Zibby Mag

By Zibby Owens

An old, dear friend just called me from drop-off.

She’s been going through something complicated and, for various reasons, the mom friends in her orbit haven’t been supportive.

“I feel terrible,” she said, kids screaming and horns blaring in the background. “I’m dealing with so much, like my kids and their new post-pandemic issues, my job which is going well but I feel guilty about being away from the kids, everything. And I just feel so alone.”

“You are not alone,” I told her. “Sometimes the people you’re with physically just aren’t your people.”

Until I started my podcast, Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, and began regularly connecting with like-minded people all over the world, I’d always assumed that friends were simply a product of geography. Full stop.

Growing up, I made friends from school, sports, or after-school activities. In college, girls from the same dorm. In business school, the same section. In life, the same job or, perhaps, the wider social scene. In mom-life, from the kids’ classes. The neighborhood.

And I thought that was it. That was the menu. I could pick and choose the women and men I connected with from that pre-selected group of items. Otherwise, the kitchen was closed.

Luckily, I’ve made some amazing life-long friends that way, friends I rarely see but adore nonetheless. Friends who have moved away but stay lodged in my heart forever.

But if I’ve learned anything from the pandemic Zoom life, it’s that I can get my emotional friendship needs met by firing up my laptop. It’s not the same as a walk in the park together or a coffee date, where I can physically reach out to a friend when she cries. But it’s close.

When I started chatting intimately with authors around the world about their books and their lives, I felt that sparkly sisterhood sensation happening often. The children’s book author in Nigeria. The journalist in Denmark. The sex expert in London. The Boston-based novelist. The memoirist in China. The woman with Lyme disease who just celebrated an anniversary with her wife.

I found myself saying to podcast guests, “Oh my gosh, we need to have coffee or meet up in real life!” Which of course we didn’t. (At least, not yet.) What I really meant was: how great to have found you! Let’s not lose this new connection!

Was it because we shared a passion for reading and writing? Was it because so many authors shared what I thought was my original cocktail of anxiety on the rocks with a shot of depression on the side?

Or perhaps it was the shared nature of being an observer, of wondering about the people at the next table at a restaurant and inventing stories about them (“maybe that’s the babysitter and she just had her heart broken and….”). Maybe it was because my people, women — and men — who had the same make-up emotionally also felt the need, the compulsion, to write and to make sense of the world through fingertips on keys.

Not every podcast I do results in a deep connection, that crackling sense of discovery. But many do. It’s intoxicating. Perhaps that’s why I continue to book eight podcasts every week. When concerned colleagues and friends suggest I slow down, I’m like: no way! I wish I could do more.

I hate passing on any book because the author might be one of my people! Yes, I must want to read their book or find their book interesting or relevant in some way. But I fit in as many interviews as I can physically prep, delving deep into memoirs and fiction, websites, articles and Instagram, to learn more. To discover. Because what if I miss my connection?

I used to think terms like “energy work” and “force field” and “spirit” were woo-woo. Now, I’m so in tune with my energy that I reference it like it’s my fifth child.

I can feel, physically, when someone isn’t nice. I sense a rush of cold wind. My body goes on high alert. My posture shifts. Their energy is toxic. I want to walk away. I don’t trust them. I just feel it. Likewise, I can sense someone’s generous spirit seeping into my soul like a sip of a hot chocolate on a rainy day. It’s like I’m one of those Care Bears with light shining from my chest, beaming it out. I can turn on my sensor by flipping an emotional switch.

My default is to assume everyone is a decent, nice person. But I reluctantly recognize that some people, for whatever reason, just aren’t. They don’t root for others. They snap at strangers. They think ambition means achieving at the expense of someone else, that in order for them to rise up, others have to be stepped on and squashed down.

This is counter to everything I believe. I think the best feeling is when I help someone succeed. That, to me, is real achievement. So I turn on my sensor to see who I’m dealing with. And I keep hoping that the good in everyone will shine through.

“Seriously,” I told my friend on the phone, “your people just aren’t where you are. And that’s okay. Because they’re out there. If the women in your class aren’t being supportive, just smile, be nice and polite, and know that you can pick up the phone and call me anytime. Your people are out there!”

“Thank you,” she said. “I just feel like no one gets me here, you know? And sometimes that makes me feel nuts.”

“I get it,” I said. “But you’re amazing. Some people can’t root for others. They’re too unhappy themselves or insecure or whatever. They’re the ones missing out! We should feel bad for them because they’re going through life angry or miserable. But their darkness shouldn’t cast such a shadow that it puts out your bright light. Sometimes you just have to move out of the way.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

We hung up as she rushed off.

It took me forty-five years to realize that proximity is just one element of friendship. Real friends who beam out that warm light of connection are actually everywhere, waiting to be discovered.

It’s like there was once a child, sitting cross-legged and playing up in the clouds, putting together a giant, intricate, magic puzzle of a zillion pieces. And he did it! Once he finished, every piece in the puzzle glowed with a bright light.

But then the child took the puzzle apart and, from his perch in the sky, scattered the glowing pieces all over the world, lodging their way into people’s souls. Now, whenever any puzzle pieces come close to each other, they know they belong to the same puzzle. They start to glow again.

It’s up to all of us to find the other pieces. They’re out there. Scattered among everyone else, hidden until you get to know the person, disguised behind various exteriors, different colors, shapes, sizes, masking the simplicity of our shared secret slice.

So find your people. Join an online book club. Sign up for a Facebook group. Try a new class. Meet more authors. Write. Say yes to something unexpected. Figure out a way to meet people who aren’t necessarily where you are right now. The glowing pieces — your people — are out there. The more pieces that are reunited, the brighter we’ll all shine.

Hokey? Yes.

True? Absolutely.

Don’t miss your connection.