledge too and is building a life that’s hers. i’m happy for both of us.
i’m positive that i wasn’t a true safe space for her either. there was something unspoken and unexpressed in her that she couldn’t say to me. or maybe i met her with doubt too. i didn’t have language for what was happening to me. it’s only in hindsight that i recognize that i didn’t have the capacity to steward that season well with us. i wish i had the tools and the language i have now back then. but who knows if we would’ve survived it.
maybe we one day we will find our way back to each other as the truer version of ourselves.
maybe not.
sending u so much love,
m
p.s. i would love to hear your thoughts…what relational friction are you experiencing as a result of your own evolution right now? don’t leave me out here in this vulnerability hangover pls 😩