Life's Curveballs: How to Heal After a Friendship Breakup

I'm diving into a painful, confusing, and honestly a shocking moment life can throw at us: when a lifelong friendship suddenly falls apart.

If you’ve ever lost a best friend — the person who knew your secrets, your mess, your laughter and your heartbreak — you know exactly how hard it hits.

👉 In this episode, I share my raw, personal story of a 35-year friendship that ended in a single explosive night.
We’ll explore:
✨ Why unspoken resentments build up and blow up — even over something small.
✨ What “violent communication” is (it’s not always physical) and how it damages relationships.
✨ The power of non-violent communication and how speaking with empathy could have saved our friendship.
✨ How to process grief, set healthy boundaries, and decide if rebuilding is right for you.
✨ Why it’s okay — and sometimes necessary — to let go, even when you still love someone deeply.

You’ll also hear about my moves across Aspen, Texas, Boston, California, and the East Coast — and how each chapter taught me to rebuild my circle, make new friends, and stay open (even when scared).

This is a heart-level episode. Because losing a best friend is a grief people don’t talk about enough. And it changes you.

Thank you for tuning in! I truly appreciate every one of you, whether you’re here for the first time or have been with me from the start.

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Subscribe & Catch full episodes of In Shock Podcast on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@inshock.podcast 📺
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Transcript

0:39

Hi everyone and welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. I consider all of you my friends, so please call me T. That's what my friends call me. I really do appreciate you showing up for me every other Sunday. For these real talks about those, what the fuck moments? Because let's face it, we all have them. We don't always know what to do when we're stuck in the middle of it, but that post-traumatic growth that comes after, it's what makes us stronger, wiser, and a hell of a lot more unstoppable. Right? Speaking of friends, we all have best friends. You know the kind of friend who just gets you, the one you trust with everything, your secrets, your mess, your truth, you love being around them, and somehow you never run out of things to talk about, thereby your side through the highs and the heartbreaks with them, you can be fully. Unapologetically yourself. No filters, no pretending, just real. You laugh until your stomach hurts with them, and when life knocks you down, they're the one you go crying to they never judge you. They just show up. And they're not just your friend, they're your person. But what happens when that friendship suddenly has a blow up? When someone you once shared everything with just turns on you in a moment that leaves you rattled, heartbroken, confused, and in complete shock. That's what we're gonna talk about today. We are diving into the heartbreak of losing your best friend. I'm talking about a situation where there is a sudden misunderstanding of an emotional fallout that completely destroys that friendship, that relationship. Have you ever been there before? I have seen it happen to some of my closest friends, and I have lived it myself. It's absolutely jarring when that friendship goes wrong. One minute you have someone you can trust with your whole heart and the next, it's like they've completely vanished from your life. It's that kind of ending, and I think it deserves space to talk about how you heal from a friendship breakup. When there's no closure, how you move forward when someone you thought was your forever friend becomes a stranger. And if you've ever sat with this heartache, this episode is for you. I have a hell of a story to share with you because I know firsthand how difficult it can be to make friends and then to lose one. There's no words. I. I've had to make new friends over and over again in my life, sometimes by choice, and sometimes because life took me somewhere new. I. I was born in Aspen, Colorado. This beautiful, breathtaking little town surrounded by the mountains my dad started his business there and raised our family there, and for a while it really was home. When I was about seven years old, my father decided to move the family and his business to Texas, y'all, and that's where I was raised. I grew up in Southwest Texas, which is very different from Aspen. I know you know this. I always had this little itch though inside of me as I got older for something more, I wanted to live in the big city. I always dreamed about being in New York or somewhere very comparable. I thought that hustle and bustle would just be so exciting to live in. When it came time for me to go to college, I packed up and I left Texas behind y'all and I went to school in Boston. Moving to Boston was exactly what I was looking for. It was a little bit lonely at first because I didn't know a single soul. I was this girl from Texas moving into these dorms, trying to figure out the tea, which is the subway system, and really trying to find my people, making new friends in a brand new city. And believe it or not, I was a very shy little girl, and at 18, it was kind of awkward, intimidating, and it really tests your confidence when you're out there trying to make new friends. But eventually Boston became my second home. I found my circle of friends, my people, these are girls I still stay in touch with today. Each move taught me something, and that was to be open even when you're scared and how to stay true to yourself it's so important to find those deep, authentic friendships. The kind where you're not performing, you're not having to put on a face where you can be real it's the people that you bring into your circle or those that bring you into theirs. It was my brother who changed the course for me. He was in the Navy. Living in California. And one day we were talking and he said, oh my God, you have got to move to California. It's the best of both worlds. You get the beaches and you get the snow so you can ski. So guess what, packed up my life in the Northeast and I moved to California. I moved in with my B brother and his wife, having familiar faces when you're starting in a fresh new state is huge. I was so thankful that I had them. It's grounding. It gives you this little pocket of safety when you're trying to figure everything else out. At 20 you are much more open to meeting people. You're less afraid. You meet people at parties, at work, coffee shops, bars, any and everywhere, right? You can make connections happen without even trying too hard. Still, even with that openness starting over, it is starting over. No matter how old you are, you have to find your spots, your people, your rhythm, and it just takes time. One night my brother decided to help kind of speed that process along by taking me to a party at one of his navy buddy's houses. You know that feeling when you look around and everybody knows each other. There. I was the new kid trying not to completely look out of place But then along came Catherine. She walked right up to me with this big, warm smile and said, hi, I'm Catherine. And just like that, something clicked. You know when you meet someone and instantly it feels like you've known them forever. Nothing awkward. No weird small talk. No pretending, nothing forced. It was just super easy and natural. It felt like finding a piece of home in a room full of strangers that night really changed everything for me. It was the start of a friendship that would become one of the cornerstones of my new life in California. It reminded me all it takes is one person to make a brand new place. Feel less familiar and scary and feel a lot more like home. Turns out Catherine was from New York and since I had recently come from Boston, we instantly found this common ground. From that point forward, we were inseparable. We just clicked in a way that felt completely effortless. You know that kind of friend that you're glued at the hip with? We went shopping together. We jogged around the track every morning before work together. We went on hikes, lunches, dinners. We would go to clubs and danced the night away until the wee hours of the morning. There was always this sense of, let's see more, and let's live more. We decided on a whim that we were gonna drive from California to Texas and go to South Padre Island, a beach that I grew up on. It is a Spring break Haven. While we were no longer in college, we were still in our twenties and we wanted to be on the beach where all the action was. There was no big planning. We drove straight through for 21 hours. We took turns behind the wheel. We sang, we talked for hours, and we didn't wanna make any unnecessary stops, so we packed the car with plenty of road snacks and a makeshift bathroom using bottles. I know it's kind of disgusting and ridiculous, but we got very good at it. It was a skill that I'm not proud to say I was able to master, but you know when you find that kind of friend, someone who matches your energy, your spirit and your sense of adventure, it doesn't really matter where you're going. It just matters that you're doing it together. We had that kind of bond I really didn't have that with my own sister when I was 10 and my sister was 16. Our father passed away from cancer and she ran away from home. It was a very traumatic time for all of us, and that's how she dealt with it. But it left a distance between us. Katherine, on the other hand, she kind of felt like a big sister that I had never had. She was just a few years older and she had this protective, steady energy that I leaned into. A lot of my friends had even said she feels and acts like your big sister. When I met Katherine, she was dating Frank, the Navy guy who was hosting the party that my brother took me to. Frank's best friend who was also in the Navy was Dan, who I eventually started dating. We were like the four amigos. We did everything together, and when the guys deployed overseas for six months, Catherine and I had each other. We worked hard, play hard, and we filled the silence of missing these guys with laughter and dreams of what we were going to do when they got back from deployment. Eventually life moved forward and Catherine and I moved in together. We had new guys in our life, and it was three of us in this house. It was myself, Catherine, and my boyfriend at the time. We were all working in the tech industry, juggling our careers, making new friends along the way. Because you spend more time at work than you do at home. Katherine got really close to one of her coworkers. Her name was Kelly, and at that time, Kelly was looking for a place to live. Katherine asked my boyfriend and I if we minded if Kelly moved in, and we didn't. I wasn't Kelly's biggest fan, but we were all mature enough to make it work. And honestly, if you remember life in your twenties, it's very fast paced and you're not sitting at home. Every single night like you are later in life but life as it always does, eventually started to pull us in different directions. We both got married. She moved to Colorado. I stayed in California. Even with the distance and all the chaos that comes with starting families, we stayed connected. We made time to visit each other when we could. Even though life got busier by the minute, because we both started to have kids, she had two girls and I had three boys. Our lives looked very different, but our bonds stayed the same. No matter how much time passed or how many miles stretched between us, we always picked up exactly where we left off. She called and said she was moving back to California and she and her family chose to live in the same town I was in, which was really cool. My world of friends had expanded by that time. I built a very tight circle of friends through the Junior League. Many of you have heard me refer to these girls as the niches, and that's different story for a later time, how that name even came about, but they were besties of mine. When Catherine moved back, she never seemed really threatened that I had this wide circle of friends and if she ever felt. Pushed out or worried. She never showed it. She always carried herself with a quiet confidence that no matter how many new people entered my life, our friendship was untouchable. We have been friends for over 35 years. She stood by me and I stood by her through life changes. She was very close to me when I went through my divorce. Always supportive, even though she had never been a big fan of my ex. But when I went through my biggest health battles, breast cancer, brain aneurysm, strokes, her presence started to fade. She was there for my surgery. For my first breast cancer, but kind of distanced during my recovery, and that might just be because my other friends had really stepped up with meal trains and putting a schedule together to come sleep over with me. Maybe it was just life. People do show up differently during hard seasons. She wasn't absent, but she wasn't fully there either. After I made it through all these health obstacles, we found our way back to each other and life started to feel, I. Normal again, after that time I had met somebody new and for the first time in a long time, I was really excited about what was ahead for he and I. I couldn't wait for my friends to meet him. When Catherine gave me the nod and approval, the real genuine, oh my God, I really dig this guy. It meant more than she probably realized. Let's be real. You don't need your friends' blessing to move forward with somebody, but when you have it, it feels like the universe is giving you the green light so we continued living our lives. I eventually moved to the east coast, but I was living by Coastally for about seven years. Splitting my time between California and the east coast, flying back and forth every month, sometimes twice a month. I was spending time with my kids, catching up with friends, and doing my best to keep all the pieces of my life. Connected. I stayed with friends. Sometimes. Other times I'd rent an Airbnb, but in the early years of living by Coastally, I often stayed with Catherine. It was the perfect setup. She had a guest suite with its own bedroom, bathroom, and even a little office space where I could work remotely. It made it super easy and it was very familiar to me. I knew her entire family. Her kids, her parents, her brother, sister, the type of friends where you're literally part of their family and when you go to their house, it feels like home. We cooked together. When I would stay there, we'd sit down as a family and have dinner. My kids would join us sometimes by this time, Catherine had really settled into a quiet domestic lifestyle. She wasn't really interested in going out anymore, going to dinners lunches or shopping trips like we used to love to do. Something in her had just shifted. It seemed like a spark was starting to fade the conversations were usually me sharing my ups and downs, my mess and milestones in my life. Every now and then she let me in. Maybe just a glimpse, share what was going on with her. She had some bigger stuff going on inside her than I had realized, and she would give me, bits and pieces of that, but I could just feel that something changed in her Then came the night that everything unraveled. I mean everything. We were all just hanging out at her house this one evening. She and her family, her kids, her husband, and we decided to watch the OJ Simpson series. A scene sparked a conversation and I said. Not all cops are good. It wasn't meant to be inflammatory, it was just a comment. She snapped and she completely disagreed with what I said. I felt like I needed to explain myself and where I was coming from. You know when someone gets really upset, you're like, okay, I am gonna give them the benefit of the doubt, and maybe I didn't do a good job explaining where I. Was coming from when I made that comment. I told her a story about my older son and what had happened to him at this event called Deltopia. It's a huge college scene in the Santa Barbara area, and that particular year, a riot broke out. You've got. A mix of college kids and people from LA and not such great parts of la. This huge riot broke out and my son and his friends who were going to school at the time were trying to get away. They weren't sprinting, they were just walking away. But this SWAT team said, you need to stop. They all threw their arms up and I guess they didn't respond fast enough, the cops opened fire with rubber bullets and many had hit my son's back. There was four or five that hit his back. Those bullets are so powerful. They knocked him down the cops came over and slammed his face into the pavement and these college kids are just trying to get back home. Anyway, they busted his lip open. It was, very emotional and traumatic for my kid and there was all this other shit going on. Gunshots, stabbings, all that kind of stuff. Yet these cops were focused on these college boys. My point to her was, not all cops are good, but she didn't wanna hear what I had to say. Instead, she completely spiraled and came undone. She started calling me names, taking cheap shots at me, even bringing my kids into her rage. That was the gut wrencher and the end of it for me. At that point, mama Bear took over and I headed towards the bedroom to pack my things, I walked into the bathroom to get all my toiletries. She came flying in there and cornered me. She got nastier, and at that point we were both screaming at each other at the top of our lungs as if we couldn't hear each other. You know how that goes when there's just so much emotion in an argument, you're trying to make a point, so you just get. Angrier and louder. She was accusing me of lying. She said I kept things from her. She claimed I had had a heart attack and I didn't tell her. It was absolutely absurd. She was knocking down my friends and how much she didn't like any of them at that point. I honestly didn't know if I wanted to laugh or cry. I have had a lot of health struggles, but that having a heart attack, that was news to me. I had never seen her like this. It was like a stranger had taken over her entire body, and you wanna know what the worst part of this entire situation was. My youngest son was there. He saw the whole damn thing unfold and heard her comments about my kids. Can you imagine? We packed everything up. We left her house. We got in the car and drove away. I pulled over once we got out of the neighborhood because I was so shaken, but I was so worried about my little guy. We sat there sobbing, both trying to make sense of what had just happened, and he was just so cute. This is the innocence of a young child. He's like, mommy, it's okay. It's gonna be okay. And I said, yes, everything will be okay. Even though I wasn't sure I believed it myself, I certainly wasn't gonna be okay. I couldn't even. Process what had just happened, and my poor kid had just seen a version of his mom he'd never witnessed before. Fierce, angry, pushed to the edge, screaming at the top of her lungs. It was really wild how someone can pull you into the worst version of yourself think of a time when that may have happened to you. No matter who the person was, we're so defensive and angry, right? We just start yelling and screaming at each other, especially if someone's attacking us. I had called a girlfriend and asked if my son and I could stay at her house, and of course it was absolutely fine. She knew Catherine and when I got to her house and shared the entire event with her. She was absolutely stunned. It was like I was telling her a story about somebody else. I was completely shaken that night trying to process the things that Catherine had said to me. It was like my mind couldn't even catch up to the reality as I was replaying it all. One truth became very clear to me this wasn't really about what I said. It was about everything she had been holding onto. Somewhere along the way, Catherine had grown very dissatisfied with me and the life that I was building, even with the friends I surrounded myself with. But instead of telling me, it all came pouring out over a comment for simple words. Not all cops are good. And somehow that was the trigger that unraveled everything between us. You know that feeling when a blowup reveals everything, someone's quietly resenting you. That was this. Maybe you've been there too. Looking back, I could see that she was carrying a lot of unspoken hurt. We've all done that guilty party right here, and because it had nowhere to go for her, it exploded in my face the next day. She sent me a text apologizing and asked if we could talk, I didn't respond. I was extremely emotional feeling the residue from the night before. I. Kind of like an earthquake. If you have ever been in one. It's like an aftershock the next day. She sent me an email later with a barrage of finger pointing at me. She was trying to explain herself and why she did what she did. But that's not what she did. Instead, it was what I now know to be called violent communication. This isn't a physical sense, but it's the energy. It's harsh, it's very accusatory and one sided. We've all been there. I've been there. I'm not saying by I have never done this, but I've certainly learned a lot throughout my life. I highly recommend I. This way to express the hard truths with love. It's called non-violent communication. It's where you speak honestly, but with empathy, your own feelings, and you listen to the other person's perspective. I know it's hard. I had to train myself to do this, but I have gotten very good at it. Let me give you an example of a nonviolent communication. Situation. Catherine could have said, it really hurts me when you're spending time with other friends. It makes me feel less important to you. That would've been a moment to connect, to talk for her to heal through the things that created so much anger in her that I was doing. But unfortunately, that's not what happened. And because of that, our friendship did not survive. It wasn't just about that night, it was years of unspoken resentment that she had pouring out of her all at once. And here's the truth, when we don't express our hurt when it's happening in the moment. It builds up and when it builds up for too long, my God, boom. It's a huge explosion sometimes over something so small, like my four words. I did respond to her email eventually, I had given myself some time to process what was happening, to take the emotion out of it, and I had a sense of what nonviolent communication was by this point in my life, I was fortunate that one of my really dear friends had introduced it to me, and I started to take that into practice. So as I leaned back and thought, how am I gonna respond to this, I decided to point out the pain she must have been feeling towards me for a very long time, and that that pain had built up quietly. I told her I needed time to process everything and figure out whether our friendship could or even should move forward. And during that time in reflection, that space that I gave myself, I realized something that was really hard to admit. How much she and I had changed. I still loved being out with friends, being social, saying yes to new experiences. That's a big part of who I am. She preferred the comfort of home, a slower pace, a different rhythm, and that's okay. But our lives and our energy had grown in completely different directions. Even knowing that didn't mean I didn't miss the good old days I truly miss the deep connection that she and I once had. That feeling that we just got each other without even trying. I miss that ease. I miss that person. The laughter, the sense that no matter what happened, we were in it together. But sometimes when we hang on to relationship, no matter what kind of relationship it is, just because of that history, those incredible moments, the loyalty and all the years we invested, it's not for the right reasons because there's no longer a connection. We're hanging on to history, facing that was really, really difficult for me. It forces you to be very honest with yourself about whether you're clinging to what was, instead of accepting what is as much as it hurt to face it, I realized the fulfillment we once found in each other's lives. It just wasn't there anymore, and maybe the most loving, honest thing that she and I could do is let go and move on. It took the good part of six months to a year for me to overcome this. This was 35 years of a friendship. I've spoken to Catherine and seen her a few times since, is it's not the same. I will always love her. Always love her family. There's too much history between us, too much life shared for my heart to ever let that love go completely. But I will never forget what happened. It struck me so hard. When a friendship like this falls apart, it hurts deeply. There's no way around it. You have to let yourself grieve to sit with the heartbreak and to give yourself permission to mourn at the loss of this friendship. This is somebody who had been woven into the fabric of my life. But sometimes, no matter how much history you share, you have to choose yourself. So what do you do when a friendship like this falls apart? Here's what I've learned through all of this. First honor your grief. You will be grieving for quite some time and give yourself that space. Don't rush through it or pretend it doesn't hurt at all. A lot of people try and shove it down so they don't feel the pain. I. Let yourself feel the pain of the loss of that friendship. Second, be honest about the relationship and what it has become, not what you wish it still was. We often hang on to what was and not what is so many people stay in the wrong relationship because of this. Third, protect your peace by setting boundaries that honor the person that you're becoming. And finally, give yourself grace to either let go completely, or if enough time passes to redefine the friendship on new terms, understanding that it will never be the same. And that's okay too. This is your decision. Friendship breakups rarely come with closure or clarity. Sometimes all you're left with is a decision to heal, move forward, and love yourself enough to release what no longer fits your life. If you're at the crossroads right now with a friendship like this, just know that you will be okay and you will get through this. You're not alone. This happens to so many of us. Give yourself grace and space and time to really decide what you wanna do about that friendship. We all decide differently what we feel serves us best, and maybe walking away is not what you wanna do. So really think about why you don't wanna walk away. Because even though this person may have completely come undone on you this one time, think about this. They didn't have the courage as your best friend to tell you what was bothering them, so they allowed it to build up, causing resentment and blowing up. I want you to be sure if you go back to that friendship, that doesn't happen again. It's verbal abuse if you decide to make amends with your friend, have a real heart to heart and promise each other that you won't hold anything back. And when you do share things with each other, it's shared. With love before I wrap up, I know I have promised I would bring on some guests this past month and full transparency, one of my interviews got completely trashed because of a glitch with a new recording software that I was trying out. So we're having to reschedule that one. But in the meantime, hang tight because I've got a fantastic. Guest coming up. She's an author whose story I absolutely love, and it's something I've talked about on social media. It's that moment so many of us dream about. When you know exactly what you wanna do with your life I can't wait for you to hear her story. Thanks for hanging out with me today. If this episode hit home for you, share it with a friend who might need it too. And hey, if you're enjoying the show, I would love it if you left a review. Reviews mean everything. They help people understand what keeps you coming back for more. Until next time.