The Art of Showing Up: How to Be There for Yourself and Your People

by Rachel Wilkerson Miller

Don’t Mistake a Level 4 Friend for a Level 9 Friend During our conversation, Shasta Nelson said something I’ve been thinking about ever since. We were talking about the levels of friendship, and I commented that most of us probably don’t have that many friends at a level 9 or 10—like, not that many people would reach that level of intimacy in our lives, right? She replied, “Many of us don’t have anyone up there.” She went on to say that if you don’t have a lot of friends in the top tier, it’s easy to treat level 4 or 5 friends like they are level 9 or 10 friends—because they are your “best” friends, even if they aren’t actually your best friends. It’s truly a bummer not to have someone who feels like Your Person, but trying to fast-track friendship in this way tends to backfire. So before you unload on your friends, it can be worthwhile to take an honest look at the relationship. Does the sharing go both ways? Are you Their Person, too? Or are you vaunting them to a higher level of friendship when it’s not really appropriate or earned?

WHOA this resontes.