“I’m fine, it’s fine, everything’s fine.”
I was talking to a friend recently – someone who, like me, went through some heavy stuff as a kid – and one of us said that phrase. I think it was me. And she stopped mid-conversation.
“Oh my god, wait… You say that phrase too? I say that phrase all the time.”
It got me thinking. How many of us are walking around saying “I’m fine” about the exact places where we desperately need support?
Here’s what I realized: The places where you’re saying “I’m fine, it’s fine, everything’s fine” are the exact places you need support.
And if that’s true – if so many of us are quietly struggling while pretending we’ve got it handled – then we need to stop treating friendship like it’s some nice bonus feature in life.
Because here’s the truth I’ve learned the hard way: Friendship isn’t a luxury. It’s survival.
The All-or-Nothing Support Myth
Society has sold us this story about where support is supposed to come from. Your family is everything. Find your soulmate. Get that one best friend who’ll be there forever.
But what happens when that doesn’t work? What happens when family isn’t safe? When you don’t have that perfect romantic partnership? When you’ve never had a traditional “best friend”?
Society basically shrugs and says, “Well, keep looking for that one perfect source. Find a foster family. Become someone’s chosen family. Find that ride-or-die bestie.”
The problem? That all-or-nothing approach leaves many people with nothing.
And I should know. Because I was one of them.
When Nothing Teaches You Everything
Let me tell you why I’m so passionate about this. Why I can’t just treat friendship as a “nice-to-have” topic.
I grew up in a very unpredictable household full of substance abuse. From a young age, I had to raise myself and eventually my much younger siblings – they’re eight and a half and ten years younger than me. When I was thirteen, my mom passed away.
My sister, looking back on our childhood from her perspective, tells me: “That must have been so lonely.”
She’s right. It was incredibly lonely. When you’re a kid trying to figure out not only how to survive, but also how to keep your siblings alive, and how to get yourself out of survival mode… that’s scary stuff to navigate alone.
Here’s what most people don’t realize: when your family isn’t your support system, you miss out on foundational things. Not just the big stuff, but the everyday things. How to brush your teeth properly. How to manage money. What to do when you have thousands of dollars in overdraft fees. How to handle a car accident. Having a dependable meal every night.
When you have nothing, you appreciate everything. I cannot stress that enough.
So I got creative. Instead of searching for that one perfect person to save me, I started building something different. I watched my friends brush their teeth and thought, “Oh, I should probably do it that way.” I leaned on coaches and teachers and friends’ parents and neighbors – not for everything, but for the specific things each of them could offer.
I built myself a support network instinctively, without even realizing I was doing it.
The Shift That Changes Everything
This worked beautifully when I was younger. Friendship is prioritized in your teens and twenties, right? Take that trip with your friends. Skip holidays to be with your chosen family. Society cheers you on.
But then the messaging shifts. And if you weren’t hyper-aware like I was – someone who knew what it felt like to have nothing – you might not have noticed. But those messages telling you that friendship isn’t as important anymore? They’re loud. They’re persistent.
I had to make a choice: keep pretending this was just a nice-to-have, or start being honest with the people around me about how important they were.
This was terrifying. I had to start telling friends: “Hey, I don’t really have what you have with your family. And I know that the ways you show up for me might not feel that big to you. But even the simplest things? They’re really important to me. I need those.”
In the full episode, I go much deeper into what it was like making that shift – how scary it was to ask people to see their small actions as vital, and how that conversation literally changed the trajectory of my life. Because here’s the thing: this only works if people buy in.
Why I Need You to Care
I think that friendship and community and connection are air, and we’re all suffocating.
That’s not dramatic. That’s reality for more people than you realize.
You might be someone like me who needs this network to survive. Or you might be someone who’s giving support that you don’t even realize you’re giving – but it’s vital to someone else.
If I can’t get you to see that your small actions matter, then the people who need support won’t get it. It’s a two-way street, but you have to buy in for this to work.
Now, I’ve talked a lot about rock bottom situations. But here’s what I really want you to understand: just because I was desperate doesn’t mean I’m more worthy of support than you are.
You might have moved to a new city and need friends nearby. You deserve that.
You might have just graduated from college and feel paralyzed by adulthood. You deserve people who will sit with you and say, “Yeah, this is overwhelming.”
You might be an empty nester wondering what comes next. You deserve connections that help you rediscover passions and have new experiences.
You might be divorced and realize your entire social network was actually your ex-partner’s. You deserve new people.
You might be parenting far from extended family, wishing you had backup. You deserve that village.
Just because you aren’t at rock bottom in all areas doesn’t mean you don’t deserve support in the ones where you’re feeling low right now.
The Relief of Small Actions
Here’s what I want you to consider: we all need to stop believing this lie that support has to be all-or-nothing.
You don’t have to be someone’s everything. You don’t have to show up in every possible way.
You can just show up in the ways you’re really good at. You can show up in small ways consistently. And that? That can be someone’s lifeline.
The complete episode explores how this network-building actually works in practice – the specific moments when I had to choose vulnerability over safety, and how small, consistent actions from different people created something stronger than any single relationship could have been. If you’re curious about what it looks like to build support that doesn’t depend on finding one perfect person, the full conversation might shift how you think about your own connections.
For me, this type of connection, built on small actions consistently, is a lifeline. For someone else, it might be the cherry on top. It doesn’t matter, because we all need people.
Your Turn to Show Up
So here’s my appeal: friendship isn’t nice-to-have. Community isn’t optional. Connection isn’t a luxury.
The person next to you saying “I’m fine” might desperately need what feels like a small gesture to you.
The friend who moved cities needs people to grab dinner with. The new parent needs someone to text at 2am. The person going through a career change needs someone to believe in them. The empty nester needs someone to try new things with.
And maybe… maybe you’re the person saying “I’m fine” when you’re not.
Either way, we need each other. Not in some perfect, all-consuming way. But in small, consistent, life-giving ways.
Ready to Stop Pretending We’re All Fine?
What would change if you stopped treating friendship like a bonus feature and started seeing it as foundational? What would shift if you let yourself need people – or let yourself be needed?
I share so much more in the full episode about why this work feels urgent to me, and how building networks of smaller connections has literally kept people alive and thriving. This isn’t just feel-good friendship advice – this is about creating the social fabric that holds us all together.
Because here’s what I know for sure: there are people in your life right now who need you to care about friendship. And you probably need them to care too.
Ready to build something that matters? [Listen to the complete episode here] and subscribe to Friendship IRL wherever you get your podcasts. Because this conversation about why connection is survival, not luxury, is just getting started.
