What happened after the episode? The one where Ali talks openly about her biggest hater being the one who birthed her. Where I disclose a disconnect between me and my own mother that just might explain the gap that prevents me from trusting?

Find out on this episode of On The Phone with Ali Lohman. This is the bonus content from The Best Friend Project, where I call the guest from this week to ask them about their episode, reflect and share.

If you haven't yet taken The Best Friend Project survey, you can do so here.

Follow Ali Lohman at https://www.instagram.com/ali.lohman/

Follow The Best Friend Project at https://thebestfriendproject.co/

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“My biggest hater gave birth to me.”

When I came across Ali Lohman's Instagram posts about the years she spent trying not to go no contact with her mother, I knew I wanted to have this conversation. Research from The Best Friend Project suggests a strong connection between trust in our mothers and our ability to build healthy adult friendships. In this episode, Ali and I talk about mother wounds, breaking generational cycles, trust, and the ways childhood experiences continue to shape us long after we've left home. Along the way, I uncover a possible reason I've struggled to feel the sense of sisterhood and safety I've been searching for. As Ali told me, "That's how you get to sisterhood. You just share."


Connect with Ali Lohman on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/Ali.lohman) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@ali.lohman)

To learn more, visit The Best Friend Project.co . While you're there, discover your Friendship Archetype by taking the Friendship Survey (https://thebestfriendproject.co/signup). We'd also love to stay in touch—come say hello on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/thebest_friendproject/) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/TheBestFriendProject)(we will follow you back!) If you need to reach us, you can always email us at Hello@TheBFProject.com.

In this episode:

- Why comparing trauma can keep us from telling our own stories
- Ali’s decision to break the cycle with her daughter
- Packing everything into a trailer and starting over
- How childhood wounds can quietly show up decades later in friendships
- Why Rachel believes she sabotaged a friendship she desperately wanted
- Ali’s approach to boundaries, loyalty, and friendship breakups
- The vulnerability Rachel believes has been missing from her friendships
- A simple lesson from Ali: “That’s how you get to sisterhood. You just share.”

Chapters:

01:15 — "My Biggest Hater Gave Birth to Me"
05:03 — The Mother Who Never Protected Ali
10:20 — Becoming the Mother She Never Had
17:35 — How She Broke the Cycle
22:01 — Leaving Home to Start Over
26:00 — Packing a Trailer & Driving Across Canada
27:24 — Building a New Life—and New Friendships
29:29 — How Our Mothers Shape Our Friendships
32:27 — Loyalty, Trust & Friendship Breakups
36:37 — Knowing When It's Time to Walk Away
39:20 — What Real Friendship Actually Looks Like
41:06 — Rachel Opens Up: Why I Can't Cry
43:55 — The Wounds We Carry Into Every Relationship
44:46 — Can a Broken Friendship Ever Heal?
46:33 — Breaking the Cycle Together
47:23 — Apologies, Accountability & Moving Forward
49:29 — "That's How You Get to Sisterhood"

Coming Next Week

Rachel talks with Barb. Barb is 69 years old, and she’s dealing with a friendship breakup that has rocked her world—even four years later. She never thought she’d still be dealing with this kind of heartbreak at 69. But what makes it even harder? Her former best friend is also her immediate neighbor.

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What did Jackie's former coach think of Jackie's comments? Find out as we hop On The Phone with our guest to hear her reaction, her experience with Jackie, spotting friendships as a coach, and much more.

Stay in touch with Jackie Kashian by following the links below:

• YouTube: https://youtube.com/@jackie_kashian
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jackiekashian
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JackieKashianJokesmith/
• Website

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"In the end, I don't know that we were friends at all."

Jackie Kashian is known for being funny. Really funny. But in this conversation, we get to know the woman behind the comedy as she shares her experiences with friendship, and how her own family influenced her social life, or lack thereof. Jackie opens up about her journey to making friends and the people who helped her understand how to truly connect with others, on stage and off. One of the most surprising stories takes us back to high school, when her track coach told her to "put the book down." What followed was a lesson about friendship that Jackie says "saved her life."

About Jackie

Jackie Kashian is a nationally touring stand-up comedian who has appeared on Conan, After Midnight, The Late Late Show with James Corden, HBO, Netflix, Comedy Central, and Dropout TV, and has been heard on NPR, Audible, and as a voice actor on Bob's Burgers and Strange Planet. Her latest comedy special, Alter-Kashian, was named by The New York Times as one of the year's five best comedy specials. She also hosts the long-running podcasts The Dork Forest and The Jackie and Laurie Show.

In this episode:

- Jackie’s experiences—or lack of them—with friendship growing up
- The coach who taught Jackie how friendship actually works
- The danger of “compare and despair”
- What happens when one best friend becomes your only best friend
- Jackie’s experience losing an intense friendship
- One unforgettable piece of advice from Jackie’s stepmother

Connect with Jackie Kashian on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok

To learn more, visit The Best Friend Project.co . While you're there, discover your Friendship Archetype by taking the Friendship Survey We'd also love to stay in touch—come say hello on Instagram and Facebook (we will follow you back!) If you need to reach us, you can always email us at Hello@TheBFProject.com.

Chapters

00:00 – Introduction
02:49 – Being a Woman in Stand-Up Comedy
10:30 – “I Had No Friends as a Child”
11:29 – ***The Coach Who Taught Jackie How to Make Friends***
15:48 – Learning How to Accept Friendship
23:02 – Do Women Really Tear Other Women Down?
24:38 – Mother Trust, Betrayal & the Best Friend Breakup
32:11 – “In the End, I Don’t Know That We Were Friends at All”
36:31 – What Gone With The Wind has to do with The Best Friend Project
41:10 – 20 Years of Podcasting & The Dork Forest
44:24 – Final Thoughts

Coming Next Week

Rachel talks with Allie, an adult who is now no contact with her mother, exploring what led to that decision and how that complicated relationship has affected her ability to make, maintain, and understand friendships.

Content note: The conversation includes references to sexual abuse, violence, and domestic assault. Nothing is graphic, but listeners with sensitivity to these topics may want to skip this episode.

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As I dig into my recent friendship break-up, I realized in order to understand "how I got here," I have had to go back and look at where I came from.

On this episode of "On The Phone," I call up Paige Parranto, one of my oldest childhood friends, to ask her what she remembers of my house growing up. It sparked a memory for both of us. Paige describes sleeping on the floor of my parents' bedroom, because it was the only room in the house with a window air conditioner. The very same air conditioner that kept my parents from coming downstairs during countless wild keg parties I would have without them ever knowing.

Hear more about this, and about the time just a few years ago when she and I met up with our other friend Emily Sellergren in San Diego. We had grand delusions of dressing up like Marilyn Monroe, only to end up looking like "sexy" (if you are blind) George Washingtons.

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One text message ended my longest, closest friendship of 12 years. No fight. No warning. Just "Friendship with you is like death by 1,000 cuts." Then ghosted. Before I started the Best Friend Project, I was a private investigator and TV journalist, so when my closest friendship blew up I went into full decode mode. I had to figure out what I had done wrong throughout my life in my friendships. In this solo episode, I tell the real story behind the project, the wedding she skipped, the golf tournament that broke us, the months I spent putting postcards in bathroom stalls across the country, gathering data from hundreds of women as I tried to figure out how others find, make and keep their friends. This is not a tidy story. Nor one I am proud of. I own my part in it too.

Mentioned in This Episode

• How one text obliterated a friendship
• What does Reese Witherspoon’s Instagram post have to do with all of this
• The Cry-Fecta of an empty nest, best friend break up and a move to Dallas
• Also weddings are hard on friendships, I am right

To learn more, visit The Best Friend Project.co . While there, take the Friendship Survey and discover your Friendship Archetype. I'd also love to stay in touch, come say hello on Instagram and Facebook I'll follow you back! (That's what friends do!) If you need to reach us, you can always email us at Hello@TheBFProject.com.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Rachel and The Best Friend Project

02:03 Rachel's personal story of friendship breakup and its impact

03:45 The research and survey process behind The Best Friend Project

04:51 Aftermath of the friendship fallout and the backstory

11:47 The emotional toll of friendship fallout and mental health effects

17:33 The story of how Reese Witherspoon inspired The Best Friend Project

21:47 How sharing stories helps heal and build understanding

27:45 Rachel's reflections on her friendship journey and lessons learned

34:00 Moving forward: hopes for better friendships and self-improvement

Tease next week:

Comedian Jackie Kashian joins the show to talk about being one of the only women on the lineup in a world of male comics, and why women in competitive spaces can be harder on each other than men are.

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What did Donielle think after hearing her story? Find out as we hop On The Phone with our guest to hear her reaction, answer listener questions, and respond to your comments and feedback.

For more information about The Modern Widows Club or grab tickets to their upcoming virtual event, click HERE.

Stay in touch with The Grief Disruptor, Donielle Young by following the links below:

• YouTube
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Website

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How to be a friend, to yourself and others, when you don't even know who you are anymore. Because grief permanently altered your identity. As Donielle shares it can be really hard to recognized who your friends are anymore.

"Didn't I lose enough? My husband died, and now my so-called friends are judging the way I grieve?"

On today’s episode of the Best Friend Project Podcast, we meet Donielle Young, who lost her husband Dwayne to stage four colon cancer at 47, leaving her with a teenage son at home and very little emotional support. In her struggle, she found a space to rebuild herself as The Grief Disruptor, creating The G3 framework (grief, grit, glow up) around the part nobody wants to talk about, how to get to know the new you, when death has changed you. Old you could show up to brunch and be present. New you looks the same on the outside, but you can't sit there and hear normal conversations about husbands traveling or not helping with the dishes after your husband has died.

Donielle knew some of her friends were judging her, she didn't realize all of them were. She talks candidly about about the day when one of her closest friends admitted she had judged the way Donielle grieved.

And she names what friends get wrong most, talks about the importance of week three. The casseroles stop but the grief doesn't.

In This Episode

• Being judged for how you grieve
• Losing your identity and creating a new one
• Auditing your people
• How friends can fumble supporting each other

Connect with Donielle Young on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn

To learn more, visit The Best Friend Project.co . While you're there, discover your Friendship Archetype by taking the Friendship Survey We'd also love to stay in touch—come say hello on Instagram and Facebook (we will follow you back!) If you need to reach us, you can always email us at Hello@TheBFProject.com.

Chapters: 00:00 Cold open

00:52 Welcome to The Best Friend Project

02:05 Meet Donielle Young, The Grief Disruptor

02:20 Who Dwayne was

03:00 A stage four diagnosis in 2020

04:10 How Rachel and Donielle found each other

05:00 Losing your identity, not just your person

07:50 The friend who admitted she judged her

10:00 "It's none of my business who's judging me"

12:40 Why G3 is a framework and not a blueprint

16:40 Were her friends surprised?

19:50 What Dwayne would say to her today

21:20 What to say to a grieving friend

23:20 Show up later, because grief isn't the flu

26:00 Rachel's confession about the text she didn't send

30:40 The relative who disappeared

34:20 Auditing your people, explained

36:00 VIP or general admission

41:20 Historical friends and what the survey found

45:40 Colon cancer, screening, and why women have to lead

53:40 The friends who showed up: Tina, Ruth, and Kenya

55:40 Her son, and what he told the counselor

57:00 Rachel's closing reflection

#GriefAndFriendship

#YoungWidowhood

#IdentityAfterLoss

#HowToSupportAGrievingFriend

#AuditYourFriendship

#Grief

#Friendship

#WidowLife

#GriefSupport

#WomensPodcast

#thebestfriendproject

#FemaleFriendship #WomensFriendship #GriefPodcast #FriendshipPodcast #IdentityAfterLoss #ColonCancerAwareness #GetScreened

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