You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships as an Adult

by Lane Moore

This book is for anyone who hasn’t found their people yet, in the ways they’ve always hoped for.

a guide for you to figure out who you are, and who you need, so you can finally have the chosen family we all deserve.

even in the best-case scenarios, people change, people leave.

We might not keep in touch.

well-ornamented “these are my PEOPLE!” tree,

I could be just like everyone else in this one way, since I couldn’t be like everyone else who had perfect families.

As close as I’d get to having a best friend, the relationships were always short-lived.

your friendships should allow you to feel safe and to feel seen, and do whatever is required to make you feel that way,

any two people who make it to the promised land of true friendship are almost heroic.

we know if we win, we win big. We’ll get friends who will let us fall apart around them, who we can be ourselves with, and who will accept all parts of us, no matter how messy and fractured some of those parts might be.

we do try again. We learn to pack better, we learn where to bury things, where to set things free, what we can throw away, what we can sew back together.

“What if I meet another cool person who is also there alone and we bond, and because I went alone, I created space for that to happen?”

You deserve to have friendships in which the conversation is easy, and you feel seen.

chosen family involved enough people so if things weren’t working out with one of them, you had another three to five people you could go to, who would be there for you.

Still have people to call if things get bad?

Platonic Soulmate

actively working to unlearn and reprogram things we were told, things we told ourselves,

It’s far more normal, albeit very painful most of the time, to outgrow each other as we grow and heal and change.

“we just grew apart”

That your paths were just not meant to continue to cross.

relationships are a collaboration between two people making it work,

a rough patch usually doesn’t last for months, causing years of pain.

If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen.

And maybe we get to write our story together exactly as the people we are.

Being somebody’s someone, even if I knew it didn’t necessarily mean as much to them, felt incredible.

Something about this potential for intimacy combined with the safety of distance stuck with me

becoming very good friends with people after I’d left, even if I was only sort of friends with them when I lived in close proximity.

best of both worlds: the belonging and companionship

Parasocial relationships are relationships with people you don’t really know but feel like you know.

The beauty of relationships like this is that at any moment you can post something in these groups or pages and have an instant community, instant feedback, instant support.

deeply healing from some traumas and feeling like my life was on pause, while others got to keep living theirs.

our friendship ebbed and flowed through great times and worse times,

A lot of my most intimate friendships were with people who lived far away. I can totally see now that subconsciously the distance made them feel less threatening to me.

Just basic respect and adoration. No strings.

I kept worrying, What if I’m making the wrong decisions again?

sometimes life allows you to form the kinds of connections that are just close enough to what you want, while also being exactly what you currently need.

when I asked him if he ever got lonely, he replied, “No. Because I had a great family.”

someone who needed something we literally all need: community.

empathy is often derived from lived experience, and many times is born from not having empathy given to you in similar circumstances.

Empathy is the currency of people who’ve been there, and wish things had gone differently.

empathy originates. “I’ve been through this, so I know how it feels.”

broader empathy, requires opening your eyes to other peoples’ experiences.

true empathy is larger than your own experience.

elevated place where I was loved and seen and safe and able to fully be myself,

We’re always able to pick the ball back up where we left off.

You miss out on those memories you make in person, where it wasn’t just a story you gave them the highlight reel of later.

finding the courage to cultivate in-person, local friendships.

I was exclusively forming connections with people who were physically, and oftentimes emotionally, at a distance as an insurance plan designed to keep me safe.

Do you feel people wouldn’t like you if they really knew you, or vice versa?

Do these distant friendships check a box for you, so that you can tell people you have friends, and avoid dealing with any intimacy issues you might have?