Finding Friends Similar to You When Your Life Has Changed

0:00Welcome to stand up and redo with Petra D'Amuse, the podcast where transformation isn't just possible, it's inevitable. If you've ever felt stuck, wait down by past choices, or like life's chapters have been written in ink, think again. Here, we believe every day is a fresh page, and you hold the pen. We're diving deep into real stories, bold insights, and life-shifting strategies to help you stand up, shake off the hold, and rewrite your narrative with power and purpose. Ready to rise? Let's get started. Hey, are you in a new stage in life where you don't have friends? You have lost your friends. It's not that you've lost them. It's that your life isn't diving with theirs. Things in your life have changed. Maybe you're suddenly retired. Maybe you got a promotion at work, and you're now the boss and all your peers that were your pals really don't talk to you as much anymore. Maybe your kids have gone off to college, and all those parents that used to hang out with at hockey or soccer,

1:05or that were connected to you from your children are no longer your friends. Maybe you have moved and you live somewhere completely different, and you're in a situation where you're 45 and you need a new tribe. I'm going to call this over 45 and I need a new tribe, because I think that happens when we reach that point of maybe midlife that our friends change, and I'm going to help you with that. I'm going to help you to figure out how to find new friends. And that sounds really like a challenging thing to do, doesn't it? But it's not. And the neat thing is when you're over 45 or over 50 like me, you will find that the friends that you and me are more like you than any of the friends you've ever had when you were younger. Because when you're younger, it's all situational. You know, like when I was young, I had 51 cousins. So a lot of my cousins are my friends, and they still are my friends. But they all moved away, or we don't live near each other anymore.

2:07So I'm not as close with them. Of course, that's not true. One of my best friends is my cousin, and we talk almost every day. So thank you, God, for letting me have her in my life. I will say that. But overall, when I was 45, I remember I switched jobs, and I was in a new role, and all of my friends from past jobs and stuff, we just lost touch, because we didn't see each other every day. My kids all grew up and moved away. So I just didn't have like, I had a lot of alone time with no friends. And it was interesting. I'd go to work, I'd come home, and I love to hike and walk, and ride my bike. So I'd ride my bike alone. Well, I started to realize I just needed a tribe. Sounds funny. I needed a tribe. I needed friends. I really did. And I'm going to tell you how I did that. I'm going to tell you first how to do it, just to make connections, I should say, that maybe aren't deep, that are shallow, but that are many. And then I'm going to tell you how to strengthen those connections and make them deep. And then I'm going to tell you how to sustain those connections and keep them.

3:08But you will find so much joy in this process as an older person. Okay, so for me, I was alone. I'd come home from my hour nurse job, and I threw my running shoes on, and I go run on the trails after work. It was a little thing that I had that I loved to do, and I still love it, still love it. So then I'd come home, and my ex-husband was there, so we'd eat dinner together. I'd kind of watch TV with him and go to bed and do it all over again. Well, I didn't really have a connection. I didn't have a friend set, even at work that I had done much with after work at that point in my life. I was new to the job. I definitely felt like if they all went out to dinner and did something like that, I would jump on that opportunity. But they were all different diverse groups of women, and all had different interests, and had already been settled into their lives and their families. So I found this group, and I wasn't a member of anything really at that point. I wasn't even really going to church at that point, regularly to anyone church.

4:10So that kind of group didn't really have anything. I had just left a job where I worked like 12 hours a day and was there on Saturdays, even. So having this new job where I would get out at 3.30 was liberating, but then I realized I didn't have anybody to hang out with after 3.30. I'm like, hmm, right now I would love to meet up with a friend who wanted to go for a run with me in the woods or wanted to do something with me, wanted to maybe go have a cup of coffee with me, or just go to dinner with me or anything. I felt very lonely. So I joined this thing called Bike 3DK, and we have a bike club in Lancaster, and there's a running club too. I actually did go to the running club one time too, but I decided I was going to try to meet people that were similar to me. I enjoy riding my bike alone. I had ridden, I'm 45 years old, I had never ridden a bike with another person except for when I was a teenager, my cousin and I used to ride our bikes to work every day. But other than that, when I would go on a bike ride, I would do like usually a 16 to 20

5:14mile bike ride completely by myself. Never once did I ever ride next to another person except for when I did, I did like a triathlon on my bike. So I decided to ride with this group called Bike 3DK, where it was, I definitely was advanced enough to ride more than a 3DK bike ride, but I knew it was a way that I could meet people and ride with other people. So I immediately just, it was kind of a neat thing because we were all in this together, and a lot of the people that were there were past people who ridden their bikes in the past and started riding again. One of the girls women there was she was from New York and she had just moved from New York to Lancaster recently. So she was, I think, believed try to make some connections just like me. So it was fun because as I was in this group, I don't know how many weeks the group lasted. I think we met every Monday or Tuesday once a week and we were working our way up to a 3DK bike ride very slowly and it was all different levels. Most of the people were very slow to start. There were some people that I don't think would have ever advanced beyond like the pace that we were going at the bike to 3DK,

6:19but then there were some people that were really advanced. Well, I found that there were about six or so of us in the bike to 30K that were kind of going the same speed. So while some people were a little faster and some people were slower, we were about the same speed. So when you're at the same speed with people and you're riding, you talk. It's kind of neat because you can kind of talk to someone in the middle of a really neat conversation with one person and then that person either falls behind or they get ahead of you and then you like ride with another person and you talk to that person for a little bit and you really get to know people and I fell in love with riding with other people. Started this Monday night bike ride. That was just phenomenal. I was so excited about it because we were, it was kind of like we were all people who were in the bike club, but we weren't, it wasn't like a formal bike club event, I don't think. We just started doing it on our own because we all found that we could get together on Monday nights. There was a connector person I call them connector people, people who connect other people. His name was Tom and he kind of pulled us all together. Him and his other friends pulled us together

7:24in this Monday night group and it was consistently, very consistent that they always met and it was nice because we didn't usually ride till 6 p.m. at night. Well, almost every person in that little group has remained my friend and a couple of them have become my really, really close friends and I'm so thankful for that group. And then what happened for me was I started to, I wanted to share with me with my friends Kate May and I organized a bike ride in Kate May and that's another thing. Say you see that there's a Bible study of people that maybe do the same thing that you do. It doesn't have to be bike riding. Maybe there's a group at a church that all go hiking once a week or maybe there's a group of all women who have young children or maybe there's a group of men that meet that, I don't know, like motorcycles or racing or UFC fighting, which I would like that. But maybe there's like a group of people that you find and there's another way to find these groups.

8:24You know, you can find these groups on Facebook. Sometimes you can find them on, there's a meetup app that you can go on to and there's all these different groups that you can meet up on. You could even just Google things to do in whatever city you're in and then dive on it, dive on it. If it's something that you really like to do, dive on it and don't be persuaded. This is the thing. Don't think that you only have to be persuaded to do something with someone else. Like, you know, what if you have a friend that likes to knit and you kind of like to knit, but you really don't that much, but you're like, well, I'll go with you because I know that you like to knit and go with them. But don't put all your heart and time in soul into something that you hate to do or not hate to do, but you don't really find it a true passion of yours because you want to meet people that are similar to you. It's really joyful when you have a person that you can call and you can say, hey, do you want to do a 20 mile bike ride with me? Or you can plan maybe you decide to start planning the bike rides on Thursday nights.

9:27Maybe you decide, okay, we do this Monday night one, but every Thursday night I can ride. So you become the connector and you reach out to like a handful of people and you say, hey, I'm going to set up a ride starting at this point. We're going to go 50 miles and we're all going to head over to this pub and we're going to get, you know, it's taco night. We're going to get tacos and beer or whatever you want to drink. And it's just you plan it after you start getting, even if you don't have a tight group of friends, sometimes that friend of a friend will become your friend and I'll give you a story. I was riding my bike with a group of people and this woman who I barely knew wrote up to me and I think we started talking about camping for some reason. And I had never met her before and I think she could feel that I liked to camp because I talked about how I loved to be outside and think we're talking about hiking at barely newer and I didn't really even think about it when she rode away because she was off to talk to the next person. And then like a few weeks later, I feel like she either inboxed me on instant messenger. Somehow

10:32she reached out to me, she had my phone number, but somehow she found contact with me and she asked me to do this crazy thing. She goes, would you like to go bike packing with me if I can get a group of women together to go on a bike packing trip and it would be like three days where we would ride our bikes like, you know, 30 or 40 or 50 miles and then we would camp and then we would ride another 30, 40, 50 miles in camp. And so it was called bike packing, you know, just like backpacking, but on a bike. Oh my gosh. I felt like this elation that this was an opportunity for me because it's the kind of thing that I would love to do. I wouldn't want to do it alone. I really have to be honest. I mean, maybe now I would do it alone. Now that I'm more experienced with it, but I wouldn't necessarily be sleeping a hammock the way we did an isolated area is like we did alone knowing that I had her with me. And it was neat because she was only able to find two women that would do this with her at this time period. I'm sure she asked a couple more. And I have a whole podcast about this called

11:35Friends of a different Elgar friends of the same Elk I'm sorry. If you listen to my podcast at all, it's a really neat episode early on when I first started. And I love the episode because it talks about our experience bike packing. But that those two women that I became friends with are my friends right now. And they're two of two of my closest friends. And we've actually done a couple bike packing trips. We've actually traveled with one of them. I traveled to Costa Rica. We'd go on vacations to Saratoga. We've done just different things together. And we're still friends. And it's all because this woman who I barely knew reached out to me knowing that I like to camp and asked me to go on a bike packing trip with her. And then I made another friend from that same bike experience. I started planning these bike packing trips not bike packing trips weekend biking beach trips. Sorry. I love where I live. I grew up in Kate Mae. I don't don't live there now. But I grew up there. I was so excited to share my home talent with a bunch of my bike friends. So we ended up,

12:40all I did was I picked a date. I found a hotel that was less expensive than the other hotels, which is really hard to find in Kate Mae. And I doubt there's any that are less expensive anymore. I think there's only one. I won't say which one it is on the on the ocean drive that I've seen that actually does is not been rebuilt and is not been redone and is maybe less expensive than other ones. But anyway, they're all very expensive. But either way, we all booked rooms for two nights, you know, a Friday and a Saturday night at this hotel. And I knew I had to do it early the first weekend in May because that weekend was before graduations. And also the second weekend in May, all the prices kind of jumped up at the hotel. So I basically said, all right, this is the weekend we're going. This is the hotel if you want to book a room, book it now. And I will plan the trips. And then I just sent out a flyer that had each of the trips, like Saturday morning, we were going to do like a 46 mile bike ride that I planned. And then the next morning, I think we're going to do

13:41like a 20 mile bike ride. And then I only organized one dinner. Well, when I was there, I had given everybody a list of my favorite places to go on favorite things to do in Kate May because there were like going to be 15 people that were coming. And there's no way you can organize all 15 people to do exactly what you want them to do at all times. So I basically had two structured rides and one structured dinner. And all I said was whoever wants to go to dinner Saturday night, let me know when I'll find a restaurant and make a reservation. Well, my hope point of this whole story is tell you that one of my absolute best friends came on that trip and I had never met her my whole entire, I had never met her and I didn't know she was going to become one of my best friends, truly one of my best friends. And she was walking down the road and she stopped me and she had a mask on and she started speaking to me. And I didn't realize that I had never met this woman that came on my bike trip. Everyone else I knew. And I remember it was so funny because I only reached out to ask people who I knew to go on this bikepack with the trip because I'm more of a,

14:44I don't say intimate person. I like to be with my friends in a smaller group. So I didn't want to just say, yeah, whoever can come and then have like 40 or 50 people that I had to change the way I was going to do it. I wanted more intimacy. So I had only invited people who I knew. But meanwhile, she reached out to me and she out of the blue, I get like an email or another message from her saying, can I come on the Kate May trip? Me and my friend would like to come on this Kate May trip. So I'm like, who is this woman? I don't know her. And I think she mentioned a friend had told her about the Kate May trip. And I don't even think I knew who the friend was as she told me told her about it. I'm like, okay, well, I must have been a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend. Well, I told her where we were booking our rooms and she booked our room. So we were talking and I thought she was this young girl because she was all trendy and she just had this cute little young voice and she was like bopping around and she had trendy clothes on. I thought she was really young. So I said hello to her, introduced herself. And I know I think she said thank you for planning the trip or whatever. So then later she was sitting next to our hotel room. We had these open

15:48in the hotel rooms where the door comes right out to the little balcony. And I see her sitting there eating a peanut butter and banana and bacon sandwich or something. And I said to her, I looked at her and I did a double take and I just said something casual because I didn't realize she was the same girl that had the mask on. I just thought she was like our neighbor at the motel. I didn't know if she was even on the bike ride. And then she started to speak and I recognized her voice and she was older. She actually is older than me. But looking at her, I would think she's either the same age or maybe even a little younger because she looks very young. But I started to laugh and I just said, oh, I didn't realize that that was you. And I asked her what she was eating and she was eating a sandwich from the peanut butter store in K-May. I love the peanut butter store. I usually when I'm there, we'll go to the peanut butter store and take a little bit of some kind of weird peanut butter home. That's all flavorful that I would never ever eat except for the fact that I'm, it's a special treat. But anyway, so she became one of my closest friends and she's actually one of those people. When I'm in dire straits and I don't know who to ask,

16:50what question, or I need help, I need advice and I have these questions that I would never ask anybody because I would be embarrassed to ask them, I'll call her and I'll ask her and she'll give me sound, solid, truthful advice or she'll make me think, even if she doesn't give me advice, she'll make me think about what my concern is in a logical way and a caring way. So what I want to say is first, I was going to tell you how to make connections and one way is just to look for different groups doing things around your town that you like to do and then go there, go there and hang out with those groups of people and then also immerse yourself in it. If there's opportunities to jump on something outside of that and get more involved with people. So that's one way to make friends. Another thing is actually in my little town, I moved into a new neighborhood and the neighborhood had a book club and I joined the book club and I'm so happy I joined this book club. The first time I

17:52went to the book club, I realized I was the youngest person there. Everyone there was retired and a little bit older and wow, there's like about eight of them, eight of these women from my neighborhood and they're so wise and I created a little group there with the book club and it's nice because now I feel like I could email that group of women and ask them a question or just even create a little gathering of my own at my own house and invite them to come too and they would come and I feel like I have more connection with what's going on in my neighborhood because I get to hear when I go to book all the latest gossip around town or not gossip but maybe who got in trouble with HWA or what happened this time or just who moved into that new house down there or just it's kind of fun because I feel connected. If you had asked me when I was 45 years old, who were my friends? Who were my friends? Who my friends were going to be in the future? I would not have known that I was going to have a new set of friends, a new group of friends and another thing

18:56is neighbors. Reach out to your neighbors. I know you're supposed to keep a certain distance with your neighbors and that's great and you should keep a certain distance with your neighbors out of respect but if you have a certain neighbor that you're driving with and you're connecting with do nice things for them stay connected to them and the thing too I wanted to tell you church. If you go to any kind of church, I have been going to church for years and didn't get connected to church. I would just go in and sit up at the back and still I still like I'm going to church and not talk to anybody, not make eye contact or live with anybody because I wanted to get into church worship Christ and pray and then leave but lately I slow down a little bit. It's kind of really nice. I am in a situation where my kids are all with their families so after church you know they're dealing with wanting to be with their husbands because they don't see them all week my daughters and my sonny doesn't see his girlfriend all week so they don't necessarily want to always be with mom or see mom or hang out with me so I feel lonely sometimes you know I'm single I'm not

19:59dating anybody and that's okay I'm not saying that that's what I want or that would be fulfilling for me but friends are fulfilling and you have to reach out and nurture those friendships as well. I started volunteering at church and now just very little I pray with people after church and I love that and it's actually given me a little bit of an opportunity to meet a couple more people at church that I haven't met before and gradually I'm building up a little more connection with acquaintances at church and I feel like if I really wanted to nurture some of these acquaintances I could do more to create a friendship with them maybe I could invite them actually I'm going to invite a couple I just met to go on a bike ride I found out they like to ride bikes so this couple at church I'm going to ask them to go on one of the bike rides I organize and it's nice because they're older and I don't you know it's just going to be fun it's going to be fun to have them come and join in on my little tribe of bikers and even if they don't ride all the time

21:00or maybe they'll make a connection with someone that they meet there that's close to their age or close to their riding speed and then they'll have people to ride bikes with and to hang out with too so there are different ways to get involved in your community and the neat thing about being over 45 is that instead of just situational friends like your kids at school their friends or work friends you can create your own friends that are similar to you they like to do the same things that you like to do now connecting was what I talked to you about and the next thing I want to talk to you about is nurturing those friendships you are responsible for what you can do for someone else if you know that someone is moving to a new home and you have time to help the move go there help the move go there tell them that you'll be available to help them if you if you see that someone is hurting and needs maybe they go into the hospital and they're lonely and you know that they their kids are a college or something go visit them in the hospital if you know if somebody gets

22:04depressed and you see that they don't show up to something for a couple times and you know that they have a personality that maybe is a little depressive and they need help just go knock on their door don't be passive go knock on their door and see if they need you to help them give people gifts if you find out somebody likes something buy that for them buy them something if you know that someone is going to be alone on a day that you're alone ask them to go to breakfast or lunch with you nurture those friendships you can't just be passive in creating friendships you have to be active and you have to ask people to do things and you have to be there for them and even if it's something that maybe they need help with or they want to do that you don't even care to do like I know like say they want to go to an antique show and you're not really into antiques maybe say hey listen if I go to the antique show with you will you go to this movie with me or say no maybe still go to the antique show with them but say hey now I went to this antique show why don't you come do this with me it's just interesting that you can find nurturing friendships is just key and

23:10giving yourself time to be alone with one person in an intimate environment is just good going on a hike with a person that is your friend or taking a walk with them or even if you don't you know that they might sometimes come for a walk with you maybe just say hey look every Monday at 6am I'm going to go walk in the city if you want to come with me just call me let me know and maybe for a while just give them a couple ask them a couple times say hey remember I'm going to walk Monday at 6 if you want to come with me instead of just feeling bad for yourself this you're alone all the time reach out make connections do stuff plan things but also nurture friendships by doing things for other people buying people things if you know they like espresso maybe pick them up an espresso on the way that you're their house or invite them over for an espresso if you like to make espresso I love to make espresso that's how you nurture friendships go out of your way go out of your way and do something nice for somebody sustaining friendships it's hard sometimes

24:14I think when I now that I've told you to have all these friends and great friends I've also learned that sometimes too many friends is hard so what I've learned is there's a couple friends that I've learned are there is one center like I don't know there's one woman from college who absolutely love and her and I have reconnected because her kids are grown for a while my kids were little and then she 10 years later had her kids and her kids are little and for about 20 years we were just passing like this every so often and we weren't really hanging out like when we were in college I lived with her for six months we hung out all the time but we had this amazing camaraderie and comfort level with each other and those friends that you can reconnect with we reconnected now and now every so often we take a walk and I get to hear all about her life and her friends and she gives you about all about my life and my friends but we give each other advice we're supportive of each other and we have reconnected so there is a group of friends probably about five

25:18women friends who I have a deeper connection with and I try to sustain that deep connection with those few friends and keep it going and it's hard sometimes because we all get busy but I feel like you have to figure out who that core group of people are that are absolute I don't want to say the ones that you love but almost the ones that you could imagine yourself and this is what I always say this is really weird imagine yourself maybe if you had to live on a deserted island with just like 10 people who would those 10 people be or five people those are the people that you would want to keep that really strong sustainable connection with a lot of my friends like that like that one woman I was telling you that was eating my peanut butter sandwich and keep me she just moved and it makes me so sad because I almost felt so selfishly sad for myself because I wasn't going to have her near me anymore but I realize that I can still call her on the phone not as frequently as we used

26:21to be able to see each other but I can still call her and I can go visit her where she lives which is really far away but I can stay connected to her that way and I will because I truly do care for her and there's my like I said my cousin who's my best friend she lives three hours for me but we've managed to stay really close and there have been times when I have really needed her and times that she has really needed me and we pull through for each other there's that group that group of like five friends on your hand that you know you need to be in their life and don't lose them you need to stay connected to them and the nice thing about those friends is sometimes if you do lose connection maybe for a few years those are the friends that you know you can call and they'll still be there for you. As far as finding your tribe if you told me at 45 the age 45 that I would have this tribe I never would have believed it and I'm so thankful for the people that I've met along the way in this past 10 years because I'm 55 now that I have my new tribe and basically I'm telling

27:23you that you can find your tribe after 45 and it's not hard you just have to put a little effort in and you have to nurture your friendships and then sustain them and you have to put effort in and work in but while the payoff is amazing because eventually you'll have that person that you can call and say hey I'm gonna go I don't know to my knitting class come with me I'm gonna go to my music lessons let's go to dance class let's go hiking in the woods let's go ride bikes you'll find those people that like to do the same thing that you like to do and they'll be your friends they'll be your new tribe after 45 and my stand-up and redo is that I'm gonna put a little more effort this year into those really close friends the ones the five the top five that I really need to nurture and spend more time with and I'm gonna love on them and I'm gonna care for them and I'm gonna put an effort in to making sure that I am there for them and thank you

28:24this podcast is a work based on the personal experiences, reflections, and memories of the the events described are true to the best of the speaker's knowledge and recollection some names locations identifying characteristics and timelines have been changed or altered to protect the privacy of the individuals involved in some cases composite characters have been created or dialogue has been reconstructed based on memory the intention of this podcast is not the defame align or harm any individual or entity rather it is to share the speaker's journey with honesty vulnerability and integrity any opinions expressed are solely those of the speaker and are not intended as statements of fact regarding any person group or organization listeners should keep in mind that human memory is inherently subjective and selective and while every effort has been made to ensure accuracy this podcast reflects the speaker's perspective and truths thank you