Hi Reader,
Michelle told me about her group chat. It was six women, best friends since their kids were in preschool, the kind that used to text daily and never went quiet.
Until she got diagnosed with Hashimoto's, and slowly, without anyone saying it out loud, it did.
She noticed it the night the group planned a dinner without asking if she could come. It wasn't out of unkindness, but because she'd canceled the last four in a row, and people eventually stop asking the friend who keeps saying no.
"I wasn't invited to things anymore," she told me. "I was invited to be updated on. I keep wondering if something's wrong with me. Like maybe I'm just... harder to love now."
I think some of you just felt something drop in your stomach reading that. If you've watched your friend group quietly resize around your illness with fewer texts, fewer invitations, "come with us" slowly replaced by "hope you feel better soon" then I want you to hear me.
That grief is real and legitimate. It's one of the hardest, least talked-about losses in chronic illness, because nobody sends flowers for a friendship that just faded.
The Science
A 2021 study out of the University at Buffalo, published in The Journals of Gerontology, followed nearly 4,600 adults over several years and tracked what happened to their friendships after chronic pain set in. Moderate pain, the researchers found, tended to activate people's social networks. Friends leaned in, checked in more, showed up more often. But severe, persistent pain told a different story. Severe pain predicted a measurable decrease in the number of close friends someone had.
The researchers had a phrase for it: severe illness becomes "a threat to the social self."
Not because you did anything wrong. Sustained, visible suffering asks something of a friendship that a lot of relationships were never built to carry. That is consistency without a resolution date, presence without a fix, love with no finish line in sight.
In my experience, this is almost never about you being "too much." It's about the difference between a friendship built for brunch and a friendship built for the long haul, and most of us don't find out which kind we have until we actually need it.
Michelle's group chat didn't reveal that she was unlovable. It revealed which of those six friendships were built for adversity, and which ones weren't.
The Scripture
Long before any researcher tracked friendship networks in a database, Solomon wrote this:
"A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity." (Proverbs 17:17, ESV)
A friend loves at all times. Not just the easy, dinner-party, no-cancellations version of you. And a brother is born for adversity, meaning some relationships aren't merely tested by hard seasons. They're actually made for them. Born in them.
Proverbs doesn't promise that everyone in your life will pass that test. It tells you plainly that some will, and that adversity is exactly how you find out which ones.
Michelle did have a Dana. The one friend from that same group chat who started texting "thinking of you, no reply needed," and who, after a flare left Michelle unable to get off the couch, left soup on the porch without even knocking, because she knew what Michelle needed wasn't a visitor.
It wasn't a bigger gesture than the dinners. It was a truer one.
The "Steps"
So here's what I'm not going to do, I'm not going to hand you three steps to "fix" your friendships, because this isn't a productivity problem. But it may be worth noticing, gently and without judgment, who in your life has become a Dana, and who's still only showing up for the version of you that doesn't need anything. Both are informative. Neither one is your fault.
You're not broken, and you didn't do anything to deserve the quiet. Healing is possible in the body, and in this particular kind of loneliness too. Sometimes through the friendships you already have, and sometimes through new ones God is still writing into your story.
I'd love to hear from you on this one.
Hit reply and tell me whether your friend group changed since you got sick? Who's your Dana, if you have one? And who do you grieve, even if it's complicated?
With you in it,
Andrea DuMez, RN, CHN, NBC-HWC
Registered Nurse | Holistic Nutritionist | Integrative Health Coach | Certified Metabolic Balance Coach
P.S. Michelle told me something else recently: she said losing those friendships hurt worse than some of her hardest flares. I believe her. Loneliness has a way of showing up in the body too. If this email named something you've been feeling but haven't had words for, just hit reply.
