From their airport meeting, they didn\u2019t stop talking. Andy describes it as an \u201cunshackling\u201d: \u201cAt the start it was the usual small\u00a0talk, then I would mention this little thing I\u2019d experienced and it was like, \u2018Absolutely, I deal with that\u2019 and I thought, I\u2019m not alone here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gaz recalls, \u201cWhen you can laugh about the things that six months ago you were crying about, and the guy you\u2019re talking to can laugh about it at your expense, that\u2019s funny.\u201d Andy agrees: \u201cYou miss that as a bloke. It\u2019s a relief to go, \u2018I\u2019m back in the normal world.\u2019 Gaz was two years ahead, so he was guiding me, too, telling me: you\u2019re going to experience this and this is how to deal with it.\u201d In Paris, they walked, talked, ate and ran together. \u201cWe came back and it was messaging on the phone,\u201d Gaz remembers. Inspired by how it felt to open up, two months later they launched a podcast<\/a>, Autism Dadcast, and supported the Disabled Children\u2019s Partnership<\/a>, too. \u201cWe also have a WhatsApp group full of autism dads and we catch up daily,\u201d Andy says. Gaz \u201cis probably the person I hear from more than anyone else in the world \u2026 This friendship is stronger, closer and more meaningful than those I had before.\u201d Gaz reflects, \u201cThere are three types of friend: the ride or die who\u2019ll kick someone\u2019s door in; the person you\u2019d call at 3am; and the person you can be vulnerable with. If you\u2019ve got one person who is all three, you\u2019re laughing.\u201d<\/p>\n The ex-church members who left religion behind \u2013 and found each other<\/p>\n Jonathan Kraft and Alicia Arthur, Tennessee<\/p>\n \u201cI was raised as a missionary kid and grew up overseas. I\u00a0attended religious boarding school and my grandfather was a pastor,\u201d says Alicia, 37. Religion \u201cwasn\u2019t really a choice\u201d. But in 2021, she remembers \u201cmy whole belief system started crumbling\u201d. A mother of two who had returned to education, Alicia was questioning her relationship with the church, and made the decision to leave. \u201cIt was very destabilising, quite traumatic and scary. My friendships were all in that community.\u201d Nobody reached out: \u201cI didn\u2019t exist to them any more.\u201d<\/p>\n Jonathan, 44, had a similar experience. \u201cI grew up in a charismatic evangelical church,\u201d says the estate agent and father of two. \u201cAround 2019, I started to see a major shift in the things I\u2019d been taught growing up \u2013 caring for the widow, the orphan, the foreigner. I was seeing a mismatch between words and actions in the church.\u201d After the pandemic, he and his wife Jenna pulled away from it. Around the same time, their child came out to them as non-binary, which is how they ended up at their local town\u2019s Pride event in summer 2024.<\/p>\n Alicia had recently come out as bisexual and was there with her husband. \u201cIt was a little coffee shop bookstore. I remember walking in and feeling a little unsure. I\u00a0saw Jonathan and his family in the back corner.\u201d She recognised Jenna from an online community for people who had left the church, but they\u2019d never spoken. The four instantly made a connection. \u201cWe swapped numbers and all went for dinner,\u201d remembers Alicia, an intern family therapist. They had game nights with the kids and Jonathan recalls, \u201cIt was clear that Alicia and I had a lot of common interests; we built a deeper bond than anybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markMeeting Alicia changed my view on what a friend is. It\u2019s set the bar<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re both passionate about mental health, we\u2019ve both been in our own therapy,\u201d Alicia says. \u201cBoth of us have this drive to always be learning and growing,\u201d Jonathan adds. They became sounding boards for one another. \u201cBoth of us tend to hold on to things loosely. We came from environments where \u2018this has to be what it is\u2019; now everything could be discussed,\u201d he expands.<\/p>\n It was new to both in a friend. \u201cWe\u2019ve stretched each other,\u201d Alicia says. \u201cWe both have wounds from how we were raised. It\u2019s been healing to have this friend who is accepting and not judgmental. We have multiple message threads going on,\u201d she says of their daily interactions. \u201cWe\u2019ll send each other video messages or memes; we\u2019ll play a game online.\u201d They live 30 minutes apart. \u201cIn person we don\u2019t get to hang out a ton,\u201d Alicia says. \u201cSometimes Jenna and the kids come over.<\/p>\n \u201cComing from church, there was often this idea that men and women can\u2019t be friends,\u201d Alicia says. \u201cIt\u2019s been beautiful to expand that.\u201d<\/p>\n Jonathan adds, \u201cI think men and women can learn a lot from each other. Meeting Alicia has changed my view on what a friend is. It\u2019s given me a healthier view of myself, what I deserve and what I have to give. It\u2019s set the bar.\u201d<\/p>\n The dog-walkers who became like family<\/p>\n Jude Davis and Maureen Anderson, London<\/p>\n \u201cI think it was our dogs that met first,\u201d says Maureen, 59, of Jude, 43. The pair live at opposite ends of a long road and Jude remembers walking a loop of the local park, four years ago: \u201cShe was the first other Black person I\u2019d seen with a dog. The connection was immediate.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAs children of the Windrush generation,\u201d Maureen explains, \u201chaving dogs as pets is not encouraged. In the Caribbean they\u2019re yard dogs. Ours are our babies,\u201d she says of cavapoo Simba and Jude\u2019s bichon frise, Mutya.<\/p>\n The pair stopped to talk. \u201cEveryone talks to Maureen in the park, everyone adores her. She was warm and inviting straight away,\u201d remembers Jude, a marketing and brand consultant. From then on, Maureen says, \u201cWhenever I\u2019d see Mutya, I\u2019d stop and walk with Jude.\u201d<\/p>\n While the dogs brought them together, it was their life experiences, particularly of grief, that bonded them. \u201cAs time went on we started to have longer conversations and longer walks. We realised we had so much in common,\u201d says Jude. In 2024, when he started training to run the London marathon for Lupus UK, he told Maureen about his younger sister Rachael who had died from the disease when she was 16 and Jude 18. \u201cIt\u00a0was really tough and I had held it in for some time.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markI don\u2019t know if you can have a community with two people but that\u2019s what we\u2019ve managed to create<\/p>\n Maureen had lost her parents within four weeks of each other from Covid complications in 2020, and had contributed to a book on Black grief and healing.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u00a0thought what she went through was awful,\u201d Jude says. \u201cNo one experiences grief in the same way but it was nice to have someone to listen and really understand. Maureen created a safe space where I felt comfortable talking about my sister\u2019s horrific death.\u201d<\/p>\n That Christmas, Jude invited Maureen to join his family. \u201cI\u2019d been happy having Christmas alone since my parents died; my son lives abroad and my family are in Birmingham,\u201d she says. But being welcomed by another Jamaican family meant a lot: \u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting all those feelings. As I was eating, I could taste home.\u201d<\/p>\n The pair found common ground in work, too \u2013 Jude had left a corporate job after 12 years and Maureen had worked for local authorities \u2013 and advocacy: Jude runs the Bop Black Opportunities Platform<\/a> while Maureen is also involved in racial equality and hosts the MAMM menopause support network<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019d discuss experiences for Black individuals in workplaces,\u201d Jude says. \u201cI\u2019d been there to support others but didn\u2019t have that outlet myself.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, he says, \u201cI hear from Maureen every day. It\u2019s so different to my other friendships \u2013 she has more experience and is easier to talk to. I always have that support from her.\u201d<\/p>\n Maureen agrees: \u201cI would describe Jude as a son, nephew, brother. I\u2019ll look out for him, he\u2019ll look out for me. When I had a cold recently, he brought me soup.\u201d Jude reflects, \u201cI don\u2019t know if you can have a community with two people but that\u2019s what we\u2019ve managed to create.\u201d<\/p>\n The adoptees with a shared backstory<\/p>\n Sue Jardine, London, and Debbie Cook, Carlisle<\/p>\n \u201cThere was an understanding of how and why we felt certain things that a \u2018normal\u2019 person doesn\u2019t quite get,\u201d says Debbie, 67, of meeting Sue, 63, 16 years ago. Both were found as babies in Hong Kong stairwells and later adopted by British families. \u201cIt was a trust thing,\u201d Sue says, \u201ca feeling we could share things that had always felt risky, about our experiences, our upbringings.\u201d<\/p>\n There was another leveller, too, Debbie says: \u201cI could look Sue in the eyes.\u201d Debbie is 1.45 metres (4ft 9in) and Sue 1.55 metres (5ft 1in). \u201cIt was having that mirror image looking back at you, deeper than just at surface level.\u201d<\/p>\n Their backstories were instantly recognisable to one another. Debbie was brought to Manchester in September 1961, as a toddler, by an adoptive Chinese father and British mother whose mixed marriage would have made them low priority for domestic adoption. \u201cThere had been an influx of Chinese families moving to Hong Kong for a better life and lots of baby girls abandoned at roadsides or in stairwells or public toilets, places where they could be found. They approximated I was 10 days old,\u201d Debbie says.<\/p>\n She was taken to Fan Ling Babies\u2019 Home, as was Sue, two years later, after being found in a first-floor stairwell on Hong Kong Island at between two and four days old. Her parents had answered a radio appeal for adoptive families, bringing her to Hatfield in 1963.<\/p>\n Their childhood experiences resonated, too. \u201cGrowing up, surrounded by nobody who looks like you, you know you\u2019re different but can\u2019t articulate or comprehend it,\u201d Sue explains. She discovered adoption papers aged 10 but remained \u201ccolour blind\u201d to her own difference. \u201cI didn\u2019t discuss it with friends. It wasn\u2019t something I wanted them to acknowledge,\u201d says the mother of one and retired social care information specialist.<\/p>\n double quotation markThere\u2019s a lot we don\u2019t need to talk about. It\u2019s unspoken because we both come from the same background<\/p>\n Debbie, a former engineering buyer, says, \u201cI didn\u2019t want to process that something wasn\u2019t quite right. I grew up in a very white village in the 60s. The only Chinese person was my father.\u201d Both experienced name-calling and neither knew other girls like them existed.<\/p>\n
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