After Lockdown, Can You Save Your Friendships?

The pandemic forced us to put our social lives on hold, but now that we’re coming out the other side, writer Rachel Tompkins decided to do all she could to rebuild some lost friendships

Many of us pride ourselves on having lots of friends, for actively keeping in touch with people from different stages of our lives. I certainly did, that’s for sure! There were the primary-school friends, the mates from art college, the university housemates, whose collective antics were thankfully never documented on social media (they pre-dated Facebook by too long to mention!). Then there's the two women from post-grad college and, more recently, my neighbours and the school-mum friends.

Like so many women, I enjoy the rewards of these friendships, the shared memories and the new ones to make. Before the pandemic, I’ve been guilty of often taking my friendships for granted, though, bemoaning the constant juggle to fit all my social arrangements around my husband and our two children.

However, when the lockdown began, a diary of meet-ups was instantly wiped out and more than a year went by without me seeing any of my friends, with only a few Zoom calls as an alternative, but even those fizzled out. One close friend fell pregnant and gave birth without me even seeing her bump, another moved house, and another is going through a tough break-up.

It felt like the months of lockdown had cost me dearly on the friendship front. Don’t get me wrong, we hadn’t fallen out, it’s just the virus came between us all.

Which was why my resolution for this year, as soon as restrictions started lifting, was to rebuild all the friendships I felt like I’d lost. Here’s how I got on.

‘We still laughed like we did before’

March