By Georgia FreeTuesday 9 Apr 2024Hope DriveRelationshipsReading Time: 4 minutes
Sheridan Voysey is no stranger to relationship. As a broadcaster and speaker, he spends his days connecting with people from all walks of life. He is a friend to many.
Key points
- Having walked a 10-year journey of infertility, Sheridan and Merryn had specific needs when it came to friendship and community.
- Intentionality is key to friendship, and it can be as easy as check ins, catch ups and meetups.
- Listen the full conversation on the Finding Hope podcast, and in the player above.
And yet, Sheridan has known loneliness intimately. Perhaps, this is what makes him such a good friend.
Getting intentional about friendships
It was in 2008 that Sheridan realised the need for intentionality around building friendship. In a Sydney seminar room with his wife Merryn, the pair listened to the host explaining the ins and outs of foster care. After years of infertility, Sheridan and Merryn had decided to pursue a future in foster care and adoption.
“What are you going to do when the little boy who you’ve fostered is punching holes in your wall because of his pent-up anger, because of what he’s gone through?” the host asked workshop attendees.
“You’re going to need a support group around you – who can you call at 2 in the morning, when everything has gone wrong?”
For Sheridan, that was the catalyst for getting intentional about friendship.
Having walked a 10-year journey of infertility, Sheridan and Merryn had specific needs when it came to friendship and community.
Sheridan and Merryn’s infertility journey
Having walked a 10-year journey of infertility together, Sheridan and Merryn had specific needs when it came to friendship and community.
“One of the challenges with it is that it is a grief without a death,” Sheridan says of their decision to draw a line in the sand, and not continue with their quest for a child.
“With everything else, there’s some sort of finite end – with infertility, it’s not – it’s what they call a floating grief.”
Community when you’re child-free
“When you’re in this situation, first off, all your friends are having children, you’re not, so there’s straight away this sense of comparison, and that can be difficult.”
Doing their best to shield Sheridan and Merryn from further pain, some friends chose to hide their pregnancies from them, which was extremely hurtful.
“People at church didn’t invite us round for dinner because they were worried that seeing their kids would trigger us,” Sheridan said.
Instead, the couple wanted to be invited into those situations, to be brought into the lives of those around them.
“You have to try and keep the communication lines open,” he said.
“You have to try and forgive, but the best thing is you need to talk through these kinds of things with each other.”
How to support friends through infertility
“One of the best things that you can do as a friend of somebody who’s walking through infertility is just be present for them, and that may well mean that you don’t ask about how things are going,” Sheridan says.
Sheridan’s most recent book ‘Praying Through Infertility’ is also a great option to give to friends on this journey.
“The great thing that we can do as friends is just say, “Sheridan, is this something you want to talk about today or do you want to talk about something else?”
“That’s a great gift.”
Sheridan’s most recent book ‘Praying Through Infertility’ is also a great option to give to friends on this journey.
Written for couples who may be a few years into the journey and are losing hope, Sheridan has collected devotionals from 37 contributors from around the world and a multitude of ethnicities and racial backgrounds. All have faced infertility themselves with various outcomes. This book reminds readers that they are not alone and will help set their hearts free from fear.
How to be intentional about friendships
“It started with putting their birthdays in my diary so at least I could remember to celebrate the genesis of their existence,” Sheridan said.
Intentionality, Sheridan says, is as easy as check ins, catch ups and meetups.
A check in is a quick little text; “Hey Dave, how you doing? Are you feeling better now?”
A catch up is a phone call. “Hey Dave, I’m calling for no other reason than to find out how you’re doing.”
A meetup is then when you get together and have dinner or coffee.
Sheridan says intentionality is key to friendship, and it can be as easy as check ins, catch ups and meetups.
If you’re thinking, “I don’t have time for friendships right now!” Sheridan encourages you to think again.
“You have 10 seconds for a check in,” he says.
“I’m sure you’ve got 10 minutes for a catch up.”
And for the introverts among us, Sheridan believes friendships can be a place for refreshment – especially friends with whom we can sit in silence.
Friendship Lab
Sheridan launched the Friendship Lab to address the issue of friendlessness.
“We miss friendship. It’s the most overlooked relationship we have,” he said.
“The essence of who we are as human beings in our DNA is to be related to other people.
“It’s a very strange quirk of our modern era that over the last couple of hundred years we’ve somehow thought that the individual can last alone.
“We are built for relationship and yet it doesn’t come naturally.”
Listen the full conversation on the Finding Hope podcast, and in the player above.
Feature image: Photo by CanvaPro