Figuring Out Your TribeFeeling Unheard by FriendsThere is a particular kind of lonely that happens in the middle of a good conversation. You are sitting across from someone you love. Someone who has known you for years, who would drive across the state if you called at midnight. You bring up the thing that has been sitting on your chest. She listens. She says something kind. And then you drive home feeling emptier than when you arrived. I did this for years with one of my oldest friends. The subject was my relationship with someone very dear to me, a relationship that has always had some hard edges in it, and I brought it to her again and again, the way you keep pressing a bruise to see if it still hurts. She always listened. And then she would say some version of the same two things. Try not to let it get to you. And, eventually, I don't know what to tell you. For a long time, I heard that as dismissive. I would leave those conversations feeling like I had spent something and gotten nothing back, and I would quietly wonder whether the friendship had run its course. It had not. I was just handing the wrong thing to the right person. Nothing was wrong with her Here is what I finally understood. My friend had never had a relationship like that in her life. Hers were easy, close, and uncomplicated. She was not brushing me off when she said she did not know what to tell me. She was telling me the truth. She had nothing to reach for. Every story I brought her had to be measured against people who had never once made her feel that way, and it simply would not fit. She was not a bad friend. She was not even a bad listener. She was the wrong address for that particular piece of mail. Another friend, meanwhile, was living almost exactly what I was living. Same kinds of moments, same aftermath, same bewilderment. With her, the conversation went somewhere entirely different. I did not have to build the background or defend the feeling. She would say girl, I completely understand, and mean it, and then we would sit there together trying to work out why people we love behave the way they do. It went past talking. We started backing each other up in real time. If one of us was heading into a gathering where it was likely to go badly, the other would come along, absorb some of the attention, and give whichever of us needed it a reason to step out of the room for twenty minutes. Having her there also took the sting out of it. Nothing was going to shock her, so there was nothing to be embarrassed about. And here is the part that took me longest to see. That same friend, the one who understood all of that better than anyone, had very little to offer when I brought her a problem with my business. Not because she did not care. She had simply never run one. My other friend had. She has built and run her own practice for years, and when I go to her with a business problem, she gives me exactly the kind of grounded, practical feedback I could not get anywhere else. Nobody got dropped. I did not have a hard conversation or draw a boundary or write anyone out of my life. I just started bringing different things to different people. The better question Most of us evaluate our support systems by asking, "Are these good people?" It is a fair question. It is just not the only one, and when it is the only one, we end up feeling unsupported by people who genuinely love us. The question I have come to ask is this: how does this person add to the quality of my life, and do I want to add to the quality of theirs? Notice that it runs both directions. This is not an exercise in sorting people by usefulness. It is an honest look at what actually passes between you, in both directions, and it usually leads to a second question that is a good deal more specific. What is it, exactly, that we give each other? That is where the relief is. It stops you from holding one person to a standard no single human being can meet, and it stops you from mistaking a mismatch for a failure. A few things become clear once you start looking this way. People belong to more than one area of your life. Support is not one-dimensional, and neither are your people. The friend who cannot help you with one thing may be the only person who can help you with another. The type of support matters as much as the subject. Some people are sounding boards. Some open doors. Some show up and quietly take a task off your plate without asking a single question, which is sometimes exactly right. And some just get it, without needing the backstory. Access and counsel are different things. This one is worth sitting with. I have a friend who is generous with her time, her money, and her attention in a way most people simply are not. She also runs a business, and she would be the first to tell you that the business side of it does not come naturally to her. So I do not take her my strategy questions. But over the years of building that business, she has met everyone. Accountants, bookkeepers, attorneys, and other people who have started something from nothing. When I need to find the right person to consult with, she is the first call I make. Her value is the door she opens, not the advice she gives, and knowing that difference is exactly what makes her such a good tribe member rather than a disappointing one.  The Replenish Test Here is the exercise. It takes about ten minutes and a piece of paper. Think of the last three or four times you brought something heavy to someone. For each one, write down three things.
Then ask the only question that matters here: is this person the right one to go to for the thing I keep going to them for? Feeling drained does not mean you are disloyal or unappreciative. It usually means there's a mismatch. And once you can see the mismatch, you can fix it without losing anybody. What you will probably find Most people come out of this with a bigger tribe than they went in with. Not because they made new friends in the last ten minutes, but because they had been measuring one person against every possible need and coming up short. When you spread the need out, you discover you have more coverage than you thought. Some people realize someone has been in their tribe all along and they never counted her. The neighbor. The cousin you only text on birthdays. The woman from your old job who always answers. And sometimes you find a real gap. There is nobody on your list for a whole category of your life. That is worth knowing. It is information, not a verdict on you or on the people who love you.  When the gap is not a friend's job This part is important, so I want to say it plainly. Some needs were never going to be met by a friend, no matter how good she is. A spiritual gap will not be filled by someone who does not do that. Grief that has settled into your body is not going to be resolved over coffee. If what you need is clinical, a friend cannot give it to you, and asking her to will strain something that was healthy. That is where a therapist, a support group, a class, a coach, or a practitioner belongs. Those are not what you turn to when your people fail you. They are tools in their own right, the same as rest, movement, and prayer. Choosing one is a form of self-care, not an admission that something has gone wrong. Your tribe is not one person who has to be everything. It is a collection of people who are each genuinely good at something, plus the professionals and practices that cover what people were never meant to carry. You probably have more of it than you think. This kind of inventory is one of the practices I write about in Abundantly You: A Toolkit for Authentic Self-Care. If you want help mapping your own support system and figuring out where the real gaps are, that is exactly the work I do with clients one-on-one. Click here to learn more.
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Everything Feels Heavy Right Now.Here's What Your Grief Is Asking For.A month ago, a cat named Kiki died, and I have been carrying that loss ever since. Kiki was abandoned years ago in the townhouse complex where I used to live, left behind by someone who had also hurt her. My neighbor and I decided that wasn't going to be the end of her story. We both fed her every day, played with her, and made sure she was safe. My neighbor took her indoors, because I'm allergic and never could. But Kiki greeted me every single morning when I left for work and every evening when I came home. When I moved away, I visited her from time to time.
In her last weeks she was diagnosed with an abdominal tumor, and her health declined fast. Our friends pooled money so she could be released from her pain with dignity and cremated. This past weekend, my neighbor surprised me with an urn pendant: a tiger's eye crystal on the front, Kiki's name on the back, and her ashes held inside.
Here's the part I want you to notice: for a month, some voice in me kept whispering that I didn't have the right to grieve as if she were my cat. She lived somewhere else with someone else. That voice is what I call the Created Self, the version of you assembled from other people's expectations about how you should feel and for how long. And it has been very loud lately.
 I've been sitting with resentment lately. Not running from it, not feeding it — just sitting with it. And what I'm discovering is that resentment is a distraction. Not a meaningless one, but a distraction nonetheless — one that pulls our attention away from something deeper that needs to be seen.
Here's what I mean. When we recognize something wrong with the world, that moment produces two things simultaneously: a call to action and a resentment. The problem is that resentment is loud. It's consuming. And so the call to action — the thing that could actually move us forward — gets buried underneath it. I notice this most when I think about people who seem unaware of the destruction they cause. Or worse, people who I suspect choose not to see it — because truly seeing it would require something of them. It would demand change, accountability, discomfort. And so they look away. That willful not-seeing is what triggers my resentment most. But here's what journaling is showing me: even that resentment is pointing me somewhere. Not toward changing their seeing — toward finding my own call to action. What is this moment asking of me? If you've read my book Abundantly You, this might remind you of how I talk about worry — how it, too, carries a hidden invitation that we often miss. Resentment works the same way. The invitation is there. We just have to see past the noise to find it.  Think of meditation as a process of catching up on the backlog of thoughts, feelings, and emotions in your brain.
When we experience the monkey mind (mind chatter), it's like having a backlog of inventory (information) in a warehouse (the mind) that we haven't had a chance to sort away on shelves. There is also long line of trucks outside waiting to bring in more inventory. Meditation is the act of intentionally not accepting any new inventory so that we can catch up on sorting and putting away our current inventory in the warehouse. Translation: Meditation is the act of not taking in any new information so that our thoughts, feelings, and emotions can be fully processed and released. Growing up, you learned about the human physical body and how to take care of it – bathe, brush your teeth, comb your hair, and drink water. But what do you know about your energy body?  The energy body is a system of pure energy that mirrors your physical body. Every living creature on earth has an energy body. It uses helpful energies that surround you to support your health and well-being while filtering out harmful energies. Your energy body also releases the energies of your thoughts, feelings, and emotions out into the world around you.
There are some people who are calm, cool, and collected in the midst of challenges. They have mastered the art of either avoiding worry altogether or at least worrying for a very short while. We all have that potential; it sometimes takes a little practice. One way to get out of a state of worry sooner than later is to turn the challenging situation into an opportunity.
Sometimes, when we are very sick, fatigued, or grieving, it can be easy to forget about the many self-care tools we have on hand. That's because a stressed mind is more prone to forgetfulness as well as reduced critical thinking and problem solving. To help you remember your self-care tools in the midst of upset, worry, and despair, take inventory of your self-care toolkit.
Use a large rose quartz as a centerpiece.
Can't get a large rose quartz on short notice? You can wear a pendant or bracelet made with rose quartz or gift it to a family member. Another option is to keep a small tumbled rose quartz in your pocket.
For more crystal tips like these and to learn more about rose quartz, sign up for one of our online and in-person crystal classes. to learn more, visit https://www.mywealthinhealth.com/crystal-healing-classes.html .
Check out this NEW self-care podcast interview I did with Lucy Byrd Hope of Wholism! Available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
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picture by Kuhn's Photography
AuthorKelly Nembhard is a National Board-Certified Health & Wellness Coach, Reiki Master Teacher, and Advanced Crystal Master with experience as a clinical research professional and developmental biologist. She currently lives in Durham, NC. 
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