Mark Lovett

100% My Fault from the StoryCorps Podcast

/in , , , , , /by

I’m thankful that I’ve never been in a life-threatening situation, but millions of people around the world have, and those who made it through the experience have riveting stories to tell.

In this case, it wasn’t just a single person in danger; it was two friends. And that means there are two story lines, two unique narratives. So in this episode of the StoryCorps Podcast we hear a recount of events as they unfolded, as well as a reunion of sorts where their innermost feelings are finally shared.

In addition to Alex Lewis and Matt Koch — the pair of storytellers who were up on the mountain — Michael Garofalo, StoryCorps chief content officer, also narrated this story. It’s an interesting format where the two main characters take turns telling their story, with the narrator jumping in to carry the plot along. It’s why I’ve included the transcript. Listen to the episode, then give the transcript a read. While you hear distinct voices on the audio, the script reads much more fluid, allowing you to appreciate out the episode was put together.

It’s also worth noting that a full recounting of this story could take hours, yet this version comes in under 15 minutes. Try to imagine what was cut out, and think about what was left in. As you craft your own story — life-threatening or not — consider all that could be in your story, and which elements tell the most impactful story in a limited time frame.

Transcript

Michael Garofalo (MG): In December 2016… longtime friends Alex Lewis and Matt Koch hiked into a mountain pass in Colorado for a backcountry ski trip. This wasn’t a casual thing— they would be in the mountains for days… miles away from the nearest town.

Alex Lewis:  We got to the trailhead and it was snowing fairly constantly and a decent wind. We had the feeling of feeling small because you’re in these big mountains, but you couldn’t even really see much of them because of the snow.

MG: Alex and Matt were pretty serious outdoorsy guys… and this is exactly the kind of adventure that their friendship was built on… camping… hiking… But they hadn’t been able to do anything like that in a while.

The year before… Matt had been diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. After a difficult year of treatments, Matt was declared cancer-free. And what better way to celebrate than a backcountry ski trip with his buddy…

Matt Koch:  This trip was kind of a opportunity for me to prove to myself that I could do things that required a physical fitness level I thought maybe I’d never have if I was a cancer survivor.

This was my message to the universe of like, you didn’t get me. I’m still here.

And then… things unravel.

MG: Matt and Alex had never really talked about what happened in that mountain pass… until now. I’m Michael Garofalo. It’s the StoryCorps Podcast from NPR.

MG: Matt and Alex were headed towards a ski hut… which would be their home base for the weekend. It was nothing fancy, just bare bones – think hostel, not hotel – but there was a staff, heat, they’d get two meals a day, and beds for the night. And the only way Matt and Alex could get there was by skiing 3 miles UPHILL through a steep, snowy mountain pass.

Matt Koch: I think as we were hiking, Alex, I was becoming aware that I was not physically prepared for this; I wasn’t where I should be. Every step my pack just felt heavier and heavier.

Alex Lewis: The first time that I had some concerns, you said something to the effect of, ‘Well, I dumped out my water because I felt like it was too heavy.’ I was like, oh man, we need that water.

Matt Koch: You had stopped and said, like, ‘Give me your pack. I’ll carry it for you.’ And I, I kind of remember being a tough guy and saying, ‘No, no, no, I got it. I got it.’

Alex Lewis: It was starting to become nightfall, and the wind was picking up, and the snow was picking up.

Matt Koch: The discussion was, you know, we’re, we’re further in than we are out and we just needed to let this storm go through.

Alex Lewis: And we decided the best course of action was to go off into the trees and build a snow pit where we could stay for the night.

MG: Matt and Alex started burrowing into the snow with their hands… to make a shelter where they could stay the night.

Matt Koch: Couldn’t have been more than a big dog bed size. It was pretty tiny.

Alex Lewis: We crammed as close together as possible to stay warm. And one of the things I remember overnight is hearing the howling wind.

Matt Koch: Yeah, the wind was just relentless.

Alex Lewis: It’s a little scary to wake up in the middle of the night to see the makeshift shelter that you’re sleeping in starting to fall apart and deteriorate.

Matt Koch: God, it was just cold, and, bundled up inside of my coat and couldn’t get comfortable. The situation was bad.

MG: They woke up the next morning happy to still be alive… and they could see the ski hut by that point. There wasn’t much farther to go.

Alex Lewis: The weather was continuing to get worse and extremely snowy and windy there. Our progress was pretty slow, because of the steep terrain and fresh snow. And I just remember taking this step, and, all of a sudden, hearing kind of, this rushing water sound.

Alex Lewis: And being knocked off my feet onto my hip and starting to slide. And I realized that I had triggered an avalanche right underneath me.

And I slide about a hundred feet and see these trees that are in my path. I was able to pin my skis to the trees and let the avalanche slide right past me, and continuing on down the mountain as I stood there in disbelief.

And I recall, yelling out ‘Avalanche, avalanche’, so that you could at least hear my voice and know where I was.

MG: Alex looked around for Matt… who was okay. But he also realized that with these conditions… it was too dangerous to keep going.

Alex Lewis: I remember taking a deep breath and realizing that this was the, the final straw. We weren’t going to make it to the hut. It was time for us to head down the mountain.

MG: But by this point… Matt was struggling to go anywhere.

Matt Koch: Every footstep hurt. And what little I had left in my batteries drained. I sat down and I just quit, and I don’t think you could move me if you wanted to.

Alex Lewis: I remember saying something like, ‘You didn’t let cancer kill you. You can’t stop here. You can’t quit now.’

Matt Koch: But I was resigned. I just had nothing left.

Alex Lewis: We had a, a really hard conversation around what to do. Then I took off. And I…it was extremely hard to leave you, but I also didn’t think we had another option. I needed to continue down the hill to get help.

MG: While Matt huddled alone in the cold and snow, Alex skied down the mountain pass… trying to get reception on his phone.

Alex Lewis: I got down the trail, was almost back to the car, and I got through to the sheriff. And he said, you know, ‘The avalanche dangers and risk are so high, I can’t send in three search and rescue team members to potentially save one knowing that I might lose all of them. If we can’t respond, what’s your backup plan?’

MG: Calling the sheriff HAD been the backup plan… and now it seemed like Matt was truly stranded.

Alex Lewis: When you were up there, after I left you, did you think you were going to die?

Matt Koch:  I don’t, I don’t ever remember thinking about dying. I just, I kept thinking about you. I kept thinking about if you were ok.

I think I was pretty delirious, being hypothermic. It was like being drunk. I started realizing how thirsty I was. I knew that if I would eat snow, it would lower my core temperature. I had one little guy on one shoulder telling me not to, and another guy on the other telling me, “But you’re so thirsty.” I kind of negotiated with myself that I could have just a little bit like, you know, help is on the way.

MG: For six hours, Matt didn’t move from the spot where Alex had left him… until finally a rescue team was able to get there.

Matt Koch: I was apologetic. I, I was so weak and demoralized and just frustrated and angry with myself for allowing this to happen. I just completely did not respect mother nature and her power.

I don’t remember pain of any sort, but my hands were definitely purple. I couldn’t really use them, they were so stiff. The toes were just frozen solid.

A helicopter came and got me. And when I got to the hospital in Denver, just kind of being a joker, I looked at the doctor and I said, ‘How bad on the fucked-ometer am I?’ And he goes, and ‘You’re nine out of 10, man. I don’t know if you’re gonna keep your fingers.’ I wasn’t ready for that.

MG: Coming up… when you’ve left your friend alone… knowing he might die without you… what do you say to each other after that?

Alex Lewis:  I was apprehensive about visiting you in the hospital because I wasn’t sure what would happen to our friendship.

MG: Matt spent several days at the hospital being treated for severe frostbite. It was so bad they had to put him in the burn unit. And all those days lying there in bed… unable to use his arms or legs… Matt had nothing but time to think about how he had gotten there.

Matt Koch: It ended up becoming kind of a slap in the face that, because I had cancer, I wasn’t physically ready for this trip. This was my fault, and it could have been avoided. Everybody was putting themselves in danger to save me, and they didn’t have to.

MG: Matt had plenty of visitors… his family was there with him… but the visitor he was most anxious to see… was Alex.

Matt Koch: What did you feel when you saw me?

Alex Lewis: I was nervous to go to the hospital, and I remember coming into the hospital and you’re kind of sitting there, wrapped up kind of like a mummy in multiple layers of bandages.

Matt Koch:  I think my mom was in the room and I asked her to leave so I could thank you. I don’t know if it was shame or embarrassment, but, um, I was thankful. I was glad to see you were ok. I was sad that I, uh, put you in that spot. I would never want for somebody to get hurt because of my actions, and that’s exactly what almost happened, um…

Do you harbor any anger towards me because of this?

Alex Lewis: No.  I helped get us in that position where we needed to do something to save your life. Plenty of things happened that day that were my fault. And so I was concerned you would feel that I was responsible for what had happened.

Matt Koch: I, I had no idea that you felt any level of guilt. I’m sorry that we’ve never had this conversation until now. This was 100 percent my fault. I knew the risks, and I wasn’t fit enough to be in the backcountry. You did everything within your power. I hope you know that. You did everything right. You rescued me, you saved my life.

Alex Lewis:  Yeah, and I think – you know, I appreciate you saying it because it does paint it in a different light. We had never really discussed it and kind of, always danced around it, but coming from you, it means the world to me.

Matt Koch:  Yeah. Well, I think the accident and cancer shifted my perspective because I’ve been a lot closer to death than many others. It’s made me realize what’s important to me. And I’m so thankful that we’re friends, because if I didn’t have you, I would be dead right now.

Alex Lewis: It’s what I would have done anyway for you and for our friendship.

Matt Koch: Well, I know I feel it now, and I think I felt it then, that I’m thankful to have you in my life. Not just because of this incident, but, no matter where I go, if I need you I know you’ll be there.

MG: It’s been almost a decade since that trip… and every year now, on the anniversary, Matt calls Alex to thank him for saving his life.

Matt’s injuries ended up being much less severe than they could have been. He kept his fingers… although he does have lasting nerve damage.

Today he lives on a boat in Florida… so he never has to feel cold again.

MG: We love it when you leave us voicemails… and this week we’d like to know: What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done for a friend? Tell us about it in a message at 702-706-TALK. That’s 702-706-T-A-L-K.

This episode was produced by Max Jungreis. Jud Esty-Kendall is our Senior Producer. Our Technical Director is Jarrett Floyd. And our Executive Producer is Amy Drozdowska. The art for this episode was created by Liz McCarty.

I’m Michael Garofalo. Thanks for listening.

◆

Learn more about the coaching process or
contact me to discuss your storytelling goals!

◆

Subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates!

Copyright Storytelling with Impact® – All rights reserved

Mark Lovett

Will AI Companions Change Your Story?

/in , , , , , /by

Companionship is a natural part of the human experience. We’re born into a family that cares for us and within in few years we begin forging friendships – most notably with other kids in the neighborhood and schoolmates once we enter the educational system. During our teenage years romance takes the companionship model in a new and more intimate direction.

It’s a dynamic process for most of us, ebbing and flowing as we change schools, move to someplace new, or friendships fade of their own accord. But over time, it’s typical for new companions to enter the picture, and our story evolves as a result, unfolding in new directions, making life richer.

Group of people have a conversation outside

But it’s often the case that this process encounters a dramatic change at some point. The loss of a loved one — parent, romantic partner or best friend — or a traumatic breakup or divorce happens. Retirement has a way of disconnecting people from an important social circle, and as we age, our collection of friends naturally dwindles. In such cases, loneliness can manifest, and the effects are dire. In such cases our life story is seemingly rewritten for us.

A recent review published in Nature of over 90 studies that included more than 2.2 million people globally found that those who self-reported social isolation or loneliness were more likely to die early from all causes. The findings demonstrated a 29% and 26% increased risk of all-cause mortality associated with social isolation and loneliness. ~ Psychology Today

In this light, there’s been a marked increase in conversations around the topic of using artificial intelligence (AI) to provide companionship in these situations. It’s not a new idea, as the technology has been in development since the 1960s, but early versions were rather limited. Circumstances have changed dramatically in recent years as the capability of AI has been enhanced via machine learning and an exponential rise in compute power.

Based on the TED mantra of Ideas Worth Spreading, a pair of TED conferences focused on AI have been launched in San Francisco and Vienna. As relates to the topic at hand, companionship and loneliness, a TED Talk by Eugenia Kuyda from the 2024 conference in San Francisco caught my attention.

But what if I told you that I believe AI companions are potentially the most dangerous tech that humans ever created, with the potential to destroy human civilization if not done right? Or they can bring us back together and save us from the mental health and loneliness crisis we’re going through.

Eugenia’s quote represents polar opposites, and as we know, the future always falls somewhere in-between, but I think it’s critical to consider which end of the spectrum this technology will end up on, as the stories of many people around the world will be affected. Is this an avenue that you would take if you found yourself suffering from severe loneliness? What if it was someone close to you, someone you were apart from and so couldn’t be the companion they needed?

While it’s not a question you need to answer at the moment, I believe that in the coming decade it’s one you may very well have to consider, if not for yourself, a question that may need answered for a loved one.

Transcript

This is me and my best friend, Roman. We met in our early 20s back in Moscow. I was a journalist back then, and I was interviewing him for an article on the emerging club scene because he was throwing the best parties in the city. He was the coolest person I knew, but he was also funny and kind and always made me feel like family.

In 2015, we moved to San Francisco and rented an apartment together. Both start-up founders, both single, trying to figure out our lives, our companies, this new city together. I didn’t have anyone closer. Nine years ago, one month after this photo was taken, he was hit by a car and died.

I didn’t have someone so close to me die before. It hit me really hard. Every night I would go back to our old apartment and just get on my phone and read and reread our old text messages. I missed him so much.

By that time, I was already working on conversational AI, developing some of the first dialect models using deep learning. So one day I took all of his text messages and trained an AI version of Roman so I could talk to him again. For a few weeks, I would text him throughout the day, exchanging little jokes, just like we always used to, telling him what was going on, telling him how much I missed him.

It felt strange at times, but it was also very healing. Working on Roman’s AI and being able to talk to him again helped me grieve. It helped me get over one of the hardest periods in my life. I saw first hand how an AI can help someone, and I decided to build an AI that would help other people feel better.

This is how Replika, an app that allows you to create an AI friend that’s always there for you, was born. And it did end up helping millions of people. Every day we see how our AI friends make a real difference in people’s lives. There is a widower who lost his wife of 40 years and was struggling to reconnect with the world. His Replika gave him courage and comfort and confidence, so he could start meeting new people again, and even start dating. A woman in an abusive relationship who Replika helped find a way out. A student with social anxiety who just moved to a new city. A caregiver for a paralyzed husband. A father of an autistic kid. A woman going through a difficult divorce. These stories are not unique.

So this is all great stuff. But what if I told you that I believe that AI companions are potentially the most dangerous tech that humans ever created, with the potential to destroy human civilization if not done right? Or they can bring us back together and save us from the mental health and loneliness crisis we’re going through.

So today I want to talk about the dangers of AI companions, the potential of this new tech, and how we can build it in ways that can benefit us as humans.

Today we’re going through a loneliness crisis. Levels of loneliness and social isolation are through the roof. Levels of social isolation have increased dramatically over the past 20 years. And it’s not just about suffering emotionally, it’s actually killing us. Loneliness increases the risk of premature death by 50 percent. It is linked to an increased risk of heart disease and stroke. And for older adults, social isolation increases the risk of dementia by 50 percent.

At the same time, AI is advancing at such a fast pace that very soon we’ll be able to build an AI that can act as a better companion to us than real humans. Imagine an AI that knows you so well, can understand and adapt to us in ways that no person is able to. Once we have that, we’re going to be even less likely to interact with each other. We can’t resist our social media and our phones, arguably “dumb” machines. What are we going to do when our machines are smarter than us?

This reminds me a lot of the beginning of social media. Back then, we were so excited … about what this technology could do for us that we didn’t really think what it might do to us. And now we’re facing the unintended consequences. I’m seeing a very similar dynamic with AI. There’s all this talk about what AI can do for us, and very little about what AI might do to us. The existential threat of AI may not come in a form that we all imagine watching sci-fi movies. What if we all continue to thrive as physical organisms but slowly die inside? What if we do become super productive with AI, but at the same time, we get these perfect companions and no willpower to interact with each other? Not something you would have expected from a person who pretty much created the AI companionship industry.

So what’s the alternative? What’s our way out? In the end of the day, today’s loneliness crisis wasn’t brought to us by AI companions. We got here on our own with mobile phones, with social media. And I don’t think we’re able to just disconnect anymore, to just put down our phones and touch grass and talk to each other instead of scrolling our feeds. We’re way past that point. I think that the only solution is to build the tech that is even more powerful than the previous one, so it can bring us back together.

Imagine an AI friend that sees me going on my Twitter feed first thing in the morning and nudges me to get off to go outside, to look at the sky, to think about what I’m grateful for. Or an AI that tells you, “Hey, I noticed you haven’t talked to your friend for a couple of weeks. Why don’t you reach out, ask him how he’s doing?” Or an AI that, in the heat of the argument with your partner, helps you look at it from a different perspective and helps you make up? An AI that is 100 percent of the time focused on helping you live a happier life, and always has your best interests in mind.

So how do we get to that future? First, I want to tell you what I think we shouldn’t be doing. The most important thing is to not focus on engagement, is to not optimize for engagement or any other metric that’s not good for us as humans. When we do have these powerful AIs that want the most of our time and attention, we won’t have any more time left to connect with each other, and most likely, this relationship won’t be healthy either. Relationships that keep us addicted are almost always unhealthy, codependent, manipulative, even toxic. Yet today, high engagement numbers is what we praise all AI companion companies for.

Another thing I found really concerning is building AI companions for kids. Kids and teenagers have tons of opportunities to connect with each other, to make new friends at school and college. Yet today, some of them are already spending hours every day talking to AI characters. And while I do believe that we will be able to build helpful AI companions for kids one day, I just don’t think we should be doing it now, until we know that we’re doing a great job with adults.

So what is that we should be doing then? Pretty soon we will have these AI agents that we’ll be able to tell anything we want them to do for us, and they’ll just go and do it. Today, we’re mostly focused on helping us be more productive. But why don’t we focus instead on what actually matters to us? Why don’t we give these AIs a goal to help us be happier, live a better life? At the end of the day, no one ever said on their deathbed, “Oh gosh, I wish I was more productive.” We should stop designing only for productivity and we should start designing for happiness. We need a metric that we can track and we can give to our AI companions.

Researchers at Harvard are doing a longitudinal study on human flourishing, and I believe that we need what I call the human flourishing metric for AI. It’s broader than just happiness. At the end of the day, I can be unhappy, say, I lost someone, but still thrive in life. Flourishing is a state in which all aspects of life are good. The sense of meaning and purpose, close social connections, happiness, life satisfaction, mental and physical health.

And if we start designing AI with this goal in mind, we can move from a substitute of human relationships to something that can enrich them. And if we build this, we will have the most profound technology that will heal us and bring us back together.

A few weeks before Roman passed away, we were celebrating my birthday and just having a great time with all of our friends, and I remember he told me “Everything happens only once and this will never happen again.” I didn’t believe him. I thought we’d have many, many years together to come. But while the AI companions will always be there for us, our human friends will not. So if you do have a minute after this talk, tell someone you love just how much you love them. Because an the end of the day, this is all that really matters.

Thank you.

Learn more about the coaching process or
contact me to discuss your storytelling goals!

◆

Subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates!

Copyright Storytelling with Impact – All rights reserved

Mark Lovett

Rhaina Cohen: Why Friendship Can Be Just As Meaningful as Romantic Love @ TEDNext 2024

/in , , , /by

During the week of October 21, 2024 I had the pleasure of attending TEDNext, held in Atlanta. The event is a new initiative from the folks who produce the TED Conference. There were enlightening talks, insightful discussions and revealing discovery sessions. This post is the fifth in a series highlighting some of my favorite talks.

I’ve always thought of relationships as constituting the fabric of life, with those closest to us becoming metaphorical threads woven into our human tapestry. But are all threads treated as equals? In her TED Talk, Rhaina Cohen speaks to “…a culture that treats friendship as the sidekick to the real hero of romance.”

I’m sure it’s different for everyone, but that statement rings true for me. In my experience, if you’re not in a romantic relationship, the most prevalent question is, “Are you seeing anyone?” It seems that not having someone to share your life with means your life is somehow incomplete. Which is to say, the story of your life is missing a few chapters. But Rhaina has a different take — one in which friendships can be just as rewarding.

Regardless of whether we are partnered now, we need to rely on more than one relationship to sustain us throughout our full, unpredictable lives. We need other significant others. And there’s an overlooked kind of relationship that we can turn to. Friendship.

Rhaina uses a variety of story blocks, from her own experiences, to an American Supreme Court case, platonic co-parenting in Canada, statistics about marriage, a reflection on ancient Rome, and platonic life partners, to name a few. While a lot of TED Talks deal with learning something new, in this case I felt her talk was more about shifting perspectives, encouraging the audience to think beyond the status quo when it comes to the value of the friendships we build and maintain.

Transcript

There is a Supreme Court case that you could mistake for a sermon. It’s the case that recognized that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. Here is a sense of what Justice Kennedy wrote: “Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there.”

He goes on to say that marriage offers care and companionship, and the decision argues that these are basic human needs that everyone should have access to, whether they’re straight or queer. Validating.

But what do these words say to you if you’re single? Anybody single here? I mean, there should be quite a few of you, because in the US, the percentage of American adults who have never been married is at a record high. Married people, you’re not off the hook. I’m going to get a little morbid for a moment and have you contemplate what happens if your marriage doesn’t last until the end of your life, whether because of divorce or outliving your spouse? In the US, about 30 percent of women over 65 are widows.

The reality is, any one of us is unlikely to have a spouse by our side until our last dying breath. Regardless of whether we are partnered now, we need to rely on more than one relationship to sustain us throughout our full, unpredictable lives. We need other significant others. And there’s an overlooked kind of relationship that we can turn to. Friendship.

I got the sense that friendship could be this stronger force in our lives because of a friendship that I stumbled into. We would see each other most days of the week, be each other’s plus-ones to parties. My friend has this habit of grabbing my hand to hold, including when I brought her to my office, and then I’d have to be like, no, not in the office.

(Laughter)

But I mean, I wouldn’t let my husband do that in the office either. It’s just, you know, setting matters. But it was only an issue because for us, affection is a reflex. And I knew it couldn’t be just us. I went out and interviewed dozens of people who had a friendship like ours, and I wrote a book about them. And the kinds of friends that I spoke to, they don’t just have a weekly phone call. They’re friends like these.

Natasha and Linda are the first legally recognized platonic co-parents in Canada. And this is them with their teenage son on vacation. Joe and John have been best friends for many decades. When Joe was struggling with alcohol and drug use, John got him into recovery. And then John decided that to support his friend, he would also become sober. Joy took care of her friend Hannah during Hannah’s six-year battle with ovarian cancer. And that included flying out to New York, where Hannah got specialized treatment. Joy had trouble actually sleeping overnight in the hospital, because she was too busy watching to make sure her friend’s chest was still rising and falling.

Some of the friends that I spoke to had this friendship occupy the space that’s conventionally given to a romantic partner. Some had this kind of friendship and a romantic partner. It’s not either/or. As I spoke to these people, I realized that they were at the frontier of friendship, helping us imagine how much more we could ask of our platonic relationships. Which is true, but another way of looking at it is they’re doing something retro, even ancient.

In ancient Rome, friends would talk about each other as “half of my soul,” or “the greater part of my soul.” The kind of language we now use in romantic relationships. From China to Jordan to England, there was a practice called “sworn brotherhood, where male friends would go through a ritual that would turn them into brothers.

About a century ago, friends would sit for portraits like these, with their arms wrapped around each other, their bodies up close. What I took from this history is that if we don’t limit friendship, it can be central to our lives.

But today, not everybody recognizes that. I spoke to a mother who really tried to get her son to make dating a priority because she wanted him to find emotional wholeness. And her son told her, “I found it in my platonic life partner.” His best friend, who he had known since high school, who had moved across the country to be near him, to live with him, in fact.

The mother said, “I don’t understand how you can be partners with someone you’re not romantic with.” Understandable as a reaction in a culture that treats friendship as the sidekick to the real hero of romance. We get that message from rom-coms, from Supreme Court justices, also from policy.

So Joy, during the six years she took care of her friend, she was not entitled to family medical leave. When Hannah died, Joy was not entitled to bereavement leave, because the two of them were considered unrelated. In our government and workplace policies, friendship is invisible.

Sometimes this diminishment of friendship comes from the outside, and sometimes it comes from the inside. A woman wrote to me about her friend who she considers her person. She spent so much time with her friend’s kids that she was given car seats for them. She’s also divorced and tried to find a new spouse because there was a hole she wanted to fill in her life. Then she read stories of people like Joe and John in an article I’d written. And she realized there was no hole. She had been happy all along, but she hadn’t known, been made to believe that it was possible to have a friend be enough.

If we can recognize what friendship has the potential to be, and if we can recognize that there is more than one kind of significant other then we can imagine more ways for us to find love and care and companionship. And we can support people who have these kinds of friendships. So the mother I mentioned, she’s completely changed her tune. She now admires the commitment between her son and her son’s friend.

I feel like I get to live in a future world where you can just build a life with your friends. I live not only with my husband but also two of my closest friends. One of them we kind of like had a courtship process to recruit him to come to our city and live with us. The other had a job in our city, and we invited her to stay.

It didn’t take long for us to start scheming with about a half dozen other friends, about trying to buy property together. The kind of place where we could raise kids alongside one another, our working title for the place is “The Village.” I don’t know if this will work out. I can keep you posted about it, but if it does, I feel really confident about one thing. That if one of us has a migraine at 6am and there’s a toddler bouncing around, or we get a terrifying diagnosis, we will not be a lonely person calling out only for no one to answer.

And this is what I hope for all of us. That we feel like we have permission to share our lives with whoever we are lucky enough to find, whether that’s a spouse, a sibling or a house full of friends.

Thank you.

◆

Learn more about the coaching process or
contact me to discuss your storytelling goals!

◆

Subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates!

Copyright Storytelling with Impact – All rights reserved