Lori Harder recounts that she formed her closest friendships in her early 30s after changing a longstanding negative personal story about female friendships. She explains that prior pain and guarded expectations caused her to push potential friends away until she consciously shifted her view and let her guard down.
I made all my friends more in my, like, early 30s, like, all of my really good girlfriends. And so many people look at me and they're like, oh, I'm so jealous of your girlfriends. I'm like, I just got these, like, not that long ago. But I had to change my story. I had such a painful, negative story around female friendships. And so I carried that into every single encounter with a woman. And so I just carried the story over and over until one day, I had to learn I have to view this in a different way in order to even be open to anybody, because all I would do is put that story on every single person other. They were amazing. They wanted to be friends. They could have been my best friends. But I couldn't let that guard down.
