Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast.

Kelly here.

And we are closing out this week's series on how to navigate uneven friendships, friendships you've outgrown.

We started Monday talking about identifying that.

Like maybe there are relationships in your life,

friendships in your life that you need to tweak and adjust

or sadly maybe even eliminate.

We then went through how to do that with love

and with a measure of caring for the relationship and the person.

And of course, after you acknowledge that a relationship doesn't work and you've had that painful conversation, there's no way around it.

That conversation will be hard.

It's important that we also talk about joy, that there is joy in doing this. If there isn't joy on the other side of it, then what would be the point of going through and being like, this friendship isn't doing it for me no more? I've got to set some boundaries. Or I need to block and bless this person immediately. What would be the point? That would just

be opting you into more struggle. You shouldn't do anything if there isn't some kind of joy

and positive growth on the other side. And it's there. I want to be clear and go back to what I

said on Monday about that quote from Michelle Obama saying

that not everyone can make the climb with you as you navigate healing and just growing and growth,

that your friendships will need a measure of rebalancing. But on the other side of that is so much

joy.

I cannot tell you when I was preparing for this series, I thought about a particular friendship breakup that was very painful.

I wanted to deny it was, but it was painful.

And four years later, I thought about that friendship breakup and was either alternately sad, annoyed, troubled,

whatever the adjective, and now I can say completely at peace with it.

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