Hi, hello. Welcome to Mary's Cup of Tea, the self-love podcast for women. Though all self-lovers are welcome here. I'm Mary. I write and speak about self-love, and I'm best known for my book, The Gift of Self-love, and I also host retreats for women. And this is the podcast that will inspire you to love yourself. Real quick, before we dive in, I want to make

sure you know about my book, The Gift of Self-Love. It's a workbook to help you build confidence,

recognize your worth, and learn to love who you are. It's available anywhere books are sold.

Thousands of people have it, love it, and have told me that it has greatly benefited their self-love

journey, and I hope it'll do the same for you. And now let's get into the podcast.

This episode is part of our best of Mary's Cup of Tea series, where I dug through over 250

recordings to synthesize clips from some of my personal

favorite episodes. Just like this podcast, The Best of series will cover topics surrounding self-love,

including body image, mental health, mindset, confidence, relationships, and women's

empowerment as a whole. Think of it as a self-love starter kit for you if you're new to Mary's cup of tea, welcome, or a little refresher if you're a whole. Think of it as a self-love starter kit for you if you're new to Mary's Cup of Tea,

welcome, or a little refresher if you're a seasoned self-lover, in which case, welcome back.

If any topic resonates with you, go to the show notes to get links to the full episode.

And today's topic is, you know it, you guessed it, friendshipships! Female friendship tips for women who value and crave

deep, rich, meaningful connection. We're diving into how to make new friends as an adult and deepen the

connections you already have. Face conflict with compassion. What to do when the fear of rejection

or the tendency to people please gets in

the way, and why learning to receive love and support can be just as powerful as giving it.

The most common question I hear is where and how do you even make friends as an adult? We will get there,

but before we do so, we need to unpack some of those invisible walls that keep us closed off

from connection because a lot of people fall into two types of avoidance. So like avoiding

connection, right? There's overt avoidance, which is like

blatantly not going to that holiday work party because you're just not feeling up for it or

...