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What would make you a great friend?

Dear Creatrix,

How did the first week of this chapter go for you?

What have you learned about yourself? Or about your friendship patterns and what you would like to have in the future? How was it to look back at the friendships you had so far?

And did you decide to reconnect with someone from your past?

When I first wrote this chapter in 2023, right as I was writing that last lesson, a person I was friends with as a baby contacted me – and we started to reconnect, which was really sweet and which shows how our energy creates our reality.

As I promised, I’m going to share a bit more about my story and how I got here, today, with you. I updated this part a bit, in 2025, as a lot has changed for me in terms of friendships and how I see my past over the course of the last years.

We always have to take one step at a time, and can only change as much as we can handle.

I see that clearly now.

In 2023 I still thought I just distanced myself temporarily from my old friends to heal, but the more I did heal, the less I felt attracted to going back, and now I desire to move in different and new directions. But had I known I was going to loose all my friends over creating the changes I desired in my life, it would have been much harder to allow myself to do it. That’s why I say we are always right exactly where we are. One step will need to the next, and we don’t actually have to worry about it, if we follow our hearts and our internal guidance.

So, just be true to yourself, and do what feels right for you right now, and then see where that takes you. 💖

Here’s my story:

When I moved to the countryside in 2021, I left most of my friends behind in Berlin, where I had lived for 12 years, and so we then had to reconfigure our friendships.

And that wasn’t even the first time that happened, as some years before that, I stopped drinking alcohol and created a new schedule for myself, so my friends and I had to change the way we interacted with each other at that point as well.

For years before that, almost all of my social activities involved alcohol. I met my friends in bars in the evenings, went to concerts or other events, and everyone I knew always had an alcoholic drink in their hands.

Of course, I knew that that wasn’t a very healthy way to live, but as everyone I knew was doing it, it also didn’t seem too strange.

And I feel really lucky, and happy and grateful, that for me, it didn’t take a big health problem, or an accident, or something tragic to change my life. Though maybe if I’m really honest, that’s exactly what it took – even though I wasn’t so sick yet. But I saw others die or get sick, because of the way we lived, and I was scared that if I continued – I’d be next.

I lost some friends because their bodies couldn’t take it, or because their mental health got so bad, that they didn’t want to live any more, and it came as a surprise each time – and showed me how fragile life is again and again – and how important it is to learn to make wise choices for ourselves.

So I wanted to avoid their fate, and at the same time, I realized it was a sign from the heavens for me to move from where I was to explore new options for myself.

Because there wasn’t any more growth for me in this lifestyle, either.

So, just as exciting as hedonism seemed at a certain point in my life, it also became lacking in climax and even got quite scary at another point, literally seeing more people die in their 30s, 40s and 50s as a result of health or mental health issues.

Therefore, at that point, when I decided to make changes in my life, I also had to rethink my friendships and see how we might be able to redefine them as well, which was very scary in a way, because while I craved change, I also didn’t want to lose the friends who were still alive over the changes I was about to make – because it felt like I couldn’t or didn’t want to lose it all at once.

But as it turns out, if you do want to shift into a new reality, you might have to let go of all attachment to the old one. Yet, as a first step, I gave up my old habits and not my friends, and as a result, it took a few years to transition into a new reality fully, which is fine as it was the time I needed.

When you move away, it seems kind of a given that things have to change, but when you want to change your lifestyle within the same environment, it can feel even more difficult to communicate the changes because we are always a mirror to each other – and saying to people that you don’t want to continue things as they are, can be seen as a critique on the choices other people continue to make.

In the beginning, I still tried to go to bars with people and just not drink, but it honestly wasn’t interesting enough to watch people get drunk to ruin my sleep schedule for that. So I lost some friends who were attached to that lifestyle and who didn’t want to or knew how to connect in other ways, right away.

But the most important ones remained.

And what I had to accept was, that, essentially, it’s not a friendship worth keeping, if it isn’t there to support us in making healthy and wise decisions for ourselves, is it?

So, I started to ask my remaining friends: Can we go to the museum during the day? Can we try out the new café around the corner? We organized collage nights and went for walks in our lunch breaks, instead of meeting for pub, bar or party nights. We went swimming together, we looked at art together, or went to the theatre or ballet. We met for a BBQ or in a restaurant.

It was a bit clumsy at first, but it worked and everybody else seemed genuinely happy about the changes, too.

But then, when I moved away, my spiritual awakening which had already led me to make the first changes of quitting alcohol, cigarettes and late nights, kicked in even more and so, while I did stay in touch with some of my friends over the years, it’s not as close as it has once been, simply because our main interest points have shifted.

So it’s been quite a journey for me, that was part of my gradual transition into more healing and creating healthier relationships.

In the beginning, I just wanted to be happier and healthier, I never thought I could lose all my friends over this. Yet, I did, and looking back, I realize that it was good that I didn’t know that when I started because it would have felt far too scary.

Yet again, I encourage you to trust that everything always turns out in the best way possible because we are never given more than we can handle.

Does this resonate? And how do you feel about it?