Friendships on Purpose

I’m writing from my kitchen counter, sitting on one of the few things not making the journey to Washington: our kitchen stools.

Behind me, three people are wrapping and taping up nearly everything we own. They start loading the truck tomorrow. We are down to one drawer, one cabinet, one coffee maker, and one pot that will stay here until we close on the house and my husband is officially retired.

I’ve turned in my badges at both of my work locations. I’ve closed my business PO box. One by one, the small pieces of infrastructure that made up our Alaska life are being dismantled.

Which made it perfect timing when, during a drawer cleanout, I found all the gift cards we are notoriously bad at using. We rarely eat out, and when we do, we never seem to remember that we have gift cards or where we have hidden them.

Monday night, we picked up dinner from South with one of them and discovered how much less stressful life felt when we were not trying to cook dinner in a kitchen being packed into boxes.

Tuesday night, we made plans to use another at Kincaid Grill. If you are ever in Anchorage, I highly recommend it.

Then, in one of those coincidences that feels almost too perfectly timed, a friend I met ten years ago at the Brave Enough Conference (BE) texted me. She was visiting Anchorage from San Diego and wondered if we could get together. She already had dinner plans at, you guessed it, Kincaid Grill, even though it is a little off the beaten path for most visitors.

She is a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician whose work includes caring for children with limb deformities. She is also part of the broad, diverse, and geographically scattered community that has sustained me over the past decade.

These are extraordinary humans who care for vulnerable populations, complex patients, physicians, trainees, communities, and families. I know pieces of their stories, and they know pieces of mine. We may go years without being in the same place, yet somehow the connection remains.
Perhaps moving makes us pay closer attention to what is actually being left behind and what is not.

The stools will stay in Alaska. The badges have been returned. The PO box is closed. Almost everything else will soon be packed into a truck.

But the people who have shaped, encouraged, challenged, and sustained me are not anchored to one place.

That part of my life is coming with me.

And when I think about how that broad, geographically scattered network came to be, I keep returning to a lesson from the first BE Conference I attended.

At the first Brave Enough Conference I attended, Dr. Jennifer Best and Dr. Heather Evans, both faculty members at UW at the time, shared the story of how they, an internal medicine physician and trauma surgeon, became friends.

Heather had attended a Grand Rounds presentation Jennifer was giving. They did not know each other, but Heather was so impressed that she found herself thinking, “She and I need to be friends.”

So, after the presentation, she walked up, introduced herself, and told Jennifer exactly that.

It became a pivotal moment for both of them and a lesson that resonated with the hundreds of women physicians present: Friendship sometimes requires us to be remarkably intentional.

On the flight home from that conference, Kristen and I happened to be seated near Heather and Jennifer. Before we landed in Seattle, we had made plans for a Story Slam in Seattle later that year with the theme #BeMyFriend.

Ten of us eventually gathered for dinner in Ballard and shared five-minute stories with that theme. Some were heartbreaking. Some were hilarious. All gave us a deeper understanding and connection with each other. Together, they reflected the many ways people find, choose, lose, and remain connected to one another.

Many of my closest friends in Alaska have moved away over the years. Two of the people who have remained especially important to me are Kristen and Juliana.

We keep in touch by text, but rarely manage to be together in person. 

Kristen is the CMO of our region’s health system and an avid soccer player. Juliana is a family physician, mother of three, and involved in more activities than should reasonably fit into one person’s calendar. My calendar has not exactly been sitting around looking lonely, either.

Over the past two years, I have made a point of scheduling a walk or brunch here and there with one or the other of them. But the last time all three of us had been together, just us, was during COVID. We sat outside, socially distanced around a firepit in a light drizzle.

It was a great night.

As my move approached, I decided that hoping we would all find time together was not going to be enough. I proposed a weekend in Girdwood at the Nordic Spa. Thankfully, I started asking several months in advance, initially aiming for August.

But we learned Juliana and her family's move to Hawaii was happening in August.

After comparing three very full calendars, we discovered that there were exactly two weekends all three of us could make it. One was uncomfortably close to Juliana’s move.

And that is how I ended up throwing myself a going-away weekend in April, four months before I was actually going anywhere.

We spent an entire day moving among cold plunges, saunas, and hot tubs in the Chugach forest. There were stories, plans, advice, support, great food, and a great deal of laughter.

There was considerably less sleep.

At some point, we created a shared iPhone note containing our to-do lists for one another. It has continued to be a source of hilarity as we asynchronously complete, comment on, and add new assignments for each other.

I am also thankful that, amid these final months, I made time for other important friendships still in town: dinner with our couple friends, a walk with another, and time together at a tea house. All, took advance planning and someone willing to say let’s get together. 

Recently, Juliana and her husband began the bittersweet process of saying goodbye to a lifetime of friends in Alaska. We were grateful to be among those to share dinner with them at South.

Juliana left for Hawaii yesterday.

Soon, I will leave Alaska in a different direction. Kristen will remain here, carrying a role whose responsibilities are unlikely to become lighter anytime soon. Our calendars will not suddenly become more cooperative. Geography certainly has not.

But perhaps that was the lesson Heather and Jennifer gave me ten years ago: Friendship does not depend on life making room for it. Someone decides that it matters and makes the room.

Heather walked up after a presentation and said, “She needs to be my friend.”

Four people made a plan on an airplane, and ten people later gathered around a table to tell stories.

Three friends compared nearly impossible calendars until they found one April weekend.

Friendship is not sustained by good intentions alone. It is sustained when someone turns those intentions into an invitation.

Reflection:

Who makes you think, “You and I need to be friends”?

Perhaps it is time to tell them.

Who have you been meaning to spend time with when life settles down?

Perhaps you do not need to wait.