Call Her Out

We all have that one friend whom you totally don't agree with what they're doing and how they're living their lives all of a sudden. A lot of the time that equates to writing off that best friend (guilty of that, proof is in the four friends I have)... Well, what do you do when it is your absolute best friend, your soul sister? You learn to support them and openly communicate with them.

You have a deep love for this bad ass babe, and you know that the way she is acting is not the woman you became so close to. Under all the bad decisions and lack of respect for herself and you is your friend, and you gotta remember that! Sit her down and talk with her, figure out what is going on in her life that you are not seeing. It takes some balls on both ends to come forward and talk about it all, but let me tell you how good it is gonna feel to be so insanely open and honest! Neither one of you is going to like what you are hearing at first, and that is totally fine; just be open to have honest dialogue with ya girl! Another factor that makes all the difference is to be stern but do not be rude, condemning, or bitchy—you are doing this out of love, remember?

One of my very best friends is a momma to three wonderful baby girls, two of which were born fairly recently; and this is where you cue my suspicion that she had developed postpartum depression, which is what I so wanted to blame all this on, especially since depression of any kind can manifest itself differently than just being "sad" or having a lack of energy or interest or motivation for everyday life things. Momma openly admits to going through it with her first babe and there was no doubt in my mind she was going through it again with the twins, but she said everything was all good as far as that went. She started acting out in ways we had grown to put behind us, and I was getting increasingly more worried. After going on and on to my actual sister about how much Momma's behavior was worrying and aggravating me, I finally decided to have a very open talk with her. (Side note: because I suspected my friend had postpartum depression I went very gently around that subject, and she assured me that she was not experiencing any kind of postpartum, so I waited until some time had gone past just to really make sure that everything was okay on that front.) There was yelling, there was crying, and there were still some unresolved actions because, hey, Rome wasn't built in a day. Then there was a whole lotta tough love and subtle hints and even more full on "what the hell is going on?" conversations. Now, a little bit later, I finally see my whole wonderfully glowy, vibrant, amazing soul sister coming back to light. Everyone is human though, and we both still make some crazy choices, but everything—well almost everything—in moderation is wonderful.

The thing is that if you can't call your girls (or guys) out on whatever out of character behavior they're carrying on—1, they're not "your" anything and 2, they're not gonna grow, learn, or get out of that phase. Your friend could not even realize the path they have drifted on and honestly that will probably be the case for most people (because let's be real, who has not accidentally wandered on to a weird path for a phase or two?). Be bold, be brave, be unapologetically in their business, because if the people closest to them don't call them out, who will?

// Stay humble, be kind, support other babes. //