BLOGMAS 2022 | DAY FIVE: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO MAINTAIN A FRIENDSHIP | NORTHUMBERLAND CHRISTMAS MARKET AT LINDEN HALL

Welcome to Day Five of Blogmas 2022!

In late November, myself, one of my best-friends – Sophie, and her almost-two-year-old daughter - Freya, visited the Northumberland Christmas Market, which was hosted by Linden Hall. We had the most amazing, lovely, hilarious time together, and that really caused me to reminisce about my friendship with Sophie – all sixteen years of it! And it is that, which has led to the inspiration for this blog post; a chat about the advice I’d give on maintaining friendships…

MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2020 POST THREE | SPENDING TIME WITH OTHERS

“If you live to be one hundred, I want to live to be one hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you”

Winnie The Pooh

The abuse started whilst I was in High School and when I began acting out at School because of the pent-up frustration of keeping it a secret, I quickly lost my friends. To them, I was either being a drama queen (a phrase I hate!) or a rebel. Either way, they found my attitude and behaviour annoying and I began getting bullied by the people I had once called my friends. Unlike a lot of people, I spoke up about the bullying straight away and unlike a lot of occasions, the telling off they had from a Teacher actually got through to them and the bullying stopped. 


When it did, I felt so alone and was desperate to build new friendships, but I was also very cautious too. I had the thought process that I didn’t want anyone getting too close to me because it would make it harder for me to hide the abuse from them and it felt as though – for so many reasons – telling someone wasn’t an option. I was also worried because the person who abused had built a relationship with me first and I’d trusted and respected him (the Police labelled this grooming), so I was nervous that building that sort of friendship would make me vulnerable for them to hurt or upset me. 

BEST FRIENDS & MENTAL HEALTH

ps. i have so many pics with my besties that i decided to just include this one because I think it sums up friendship perfectly! 

With it recently being Best Friends Day, I was inspired to write this post all about why friendship is so important in mental health…


Growing up, I don’t think I ever paid much attention to my friendships, and that doesn’t mean I was isolated and didn’t have any. It was just that I wasn’t really conscious of the possibility that I could be friendless and that meant I wasn’t very appreciative of the fact that I had three best friends who I’d do everything with! 


I felt like this all through First School until we started Middle School and each of us found their own friendship groups. It seemed to be fairly natural and with us all being in different classes anyway it’s kind of just made sense that we’d find other friends who were in our class. A huge milestone and test in the group’s friendship came when one of my friends lost her mother very suddenly. Our other two friends had no real reaction – that I know of – but I (and my Mum!) were there for her and her family in a flash, and our friendship seemed to repair itself a little for the duration of Middle School.