My (32F) friend (31F) hurt me a lot with very insensitive & heartless comments about my lifestyle & health issues which is directly connected to my parent’s illness & passing & how the grief & depression affected me. I cut contact with her & I think she was taken aback & didn’t expect that.
After a few months she had asked mutual friend to find out “what she would need to do to make things right” but meanwhile she didn’t even try to simply apologise to me.
More recently she messaged me for the first time to ask to meet for coffee & I asked why so I could understand what the meeting would be for as she has a history of messing up in the past & then coming back into your life & acting like everything’s normal after some time has passed, but not actually taking responsibility about what happened. So I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to turn up to a coffee meet where I have to pretend everything’s normal again. She didn’t reply.
A couple of weeks later to the present day, I’ve now found out from others in the community that her parent is very ill. I suspect this is recent & wasn’t the case when she asked to meet as he is too ill for her to be doing other social things.
I feel heartbroken for her & concerned & I messaged her straight away to offer support & prayers. I also offered practical help with things but I know she has a huge extended family who are really close & take care of everything like food & chores & lifts to hospital. She replied acknowledging it & thanking me & said they hadn’t actually wanted anyone to know but it seems to have spread.
I’m now wondering how to navigate things with her. I can put aside our falling out to support her, but at the same time we feel like strangers now so it might be strange & difficult to navigate, & I know she won’t be available in person (as she’s working or in hospital) & barely on the phone either anyway to be able to be there for her in any capacity. And I know it’s not appropriate to overwhelm someone in that position with messages either.
Do I forget about our falling out & what she did entirely now & become her friend just as we were before.
Or do I (with all things already considered in regards to not overwhelming her anyway in a hard time) keep a step back because of the status, or lack of, our friendship.
She does not have any other friends here except me & mutual friend. And mutual friend is not as close to her as I was or has the long history with her like I do.