Naturalle Drea

I’m not sure why it took me so long to finish this book but I am finally done! I am so proud of myself and need to get my next book to read because I made a goal of reading 10 books this year lol. I think it was just hard to make the time to read because work has been so busy and everything else but I am glad that I finished it. So let’s jump into this review.

I have no clue why adult friendships are so hard and difficult. I get why sometimes we can’t get together like we want due to our kids, family life, work and everything else life throws at us but you really do need your friends in life. This book really helped open my eyes to friendships and about myself as a friend. I think it was hard for me to read sometimes because I was basically reading about myself and situations I’ve dealt with others. I’ve had this on-going thing as an adult about what friendships should look like and how much grace should you give others and red flags and when to step away and all. I often wondered if I was the bad friend at times or did I need to have a conversation instead of distancing myself from someone. This book just really helped me with a lot.

Fighting For Our Friendships was written by Danielle Bayard Jackson who is actually a friendship expert and educator who speaks about the female friendships. I think I saw someone online post about this book sometime last year and knew I needed to read it. Now I will say when you read this book, it is advertised as having 9 chapters but I am counting section two as mini chapters so to me it has 18 chapters all together. I love how at the end of each chapter, you are asked some questions and given preview questions of the next chapter. I need to go back myself and answer those questions but feel like they are helpful to make sure you understood what you just read.

The first five chapters (part one)goes into defining friendship, recognizing conflicts and how to deal with them, the three affinities of female friendships (symmetry, support and secrecy), knowing when someone is being a mean girl and and consequences of avoiding conflict. I am someone who has trouble with having those difficult conversations with others so I actually avoid them which is not good. I don’t like conflict at all. The chapter on conflicts helps you with starting those conversations and how to word what you trying to say so it doesn’t come off harsh at all.

The second part (the one I said had the mini chapters) dealing with 9 types of friends: The Flaky Friend, The One Who Doesn’t Reciprocate,The Gossip, The Loved-Obsessed Friend, The Controlling Friend, The Jealous Friend, Newly Changed Friend, Clingy Friend and Negative Friend . It gives a scenario for each type of friend, how to recognize it, the possibilities on why they are like that, how to deal with it or when to step away and when to know you are that friend. I feel like there was a little bit of myself in some of these and I’ve dealt with these types of friends.

The last part of the book deals with dealing with friendship breakups, how to move forward, how to fight for those friendships that are worth fighting for and how to make friends. It was so easy when we were little, you just went to up to someone you played with before asked to be friends. All we wanted was someone to play with and sit with at lunch. As we grow, the friendship require more and you are dealing with different personalities and growth and everything and just feels like it gets more difficult in adulthood. Friendship breakups are so hard because you sometimes don’t know what went wrong or it just took its course. People do grow apart and sometimes the friendship no longer serves you or the other person. I also love how you are given tips with dealing with a friendship breakup. I also love the chapter on how to make new friends. It gives really great tips and how to execute them.

Overall I highly recommend reading this book.Even if you have healthy adult friendships (I’m jealous lol), it would be beneficial for you to read as well. If you do pick up this book, report back and let me know your thoughts.