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In this episode, Dani talks about some friendships she's had, how's she's struggled with them, and what she's learned from them.
For links & recommendations, see full episode notes.
Dani is honest and refreshing in her takes on the world and society. Listen as she explains how she’s come to understand the world through kindness, both towards ourselves and everything else.
[0:00] Hello friends! Welcome to Understanding Kindness, a podcast hosted by me, Dani! I’m someone who’s lived some life, and has learned to approach it through learning from everything around me. What I’ve learned along the way is to be kind and understanding to ourselves and all that’s around us. So, join me as I discuss concepts through experience, learning, growth, kindness, and understanding. I approach topics with kindness towards ourselves and everything outside of ourselves, emphasizing the importance of our need for change in this world. If I can do it, you can do it, and we can do it, together. Welcome to Understanding Kindness.
[0:39] (Theme).
[0:44] Hey there everyone! Today we’re going to be talking about friendships…and feelings. This topic and these relationships have been something that I’ve struggled with throughout my life and something that I’ve recently been understanding more, so I want to talk through what I’ve been learning here with you! I’ll discuss some of my friendships and my feelings about them, as well as how those friendships have changed and how my feelings about them have changed. Some of these changes were inevitable and seemed to “just happen”, and some of them were implemented by my own learning, growth, and understanding. Let’s jump into the episode!
[1:21] For today’s Native segment I want to highlight yet another zine that I came across on the Indigenous Action website. This zine, titled “Defend the Territory”, is presented by Warrior Publications and can be found on the Warrior Publications website (linked in the episode notes) as well. “Defend the Territory” is a practical guide of “Tactics and Techniques for Countering Police Assaults on Indigenous Communities”. I’m sharing this one with you today because I, similar to Indigenous Action and Warrior Publications, believe this information needs to be as widely accessible as possible. As you may know from the zine titled “500 Years of Indigenous Resistance” that I highlighted in episode 25, Indigenous Peoples have been resisting colonization for hundreds of years and have acquired vasts amounts of knowledge on defending their territories against colonizers. As is evident by learning just a bit about Indigenous resistance, police are very often used to assault Indigenous communities when they resist colonization through protests and/or blockades. This zine gives an in-depth review of all tactics and weapons utilized by police to suppress Indigenous resistance in order to gain a deep understanding of the lengths they will go to to squelch these voices. By gaining this deep understanding, resistance to colonization can grow stronger and even more resistant of these militant forces. As someone who has yet to be on the frontlines of any resistance, I was not aware of all of these tactics and all the weaponry used against protesters and warriors. After reading through this zine, it is extremely transparent what is being done with such a strong police presence and the police assault. The zine gives detailed information on the specific tactics and weaponry used by police forces. From tear gas, to rubber bullets, from sniper rifles, batons, and tasers, to armored vehicles, police will use any and all of these tactics and equipment to forcibly dismantle peaceful public protests and enforce submission. What was most evident to me through reading about these tactics and techniques is that these militant forces are there to cause fear, destruction, and submission. The weapons used are used to injure and mame human beings. Corralling tactics are utilized to force protestors and warriors into confined spaces where they are unable to leave, then many times assaulted, arrested, and/or kidnapped. These forces are there, not to protect the rights of the Peoples of these lands, they are there to protect private interests, including both corporations and governments. If you need any more convincing of these claims, take a look at this “Defend the Territory” zine to learn more for yourself. Even better, if you are able, with this knowledge, join the frontlines of an Indigenous-led resistance near you. I’ll link everything in the episode notes.
[4:22] {Singing} *Shooouuuuut-Ooooouuuutttttsssssss*Hi there my wonderful Patrons! Thank you, thank you for your continued support! If you’d like to become a member of the Patreon family, visit patreon.com/understandingkindnesspodcast.
[4:42] Now, on to friendships. Friendships are beautiful, unique relationships in our lives that play huge roles. We rely on our friends, not just for companionship, but also for advice, hanging out, having fun, emotional support, and even familial support. I’ve definitely experienced friendships that encompass all of these traits and ones that only entail some of them. None of them were agreed upon beforehand, but they all seemed to work perfectly for both myself and the other person in the relationship. And that’s what friendships are: relationships. They take work and equal partnership; they morph and change over time; they end and new ones begin. Let’s dive into my first real friendship.
[5:29] As some of you dear listeners may know, my first real friendship was with my friend Jasmine. We met in band in the 5th grade and really hit it off during our 6th grade year. We spent almost all of our time together. We’d come home from school and head to each other’s houses, just to go out and rollerblade around the neighborhoods all afternoon. Then we’d spend the rest of the night playing Rock Band in her basement until we fell asleep, then did it all again the next day. Now, we were young during our friendship, but we spent lots of time together and got to know each other’s families well. We got to know each other well. Not like in a typical adult or even young adult friendship. Ours was more like siblings. See, I was essentially an only child at this point because neither of my siblings lived at home anymore and Jasmine’s brother is autistic so they didn’t play together much. We acted as each other’s siblings in this sense. We were there for each other all the time, for anything. And because we spent so much time together, we ended up fighting on more than a few occasions. But, since we were such like siblings, once it was over we just went back to hanging out again. No harm, no foul. It was a truly great friendship.
[6:42] Then, after our 8th grade year, Jasmine moved to Canada and our friendship gradually faded out (until recently…check out our podcast together called Better When Awkward! We did an episode with our moms!). Now this was about 2008/09 and I didn’t understand how to keep a friendship going with someone who lived in another country and who I wasn’t able to see all the time. Jasmine also struggled with trying to keep the friendship going, and with time we stopped talking all together. This is something that now I’m able to look back on and learn from. Relationships take equal effort. And I don’t mean 50/50 in the exact same ways all the time. I mean a 50/50 commitment. We both had to be equally committed to keeping the friendship going, and at that time we just didn’t know how. Even though I can look back at this now and understand what was happening, back then it was really difficult for me. I didn’t understand why she had to leave and I didn’t understand how to keep the friendship going so it was like someone just ripped her away from my life. I took it hard, and it affected how I approached friendships into high school.
[7:54] I didn’t find many friends in high school that I really wanted to hang around with. That is, until I began hanging out with my friend Tonya. Tonya is my friend who helped me through my rough patch in high school. I depended on her for a lot. Whenever I wasn’t at school I wanted to go to Tonya’s house and hang out, even if that meant I’d have to help with the household chores. To me, at least I got to be around my friend and hang out with her afterwards. Tonya also provided me with a lot of emotional support. I was an angst-y teen and feeling pretty lonely and Tonya was always able to brighten things up. So, when she had to move to another state, I took this pretty hard too. Again, I didn’t understand why she had to move and felt like she was just being ripped out of my life. Since then, we’ve seen each other much less and don’t talk as often, but when we do talk it’s like nothing has changed. We pick up right where we left off. We update each other on our lives and still provide that emotional support. From this friendship, I’ve learned that physical distance doesn’t have to mean emotional distance.
[9:01] Soon after Tonya had moved away, I began working and met my friend Jessica. We were very close in college and lived together at one point. We spent almost all of our time together as well. I relied on her for lots of things too. She helped me through my romantic relationship during this period, she helped me with school, with my mental health, and on top of it all she was just there for me. She listened and I hope that I returned at least some of the kindnesses that she showed me. I was really lost from myself at this time and Jessica helped keep me grounded, even when I couldn’t see where the ground was. So, when college ended and we started going on our separate ways, this was really difficult for me yet again. Jessica didn’t move away physically, but both of our lives began moving on. The interconnectedness of our friend group began pulling apart and we saw each other less and less. With that we talked less and less too. This was really hard because I began feeling like I was losing another friend. It wasn’t until recently that I learned that I hadn’t lost any of these friends in my life, our relationships to each other were just changing as our lives changed.
[10:15] And that’s what my friendship with Jessica taught me most. Our lives will shift and morph, and we can still make the choice to continue being friends. We don’t have to see each other all of the time to remain friends. We don’t have to be considered really close to remain friends. We have a history that cannot be recreated. Our histories are cemented in each other’s lives and I wouldn’t have given up those experiences for anything. We will always be close because our histories were close.
[10:47] It wasn’t until the past 6 months or so that I really began understanding this concept. It’s been over 12 years since my first friendship with Jasmine seemed to end. It’s been about 10 years since Tonya moved away. And it’s been just over 4 years since my friendship with Jessica began shifting. At first, I didn’t really understand that my friends weren’t choosing to leave my life, our lives were just changing. We may not have known how to deal with that at that specific time, but as time has moved on, we’ve learned that we can choose to remain in each other’s lives. Jasmine and I have been back in each other’s lives for almost a year now. Tonya and I still go on and off with talking to each other, but I know that when both of our lives meet up again, we’ll pick up right where we left off. Jessica and I are in each other’s lives much less at the moment, but we still talk and hang out on occasion. All of our lives are different from the circumstances that were surrounding them when we first crossed each other’s paths, but we did cross paths and those experiences will remain with us for our entire lives. I know that I’ll always be there for them and I’ll always be incredibly grateful to each of them for how they helped me during those periods of my life. Relationships change, they morph into things that we could never have foreseen. Relationships take commitment, they show us how close we can remain when we’re not physically near, and they show us that life goes on, it changes, and we can choose to change with it while knowing that our friends will always be by our side.
[12:26] {Singing} *Recommendaaaationsssss*For today, I’d like to recommend the zine “Defend the Territory”. To see for yourself the disgusting range of tactics and weaponry that police use to assault and further genocide Peoples, check this one out on either the Warrior Publications website or the Indigenous Action website. I’ll link both sites, along with the zine, in the episode notes.
[12:55] If you enjoyed this episode, help support the podcast! All this content is free and I’d love to make it my job one day, so if you’re financially able join our patreon or send a one-time or recurring donation through paypal! You can also share an episode with family or friends, and give UK a kind rating and review!
Check out UnderstandingKindness.com for all episodes, transcripts, and blog posts. And why not take a listen to my other podcast, Better When Awkward, co-hosted by my childhood best friend Jasmine!
Get in touch with me by emailing UnderstandingKindness@protonmail.com, or through social media. You can find all links in the episode notes.
For now, be kind, be compassionate, be understanding, and question everything. I’ll be here. Thank you for listening to this episode of Understanding Kindness. [End transcript]