20 I Refriendulating: Celebrating the platonic soulmates in life

Friendship, for many of us, can be one of the most important relationships we have, yet it doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. We throw parties and showers when someone gets married, but don’t spend enough time honoring the friends who love and accept us through life’s different chapters. In this episode, Julia talks with her platonic soul mate, Lia, about what makes their friendship special and how they’ve stayed close through hard moments that could have separated them.

__________________________________________________________

Episode transcript is below. Transcripts may not appear in their final form.
__________________________________________________________

Julia Winston: I'm Julia Winston and this is Refamulating, a show about different ways to make a family. 

One of the themes that has come up over and over again since we started Refamulating is friendship. It’s come up in interviews or when I’m talking about the show with people, but it’s also such a prominent theme in my own life. 

 I mean one of the reasons I wanted to start this show was because I was like, what does family mean for me? As a child-free woman who was single throughout most of my 20s and 30s, friends have played an outsized role in my life. And I know that this is the case for a lot of you out there, whether you’re coupled or single. For many people, our friends become our chosen family. Maybe you’ve got a big community of friends, a smaller crew of people you lean on, or there’s a specific, individual person who plays a really big role in your life: a “best friend.”

In society, we put a lot of emphasis on romantic partnership. It’s almost like love is a hierarchy with romantic love at the top, and all other forms of love are less significant. I totally bought into this belief for most of my life. When I was single I often felt like I was behind or missing out on the most important type of love. But when I look back at my life from the perspective of friendship, I can see that actually I did have a life partner. I had a best friend by my side who gave me love, support, companionship and pushed me to be the best version of myself. 

So on today's episode I want to tell you the love story between me and my best friend Lia, my platonic soulmate. 

Julia Winston: We met when we were 29. I think it was 29.

Lia: Yeah, 29 sounds right.

Julia Winston: I think all of us want to be seen and chosen. And I think that I always had the story like most women that You want a man to choose you. You want a man to, like, ride in on a white horse and, like, rescue you, you know? And something really magical that happened to me when I was 29 was that I met you. And I didn't realize that, like, feeling chosen Oh my god, I'm already gonna fucking cry.

Lia: Bring it on! Ah!

Julia Winston: like I met you and somehow without me even realizing it, I met like my person. And, and suddenly I had a person who was my person, and it's been like that for the last 12 years since we met, and it's a crazy gift that I feel like I've received in this life to have met you and, and to have become best friends with you.

music

Julia Winston: When we started working on this episode, I realized that in order to tell my best friend love story, I wanted to be a guest, not a host. So our executive producer Claire McInerny stepped in as the interviewer for this one. You'll hear her voice throughout this episode as well. 

Claire McInerny: I want to hear the story of how you guys met and like, like your, your friend meet cute story. 

Lia: My husband had a birthday party, just like a casual birthday party in San Francisco in the Panhandle, which is like a big park. We invited a work friend of mine and, he brought Julia because he was like, I'm going to bring the person I'm dating. and I can picture so clearly like what you were wearing and like you had this really cool. I mean, you still have the same hair there's like big curly hair kind of on top of your head and you had like a cool bandana or headband or something and you have this big beautiful smile, which anyone who's met you knows and I just remember like, I was like, okay, Leah, like you can do this. Like you can go, like, you can go be the person, the friend pursuer and going and talking to you and having a great conversation and just getting really good vibes and pushing myself to be really open and we hit it off. We bonded over the fact that we were on the same antidepressants at the time. I don't know if you want to put that in the podcast, but, um,

Julia Winston: We were both a little bit, a little anxious. We were like, Oh my God, you're anxious too. You're an anxious Jew? Like me?

Lia: And we, we laughed at that so hard and I was like, okay, this is my person because like someone who can take the The, the things that are challenging about life and like, hold them lightly. And I just, I had not really known people to do that before. And I was, but I was craving that. And um, we laughed and we danced and we had a great time. And just like, yeah, falling head over heels in love.

Julia Winston: Totally. My, my version of the story is, is similar. But then when you reached out to me later, I was like, Whoa, she's like making an effort to be friends. This is amazing. Because I'd only lived in San Francisco for like a year at that point. And I didn't really have any friends outside of my, the people I worked with and you were someone who was really reaching out your hand to me from outside of my bubble, but you were my neighbor, so I was really pumped about the opportunity to hang out and I, I will never forget our, um, I will never forget the Hardly Strictly moment where we were in the middle of this bluegrass festival, sitting on the ground, people are dancing everywhere all around us, there's like a lot of energy, but we were like, zoom, like, we were just in a deep conversation, and we did not care what was happening around us, we were just like, in it. And people were, I remember trying to like interrupt us cause they wanted us to come hang out. And we were like, no, we're busy, which is definitely a trend that has continued. Like if we're in a moment together, like you will not enter this force field. 

Julia Winston: And I also remember, um, to your point about like the falling head over heels moment. I remember one time when you came over to my house and I was like living in this startup house with a bunch of other entrepreneurs.

And I basically, anytime I brought anyone over, We would go to my room because I, there was no private space. So I like invited you over and you like came up to my room and I remember kind of like having a crush on you and we were sitting on my bed and I was like, she's so pretty. Should I like. Try and kiss her right now. But then I was like, no, she's married and I'm straight. What turns out I wasn't totally straight. Didn't totally know that at the time, but yeah, I felt an attraction to you. You know, I was like, this person is so beautiful and intriguing to me. And I just remember. That being the beginning of a lot of curiosity and wanting to spend more time with you.

Looking back, the attraction I felt towards Lia kind of reminds me of the feeling I had in adolescence when I met a cool new girlfriend who I admired and respected. Some of us are more fluid than others when it comes to sexuality, so these attractions can be a little confusing but in this case it became clear pretty quickly the attraction between me and Lia was purely platonic - and electrically charged.

Lia: I think that that, that feeling is just like an energy, right? and there can be this like sexy energy between people which is just like I see you you see me We're vibing like our energies together are creating this like chemistry. It's chemistry. I've been with my husband for a really fucking long time haven't done a lot of like, you know dating new people. But That feeling, I imagine that is kind of like what it feels like to start to date somebody new that you really like, it's like you're, you want, like, I remember being like, Oh my gosh, I, I had similar feelings, right? Like, I want to spend all my time with this person.

Like, I can't, I get a text from them and I'm like, so excited. I'm like giddy with excitement when I go to hang out with them. And we felt pretty hard. 

Julia Winston: When Lia and I met, she’d been married for a couple years to her husband, Matt, who also plays an important role in this love story. I spent a lot of time at their house, in fact we had the keys to each other’s houses. We went hiking almost every weekend and had family dinner most Sunday nights. It wasn’t long into our friendship that Matt started calling me his wife’s wife. 

Julia Winston: Matt, um, said something so sweet to me once. it was on my birthday last year. He, he thanked me for the relationship that you and I have. And he said, Like, what you, and what you do for Leah, I'll never be able to do for her. Like, you have something totally different and unique and what you and Leah have makes our relationship better. And you can give her things that I will never be able to give her and I want to thank you for that. And that just like, Ugh, it makes me want to cry right now because it's just like the most gracious attitude a partner could have. I feel like we've been given full reign to love each other in this way that I don't, I wouldn't, neither of us would have been able to grow in our secure attachment\ in the ways that we have if you know, we hadn't both had that freedom. So I I just think there's been a level of freedom that even though our lives have looked very different in terms of being coupled And uncoupled that we've both been given the space to love each other in this way that I think is very rare 

Lia: Matt is just not a jealous person. Um, He, I mean, I even asked him, we spent New Year's together and I was like, Hey, do you ever get jealous?

I like, sometimes I ask him that and he's like, no, he's like, I'm not. Because Julia and I talk a lot, we like to pontificate about our relationship, like around him. And sometimes I'm like, I'm like, Oh, does that ever bother you? He's like, no, I'm thinking about something else, like what to make for dinner or whatever. Even the other day, I was like supposed to be cooking dinner or something and I was like, I gotta go talk to Julia for like an hour and a half on

Julia Winston: Let’s not forget, for Matt’s birthday we all went camping and like he said he got up there early and he set up the tents and everything. And you and I rolled in late And we took over the big tent and we slept together in his tent and there was this other small tent like separate and you were like, oh julia's gonna sleep with me in the main tent. I hope that's okay And he goes. Oh, I assumed i'm sleeping in this small tent.

Lia: On his own birthday.

Julia Winston: On his birthday and all of our friends were like wait all of his friends and your friends were like wait You guys are sleeping together? 

music 

Julia Winston: Back in the early days of our friendship, it started becoming evident that my relationship with Lia was unlike any other friendship I'd had. I called her my best friend, but that sometimes felt so trite. It's like when you're dating someone seriously, maybe you’re living together, and using the term girlfriend or boyfriend feels so juvenile for how serious it is. 

I often felt that way when talking about Lia. I had a handful of deep friendships that were really important to me, but this one felt different, and I had no words for it. Until....we traveled to Oaxaca Mexico two years into our friendship.

Julia Winston: Right when we got there, we were sitting in the town square and, This guy came up to us, this local guy who was like really young. He was in his early 20s and we thought he was trying to sell us something, but he really was just like a friendly local who was saying hi and was curious about where we came from.

And his name was Ever. And he became our friend and we ended up spending like our whole week hanging out with him and his friends. And that first day when we met him, when we were trying to describe who we were to each other and where we came from, we were like, Oh yeah, we're visiting from San Francisco. We're on vacation. We're best friends. And he was like, Oh, like Alma Gemela. And we were like, what's that? And he was like, it means like soulmate in Spanish, like a soul twin. And. We were like, yeah, that is totally what we are. And that became our nickname for each other. Like we call each other Alma G, which is shorthand for like basically platonic soulmate.

Lia: That was such a sweet moment because you're right. Best friend is not really the term. But al muhammala is like, it's a deeper thing. And we don't even just call each other that. We, we use it to describe a certain type of interaction that we have, or a certain type of, It's like when we're describing that, we're saying like, this is an Alma G moment.

It's like we, that means a really specific thing to us. We're always finding new ways that we can use that, that term because it is a deeper soul level relationship where it's like, in some ways we've always said that we're like mirroring each other's souls. We're showing each other self compassion by being compassionate to the other person. 

Julia Winston: Well, we're here to help each other grow. Like for us, we started realizing that one of the great gifts of this friendship is that we have the opportunity to help each other grow as humans, um, being more loving humans because we share so many of the same qualities that we each struggle with.

So when I see you struggling with something that I know I struggle with, By showing you compassion, it's also me showing myself compassion, and vice versa. And so that is what we've started referring to as an alma g moment. It's like if I see you struggling, but I can hold you with compassion in that moment, that's also a way of me extending love to myself. And when you do that, it's the same thing for you. And so there's this like really beautiful thing that happens, especially during moments of conflict for us. Because sometimes you're struggling on your own, and I can be there for you in an Alma G moment. And then, you know, there are times I'm struggling and you show up for me, but then there's some times where we're struggling with each other.

And those are the most powerful moments where we did just the other day decide in this sort of like progression of, um, our use of the term Alma G, that now we're using that as code for like, This is a moment where we're both struggling and let's be loving towards each other and use this moment to grow right now.

One of the most striking features about my friendship with Lia is our ability to deal with conflict. We’ve known each other for almost 12 years now, and in that time we’ve hurt each other’s feelings, we’ve had disagreements, and we’ve learned how to move through those moments in a way that makes our friendship stronger. 

One of our first conflicts happened in the first six months of knowing each other. After we met and fell in love, we planned a month-long trip to Israel and Turkey just the two of us. (As one does when falling passionately, wildly in love). During that trip, I was bonding with some locals in a way that made Lia feel left out and the tension that surfaced became impossible to ignore. When we addressed it head-on, it was the first time I saw the depth of Lia's emotional world. She shared how she felt, which was confronting for me, but we both rose to the occasion and worked through it in a loving way.

Lia: I think one thing that was kind of cool about it was like, maybe if it had happened in San Francisco, you know, you have days that would go by or weeks that would go by and you wouldn't talk about it, you wouldn't unpack it, you wouldn't sort of clear it, we had to do it like the next day because we were traveling together and we were like, we're here. I remember we were in Istanbul like walking around, I remember we'd gone to see like the Hagia Sophia and then we like sat down on a Park bench near there and like had a whole conversation about it. I feel like there hadn't been really too much in the way of conflict before that, but that was the first one where it was like, Oh wow. Yeah. Like who you are before and where you came from and all the things that you're holding, like they show up in this relationship and we had to work through it. And we, we started to build that muscle early.

Julia Winston: Spending a full month together just the two of us paired with that moment of conflict proved that we really did have something special. We knew we loved each other, and then we learned we were willing to fight for it.

Lia: I mean, I feel like on that trip, it was cool because we were really getting to know each other's backstories in this very deep way. We were, every night, you know, going to dinner, and having wine, and talking to each other, and just kind of, like, unpacking our entire lives. I heard someone say, it takes 200 hours of like shared experiences to create like a real friendship. We like way surpassed 200 hours on this trip.

Julia Winston: As the years went on, we encountered moments of divergence that went deeper than just feeling left out of a hang. The biggest one happened in 2019 when Lia got pregnant. For years Lia and Matt felt like family and Lia was able to prioritize me in a way that not all married people do. But in 2019... that changed. 

Lia: Matt and I got pregnant and we moved to Oakland and bought a house and that was right before COVID and then COVID happened. And then Julia was like in a kind of not a great relationship that ended kind of right around then. And it was like, one of these moments where like, So much change was happening for both of us in very opposite directions and life circumstances had changed such that I couldn't just like spend the kind of time with her that we had before and she was used to, you know, being included in the unit in a certain way. And we were trying, but it wasn't hard because of COVID. It was just like all these circumstances that kind of like blew up and that was the low point of our relationship, um, for sure. 

Julia Winston: it was like, so painful for me to know that you and Matt and River were just down the street, but like, I, I wasn't part of the unit. I couldn't be because of COVID and I resented you and I resented things. And I also knew that that wasn't correct or healthy, like that, that wasn't fair. You didn't have any control over that. You were doing what you needed to do. I think that that was when I kind of recognized that there was a level of codependence that had in our relationship where I was really needing my connection with you and your family unit in order to feel complete in my life in the bay area. And You know, it was really hard, but I I had to come I had to see that clearly in order to make the tough choice to move back to Austin after almost a decade of living in the Bay Area because I was like, it's time for me to go home to my family.

Lia: It was devastating for me. And I know hard for her too, in a lot of ways. and I'll never forget, uh, Julia, I think about this all the time, how like we were on the phone and I was just like, I was crying. I was so upset. I mean, I'm supporting, cause I knew why you were moving and I absolutely understood why you would make that choice. And I supported it and I got it. And I was like there for it. I was like, if I were you, I would do the same thing, but I hadn't been able to fully understand the pain you'd been experiencing and the way that you'd been kind of like the day to day of like what your life had been like. I just couldn't understand it and that was hard for you and hard for me too. And um, we were talking and you were like, this is gonna be better for our relationship. Like this is what I need to do, like part of it. It's like you weren't moving because of our relationship, but you were like I'm making this choice in part because I, I, I know this is like actually going to strengthen our relationship.

Julia Winston: It was really hard. I mean, that was like a really tough time. I also remember. Like vaguely understanding, but like recognizing that I couldn't fully understand how much you wanted me to see what your life was like as a new mom. Like you had a baby and I, I had my own needs from you, which was to feel accepted and to feel part of the family, you know, part of your life in a way that you couldn't, but then my pain was like taking over my ability to even see you clearly in your journey as a new mom. 

Lia: motherhood has been beautiful and wonderful and also like so challenging and life shattering and required really deep personal work for me. , and I think it wasn't even until pretty recently, I think that Julia had a deeper understanding of kind of like what that's looked like for me internally. And so, um, it's those ways in which we, we, we, We have separation. 

Julia Winston: So we just like, were not able to be close in the way that both of us wanted at that time. And I do feel like it was like, oh my gosh, we, if we want our friendship to remain strong, like this, this is a moment where it could like, it could crumble a little bit and I really appreciate hearing you recognize, you know that that prescience because I'd been working through it a lot in therapy I really had no other relationships to like talk about at that time.

I don't know if anyone out there has ever seen broad city, but I freaking love that show and like we have this joke so Abby and Alana have this like amazing best friendship and then there's like this one moment in this episode of Broad City where they're making a joke of their codependence and they start calling it Lil Cody and I was like, oh my god, yes!

Lia: Yeah. yeah, we like realized that sometimes we were holding things back that were important for us to grow as a whole individual human and person.

Julia Winston: We didn’t want to hurt each other's feelings.

Lia: and that's, you know, that was the little Cody and it's like, okay, how do we both be whole and continue to grow on our own because we had become like so intertwined with each other's lives by that point. We, we sometimes see it crop up, but now we know it and we say, Oh, little Cody and we can like be, we can be light about it.

Julia Winston: Yes. Thank god for these like code words. 

Claire McInerny: Julia, I want to go back to something you said when you guys were talking about like that really painful moment where you were going back to Austin, you were kind of recognizing like there was a lot of codependency, but you said that you, you told Leah it would be better for your relationship and like, what made you think it would be better?

Julia Winston: I’m gonna go on a little tangent, but I'm gonna answer your question. I used to have this corporate job and I got to a certain point where like nine months had gone by and I was like This is not working like something is not working here. And I didn't know what to do and I felt really hopeless and I remember having this sort of like epiphany That either I could change my attitude, I could change my situation, Or I could do both and I ended up doing both. I ended up leaving, like changing my attitude and leaving that job and becoming a contractor and still working with them. I just needed to shift my relationship with them. And I think that subconsciously I felt that same sort of feeling when I got to this place where I was miserable during COVID and I felt hopeless.

I felt like I had reached the end of some sort of road. And what started becoming clear to me was that I needed to change my attitude. And I was having a hard time doing that in my circumstances. And so I was like, I need to change my circumstances in order to change my attitude. I needed to do both. I knew that I would be a better version of myself if I did that. And that that would translate to my relationship with Leah because I was putting so much pressure on our relationship to give me connection and I just wasn't going to be able to get everything from this one source.

It's kind of like in a romantic relationship, if you're depending entirely on your romantic partner to get all of your needs met, it's going to break under the weight of that pressure. And I felt like that was sort of starting to happen for me and Leah. And I think part of the reason I knew that is because in my journaling and in my, In my therapy, there was a level of intensity and attention on my relationship with Leah that was unhealthy.

And, I, I understand now that it's because I didn't have enough filling me outside of the relationship. And, It wasn't going to happen in Oakland living alone during a pandemic. And so I knew it was time to move on and it was a bit of a leap of faith because I didn't really know I didn't really know how things would change It was scary because then we were going to enter for the first time in the live The lifetime of our friendship a long distance friendship and that was a huge jump for us. But um, I knew that it was time to begin again And I also knew that we had already departed anyways from the way things had been because she was a mom and I wasn't so things were going to change anyways. 

Claire McInerny: I want to ask how parenthood for you, Leah, cause that's a big shift, you know, you, a lot of your energy has to go to caring for a baby. So what did that look like for you too?

Lia: Yeah, I think Julia left River, my son, was about 19 months or so, um, or 20 months when she left. So we had a little go at it. Right. I Mean, part of my entry to motherhood was pretty rocky and it was just such a, I mean, it was, um, It was, some people have a smoother time at it. It was not smooth for me for a variety of reasons. I had a really big, intense job at the time. My husband also was working a lot away from the home. Um, once COVID hit, that helped a little bit. Um, but then that isolated us completely. I totally had postpartum anxiety, but I was Didn't want to admit it and was sort of running from that and I felt like my own sense of being like alone and in an echo chamber and you know Terrified and anxious all the time and not like myself I didn't feel like myself for probably like two years after my son's birth. I had a totally different envisioned motherhood being really different than it was. And I felt a lot of like shame about that. And it felt very hard to talk about, about just like the challenge, the way that it was hard for me.

And so I think I didn't have language for that and I didn't know how to talk about it. And I didn't know how to talk about it with somebody who, I mean, I could barely even talk about it with like, other moms who didn't seem like they were struggling. But at the time I was really like, whoa, this isn't what I thought it was going to be. I'm really freaked out by it. I'm freaked out by my own experience of it. And I wasn't able to share that with Julia, um, probably partly because she wasn't having that experience and I, I didn't want to, I, I felt so much pressure even in my relationship with her to kind of like show up a certain way around motherhood and it took a long time to unwind that. So there was that and I also could tell that. The very fact that I had a baby and that Matt and I were this unit was really painful for her. I mean, I knew, this is where a little Cody comes up because I would withhold some of the hard stuff, but I would also withhold a lot of the joy, um, because I didn't want to, I didn't want to cause Julia pain, you know, and that was, um, to the detriment of our relationship because I think Julia didn't understand or have a clear picture at all of what mothering was like for me, the ups and the downs.

And I really hid that from her. It was not her fault. And I was like so cautious to not want to trigger her. And, um, some of my pain has been around like seeing all the freedom and space that Julia has, which is like sometimes painful for me to witness. Um, because I feel so constricted, restricted in terms of my time and energy and movement.

We have made an effort to be together one on one in some capacity every year.And it truly is like medicine for me. I take that back to my life, my parenting.

Claire McInerny: Julia, what was your experience when Leah had started going into motherhood, like what's the flip side of what she just talked about?

Julia Winston: Oh man, you know, I think one of my, uh, challenges is, uh, for anyone who's familiar with the Enneagram, I'm an Enneagram seven. And so I love having a million experiences, but the, the shadow is that I don't like when things are not pleasant. And so I tend to hide from that. 

When I think back to when leah first got pregnant, I think I started feeling a schism um when I started feeling A little bit of a drift within myself when she and Matt started trying to get pregnant because I knew I think I was almost protecting myself like, Oh, things are going to change.

I need to go find my own sources of social connection and fulfillment to prepare myself for this. And around that time, um, I was like hosting a lot of events and I was spending a lot of time. You know, with like, uh, you know, various communities and I was really like revving up and I think I, I remember, I don't know if you remember this Leah, but I think there were some times during that period, like when you were getting pregnant, when you got pregnant and the challenges that you had to on your fertility journey, I was with you, but I also like couldn't relate to you and I was just kind of disappearing into my like party friend, you know, social butterfly mode.

And I could see that that, that there was a gap. Yeah. You know, a little bit of a wedge forming between us. It wasn't anything that was going to break our friendship, but I felt that there was like a little bit of distance creeping in just because we were no longer fully on the same page. So I think I was doing a lot of like preparing myself, protecting myself from distance by creating it a little bit. And, um, and then, but it was also so beautiful. Like, I was so happy for her and Matt, and I will never forget showing up the day River was born. And I had been listening on repeat to Leon Bridges song River and playing it in the hospital and just being, feeling so, like, connected to their baby and holding him and So much care for Leah and Matt, bringing them pizza and wanting to be part of their lives. Um, so it's all true, I was protecting myself from the distance that was forming inevitably through our difference in experiences. And I was also like, so it was also such a beautiful evolution of watching my best friend become a mother.

Julia Winston: Earlier, Lia and I described how Alma G is our name for each other but also a way to describe moments when one of us feels the need to reconnect. One of us might shoot the other one a text and say something like, “hey boo can we have an alma G moment?” It's a soft way to open up a vulnerable conversations that will hopefully lead to us getting closer and understanding each other better when things get tough.

Lia: I think that the crux of almost all of our, like, moments of conflict have been around moments where we haven't been able to truly see or witness each other's experience, I would say. And sometimes those are little, little tiny things. Most of the time it's around bigger stuff. Like, there are ways in which Julia and my lived experience are very similar, and in some ways, like, we are soul twins. Like, our souls are very similar in a lot of ways. And our lived experiences have been really different in a lot of ways too. And in some ways that have been like painful or brought up challenges for the other.

And sometimes we just simply can't see the other person's experience. And that has been hard. Um, and in those moments, we've had to like call the other one into understanding. Where we're at and, and being more, it's like you want this person to just know, right? We often say like, I wish I could just download my brain to you, you know, um, but you have to explain. And, and so I think the moment, the places where we're separate have sometimes caused this, the conflict. And when we come together to talk about it, we get an opportunity to really see the other person and everything that they're holding. That's hard. And what's, and the good, obviously too.

Julia Winston: I think that was so well said. Actually, I got emotional hearing you talk about, um, that we, we've grown in our secure attachment to each other through that. I feel like every time we've had a moment of conflict, um, It's been an opportunity for us to practice trusting that we're going to make it through it and knowing that we're both equally committed I think that's something really important is there's a level of reciprocity In our like we are both equally committed to being there like there's never a question that one of us is going to turn and walk away or abandon each other and that's been really important for us because one of the things that We experience in this life that's similar is we've, we've had insecurity about is, you know, being left behind or being excluded.

And so we really get to practice like ensuring, reassuring the other person that like, I'm here, I'm not going anywhere. And over the years, we've come to really trust (and know that that’s true)

Leah is married and she's been in a relationship for a really long time and she has two kids. I am newly in a relationship, but I've spent most of my adult life single and I don't have children and So there are, there are ways that we've lived our lives that are just different from each other. I've gotten opportunities as a single person that Leah hasn't as someone who's coupled and now has children.

She's experienced love and intimacy in ways that I just haven't as someone who's been really single for most of my life. And so I think that when the challenges, um, or joys that have arisen for each of us, uh, are something that the other person just can't understand. And we're wanting to be held by our Alma G in those moments, but like she doesn't know how or doesn't understand the significance of the moment. It can be excruciating because that's like the person who you feel like should be there for you the most during a time when things are hard. But like if she's on her own path and doesn't really get it, she can't. And so the only way for us to get there is to really bring the other person in, and that can be really vulnerable

Julia Winston: My relationship with Lia taught me that a friend can be a great love in your life. That a friendship can be as supportive and special as a romantic partner. But not everyone prioritizes friendship this way, and it's no wonder because society doesn’t recognize its importance. We really have to fight for our friendships. An metaphor I read about recently that speaks to this perfectly comes from the book Big Friendship by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman. It’s this idea of a burner on a stove. There are four burners on a stove and each burner represents an important part of life. Family, friends, work, and health. And when things get busy, the friendship burner is the first to fall off. Even though they’re crucial to our health and wellbeing, we’re not conditioned to value friendship as much as the other three. 

This can be especially challenging when one friend starts a family and the other doesn’t, because priorities and availabilities start to shift. And that’s something Lia and I have navigated as she’s moved into her role as a mother. 

Claire McInerny: It sounds like, you know, certain moments have happened and you've learned from them and you were saying, like, now it's easier to address things, but like, how do you start those conversations and how did you, when you first started get the courage or find the words or say it in a way where the other person would understand and not get defensive or something.

Lia: I feel like one thing that's, oh, that's really true about Julia and I individually, and this is probably why we've been able to be, why we're Alma Gs, but is because we do our own personal work and we are deeply aware of what our own personal work is. And we're also aware of what the other person's personal work is. I remember in the beginning, I would feel really flooded with emotion and a lot of anxiety of friendships where I'd been burned in the past, you know, um, or some anxious attachments shit that would come up and I would feel flooded.

But over time as I learned, I feel like I gained so much more like emotional agility through my relationship with Julia. And by that I mean, like, really understanding what emotions were coming up and understanding the way that they were working within me and we would talk about these things and we had such an awareness of each other's stuff because we would talk about it all the time in the context of our relationships with other people and other things that were coming up in our lives. And so when I would bring something to Julia, it was with this perspective of like, Hey, I know. And even just the other day, I was like, Hey, I know a lot of this is mine to own. And I can also imagine that if I were you and knowing what I know about you, that I would feel this way. And we have a very global awareness of each other's strengths of each other's shadows. And also, um, History. And so, and, and we're always doing our work. Like, I know that if I say something to Julia, like, she is going to think about it, and she's going to take it to heart. She's going to integrate it into her own personal work that she's doing, and her own, like, Her own exploration, and she trusts me to do the same, and so it's never with a blame or with any kind of accusation.

Julia Winston: At this point in my life, no one knows me better than Lia. It takes years of sharing  intimate moments - both joyful and challenging - to really know someone and build the kind of trust and resilience Lia and I have built. When you’re first getting to know someone, conflict can bring up anxiety because you’re not sure if they’re gonna stick around, or if you’ll want to. But over the years, Lia and I have proven to each other that we will, no matter what. We’ve given each other the gift of secure attachment. 

Lia: And I think, again, that took practice. It wasn't always easy. I think in the beginning we were like, Alright, I'm showing up to the table, and like, it might be really uncomfortable, and like, sometimes it is, but I'm just gonna keep showing up. And then over time These conversations have become so transformative because there's always light bulbs and always ahas in them. Um, but it's that willingness to do your own personal work that's, I think, necessary and the willingness to be like, hey, I seem, I own my part in this, um, and I know how, These are dynamics. It's not me. It's like us. And, um, Julia and I have always held the us.

Julia Winston: I love that answer. It's just like, oh, it's so satisfying. And I think there's one other thing I would add. Which is, it's too precious to let go. You know, I think we've always just known that, that like there's something really special here and part of what is so special is the chemistry that Leah talked about early on, but it's also like, it's very rare to meet someone who just feels like a fit.

When you meet a human who feels like a fit, regardless of the context, whether it's romantic or otherwise. That's something to hold on to, that's something to fight for, and so when things aren't perfect, even if it's super uncomfortable and I really don't want to deal with it, like, I don't want to lose Leah and so I'm going to pay that price of discomfort in the moment in order to keep investing more deeply in the relationship.

And I, I just like, I've, I've had so many wonderful friends through my life, which has been a gift, but there's this thing with Leah where like, not only is there an emotional and spiritual and mental and intellectual resonance, but we like all the same stuff. We like hiking. We like traveling. We have a similar sense of humor. We enjoy the same like books and films and there's just so much in common that it would be a massive loss. 

Julia Winston: Beyond our years of shared history, these common interests are what have kept Lia and I close when other factors strain our friendship. When she became a mother, when we’ve had moments of tension, we know we’ve got other, simpler, things to fall back on to feel connected. And I realize after more than a decade of friendship with Lia how important that is. When things get hard, and even when they don’t feel totally resolved, we keep talking it out as we lean on our shared interests. We just keep going.

It is worth the investment. The short term pain is worth the depth of investment because the friendship keeps generatively. The friendship keeps generating more and more riches for me in my inner world and just in my lived experience. So like it's worth it and I've learned that now. I, I wish I could go back in time and like talk to Julia and Leah of 10 years ago when we were like fresh into our, you know, a couple of years into our friendship and be like, why are you in these hard moments? Why are you sticking around? But right now it's so obvious that like, it's worth it. It's worth the investment. Yeah,

Lia: I think every time we have one of those conversations, it, it unlocks like a next like level of our friendship. And that's the reason why we keep doing it because we know that it's necessary to grow the relationship and to deepen the relationship.  It's like we didn't even know what it could possibly become, but we, we somehow knew. I love that answer so much. I think it's so true. I mean, I've never felt anything except for like, just pure love underneath the hard conversations. And Julia is you are love, you know, in so many ways and you just don't walk away from that. Like you, you, you got me for life. You're stuck with me. Um. And it's just, it's like, I, like I said, I can't imagine my life without you. I know that like, when we're old and gray, like we're going to be hanging out, we're going to be talking about this, we're going to be talking about all the times, you know? And I have a vision for us now of that time and like to continue deepening into that. And so I'm like, I'm, I'm in it for the long haul and probably a future life too, because our souls are twins. 

Julia Winston: We’ll be back again. I, I feel the same way and I feel like even in this moment, so seen by you, like. In my meditation practice every day I try to be love and like for you to say that it's like there's no deeper way I could feel seen by you than to hear that from the person who I've like really been through it with like if you still feel that way about me even though we've been through hard times and you I feel like you really get me.

Lia: Yeah.

Julia Winston: I also just like I Enjoy you I think you're like such an Unbelievable being and like, I love like just seeing you in the world, you know, and I also like I see where you are now and I see how devoted you are to just being the best version of you and I see you becoming that version more and more every day. There is so much depth and capacity for depth that you have that a lot of people don't have. With the joy and the silliness and also the shadow and the tough stuff. It's really like, I see the elder Leah, like I see you as an elder and I'm like, Oh my God, I just want to like, I just want to like sit at her feet by the fire and look into her eyes. Like for her to tell me everything about life.

Lia: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. We'll be sitting together. We'll be sitting together.

Julia Winston: Yeah, we'll be holding hands.