01/14/2025
I have not posted on this page for a while but I read an article this morning that I found really helpful. I am linking the article to this post but will cut and paste the part I really loved.
In the work I do words matter and how they are framed matters. This time of year so many are struggling and there is no doubt we cannot take on the major problems of our friends and family... But I really like the idea of "What small thing would help you right now?"
I am going to try it!
"Last summer, when my California family arrived in Cambridge, England, for a vacation, enormously jetlagged and utterly exhausted, I ran into an old friend in the cluster of college buildings where we’d be staying for the next month. My daughter and I were on a walk just to stay awake before dark when Shelley popped out of her apartment, huge smile on her face, to greet us with open arms.
She and I hugged and briefly caught up – my family had spent half a year in the city the previous year so we’d grown close – and she then asked one simple question: What small thing would help you right now?
Not: Can I do something for you?
Not: How can I help?
Not the terribly generic and unhelpful: Let me know if you need anything. (Anything???!)
But: What small thing would help you right now?
Something about the specificity, the smallness of it, was a revelation.
Had she framed the question in another way, I certainly would have said, “We don’t need anything! We’re fine! Thanks so much for asking!” But given how straightforward her ask was, I felt like I could make a little request: After 18 hours of traveling and flying on a crowded plane and sitting through the long cab ride from London, my daughter was now begging for ice cream. But there was no way to get that unless we walked 20 minutes into town, which we were not going to do. So, I turned to Shelley and asked: Do you happen to have any form of ice cream in your freezer?
She stepped back into her kitchen and procured an ice cream sandwich. I cannot begin to tell you how welcome and loved and cared for this made us feel. And I know that it made Shelley happy, too.
This simple question has been a game-changer for me: so often we can’t solve a friend’s big problem so we shy away from trying. How could I alleviate a friend’s heartbreak over her divorce, her parent’s death, her teen struggling to fit in? I am not a therapist! Nor a magician!"
In a time when suffering is everywhere, I’ve found this approach to friendship as a guiding light.
