What makes a good friend? Well, hello there. It's Morgan here and welcome to today's episode.

The question that we're going to be sitting with today is what makes a good friend.

This question is inspired by a piece that I wrote in my latest book that comes out very soon,

February 14th, Valentine's Day, 2003. The book is called You Are Only Just Beginning,

if you'd like to check it out. And I have a chapter in this book on lessons from elephants. There are 10

chapters. Every chapter has a theme and this chapter on elephants is about finding your people.

Now, everything that I personally know about elephants is from afar.

I don't see elephants on a regular basis, but I remain very inspired by elephants and just the way that

they communicate with each other, the way that they create community.

And I think that there is a lot that we can learn from

animals about community. And of course, we as humans are different, but I personally enjoy

just looking at various animals in the animal kingdom just to see what we might learn. So I wrote this poem that isn't necessarily about

elephant relationships, but after spending quite a bit of time researching elephants for this chapter

in the book, it just got me thinking about the qualities of friendship and why friendship is so important. So my personal history with friendship is

relatively complicated, I would say. I grew up undiagnosed autistic and I really struggled

making friends. I have one sibling, my sister, who is almost two years younger

than me, and we're pretty close. And it's something that we actually both talk about now as

adults, how it was hard for both of us to maintain relationships with friends as kids, as teens.

And as time goes on, it's still challenging. It's still,

it can be a challenge. And I'm sure that I'm not the only person who has struggled with that.

However, I think that whether if you've had the same best friends forever or you're struggling to find

friends today, friendship is undoubtedly a very valuable way that we can

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