Ep 7: (Part 1): A Skydiver, an Ayahuasca Guide, and a 20-Year Best Friendship | Melanie Curtis & Shannon Leigh

It was a short video. Not even two minutes long. Just two friends singing their hearts that made Rachel cry, and question everything about her own friendships. This is the conversation that followed.

Scrolling Instagram one night, Rachel Joy Swardson stopped on a video of two women in long coats and sunglasses, belting Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us" into wooden spoons, with a caption that read: "When you realize every love song is actually about your friendship." It made her laugh. Then it made her cry. Then it left her with a wave of regret, envy, and longing she never saw coming. So she did what The Best Friend Project does best and she invited those two friends on the show to help her understand it.

In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Rachel sits down with Melanie Curtis and Shannon Lee, best friends of more than 20 years whose bond is equal parts deep and ridiculous. Melanie is a keynote speaker, world-record skydiver, and peak-performance coach; Shannon is a spiritual ambassador and master plant-medicine facilitator. Together they trace their friendship all the way back to a "love at first sight" moment on a skydiving packing mat in 2005 — and the two decades of high-integrity follow-through that made it last.

In This Episode: 

• A "love at first sight" friendship tells how Melanie and Shannon recognized each other instantly on a skydiving mat in 2005, and the 20 years of follow-through that proved it real
• Melanie on why being ridiculous together is actually an act of service and connection
• Nature taught Shannon that honesty is the default, and one of the greatest gifts we can give is to stop trying to change the people we love
• Boundaries inside unconditional love and how to accept a flaky or difficult friend without abandoning your own limits
• The friendship "template”, or the sticky-note mantra that has guided Melanie and Shannon's bond for two decades

Connect with Melanie and Shannon:

Melanie on Linkedin

Melanie on Instagram @melaniecurtis11

Website MelanieCurtis.com

Shannon On Instagram @luacheialuminosa  and @greatspiritfarm

About The Best Friend Podcast

The Best Friend Podcast is where original friendship research meets real-life stories. Host Rachel Joy Swardson, founder of The Best Friend Project, investigates how women find, make, lose, and keep the platonic loves of their lives through original data, personal experience, and candid conversations.

To learn more, visit The Best Friend Project.co . While you're there, discover your Friendship Archetype by taking the  Friendship Survey We'd also love to stay in touch—come say hello on Instagram  and Facebook (we will follow you back!)  If you need to reach us, you can always email us at Hello@TheBFProject.com.

Chapters: 

0:00 Love, Hilarity & Becoming Toxic: A Preview

1:00 Do Friendships Last Forever — or Grow Apart?

2:00 The Instagram Video That Made Me Hiccup Sob

3:00 When Every Love Song Is About Your Friendship

3:40 The Regret, Envy & Joy I Didn't See Coming

4:30 Meet Melanie Curtis & Shannon Lee

6:20 Love at First Sight — With a Friend

8:00 20 Years of High-Integrity Follow-Through

8:40 Love and Hilarity: The Two Most Important Things

10:00 What It Was About This Video That Felt Different

11:00 Divorce, the Recession & No Time to Be Silly

12:40 What It Means to Truly See a Friend

14:00 Untapped Potential & Refusing the Corporate Box

16:00 Recovering People Pleasers & the Power of Rebellion

19:00 What Nature Taught Shannon About Honesty

20:00 Loving People As They Are — Without Losing Boundaries

22:00 The Friendship "Template" on a Sticky Note

24:00 How I Got Unconditional Love Wrong

25:00 When Resentment Poisons the Well

26:00 Coming Up in Part 2

#TheBestFriendProject #WomensFriendships #FemaleFriendship #BestFriends #AdultFriendships #FriendshipGoals #UnconditionalLove #ToxicFriendship #PeoplePleaser #FriendshipAdvice #WomenSupportingWomen #Skydiving #PlantMedicine #PersonalGrowth #Boundaries #Vulnerability #IntentionalLiving #Friendship #FriendshipPodcast #podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Love and hilarity are the two most important things in life in that order. So love first, no matter what, and hilarity without it, we our lives are just so much less fulfilling, rich, connected, fun, all these wonderful things.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

I do feel like I became toxic because of my resentment, and then I poisoned our friendship waters, and she pulled the drain on it and was like, okay, I'm out.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

In this space of unconditional love, of unconditional friendship, we are the template for the world, one person at a time.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Look around and you'll see them. Women. Out walking, in restaurants, at the airport, stores, driving in their cars. Women are everywhere. And every time you see a woman, you're seeing someone who has, at some point, struggled with a friendship. Because it's one of the most complicated, meaningful, and rewarding relationships of our lives. But how to do friendship well isn't talked about enough. So let's start. I'm Rachel Schwartzen, former private investigator and TV journalist, and now host of the Best Friend Project, where we use original data and real stories to better understand how women find, make, and keep their friends. Thank you for listening. Do friendships last forever or inevitably grow apart? According to our survey, the answer is split. So what's really going on? Is friendship about choosing the right friends or learning how to be one? Welcome to the Best Friend Project, where we explore how women find, make, and keep friends and understand more about when and how to let them go. So today's episode was inspired by an Instagram post that I saw. And as we all know, our algorithms will respond to what we respond to when we're on social media. Because I work in friendship, my algorithm is consistently populating with friendship videos, whether they're breakups, makeups, you know, of just people waxing on about toxic friends and ditching them and all the different types of friendship content you can imagine, including friendship videos. So a few days ago I saw a video of these two friends and it hit me in ways that I I completely did not expect because it got my attention, it made me laugh, then get a lump in my f throat, and then tears just started welling up in my eyes, and I felt a fatigue and an exhaustion and a sorrow that I just didn't even see coming. The video showed two friends with long coats on and sunglasses singing their hearts out into spatulas and wooden spoons to the 1987 number one smash hit by Starship, Nothing's Gonna Stop Us. And the caption on the video said, When you realize every love song is actually about your friendship. And what made me well up with this new tear experience was this feeling of like regret and loneliness and envy and joy. Because amidst my own personal heartbreak, which has led to the inspiration for this entire project, I've been left wondering if I have openly loved my friends as much as I could. Like, do I have untapped uh uh potential or am I too insecure or too lacking in confidence to even like ask my friend to be silly and weird with me and put on a coat and sing a song? And that's what hit me. It was like not only do I not have that person in my life, I probably don't have that person in my life because of me and choices I've made or not made or vulnerabilities I've been too insecure to show. And it's just made me so horribly sad. Um and so to better understand their friendship, their video, you know, why they even created this video, and then have them help me understand what my role potentially is in it, I've invited them to join me on the podcast today. So joining me are these content creating friends from the video, Melanie Curtis and Shannon Lee. It turns out that Melanie is far more than a comedy content creator. She is also the highly sought-after keynote speaker, world record skydiving expert, peak performance coach. Melanie teaches sales teams and leaders how to access results and impact to match their ambition. She does this all with a parallel of fierce and rebellious commitment to her own creative expression and leadership by example, using her public platform championing women and girls to take up unapologetic space in this world. And talk about Yin Yang. Shannon is a spiritual ambassador who brings a rare integration of scientific understanding, spiritual vision, and personal transformation to her work. Her life experiences have cultivated grounding compassion and unwavering commitment to advancing a more unified, compassionate, and peaceful world. She is a masterplant sacrament facilitator, dreamer, coach, doula, author, artist, business owner, whose own work is rooted in over three decades of healing arts, expanded state exploration, and a devotion to God and Mother Nature. Welcome, Melanie and Shannon. Yay!

SPEAKER_00 5:46

It's so wonderful to hear all that and to be here. Thank you so much for having us, Rachel.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

It's it was amazing, like because you watch these videos and you're like, oh, there's just some goofy friends, you know? And then when I got to them, I'm like, oh my god, these are like brilliant, incredible women. And that even made it more fascinating to me that you're professional people, you're spiritual, you're deep, you're soulful, but you're also singing into a wooden spoon with glasses on. And as I entered too, the Bathroom Project seeks to understand how women find, make, and keep friends. And the find part is what really made me well up with tears because I want to know how you guys found each other, but also how did you find it within yourselves to even know you had this type of friendship potential, this silly loving thread within your friendship?

SPEAKER_02 6:35

Mel and I met through skydiving, and uh Mel was an organizer at a drop zone where people skydive out in California, and I was living in Florida at the time, and I was a newer jumper. I had like 150 jumps or something, and um I was emailing her about this event that I wanted to go to, which is like a big skydive party where a lot of people just travel and they have all kinds of airplanes and theme parties. And I was getting Google and I was emailing her about can I bring my massage table? Because I used to do massage as well and and help pay for my jumps and my travel. And she was like, Yeah, absolutely. And I never saw her in person. I didn't know who she was, you know, she wasn't the person that the big famous person she is today. And uh I saw her on the packing mat in the drop zone, and it was like instant recognition. I knew who she was. It was like that if you you could have a love at first sight moment with a friend, it was it. Yeah. And I think Mel felt the same thing, but over time we have that has been tried and tested and been proven to be true. It wasn't just like this thing that we you know. How long ago each other? That was 2005.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Okay, wow. So over 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Yeah, yeah. And just to pop in, it for sure I felt the same way. It was a mutual recognition moment. I've said this m multiple times over the years about our friendship that yes, we had that initial, you know, soul connection, and we followed it up with 20 years of high integrity, follow-through, keeping our word, cleaning up our conflicts, like really showing up in relationship through the mess and the majesty, as it were, of what's possible in friendship. I I want to speak briefly though, Rachel, to what you just shared about how do we do all these kind of deep things, but also have this kind of ridiculousness about us, our this willingness to play and be funny and be dumb and like embrace the ridiculous, as it were. That's something I personally deeply believe in. One of the things I said years ago, Shannon, you'll love kind of I think bringing me bringing this back up, is I used to say all the time, love and hilarity are the two most important things in life in that order. So love first, no matter what, and hilarity without it, we our lives are just so much less fulfilling, rich, connected, fun, all these wonderful things. So I personally feel quite strongly that being ridiculous and leaning into comedy and humor and and laughs and that type of stuff is a really important thing to do. So I am kind of constantly asking my friends to participate in this type of silliness with me because I believe in it so much, as in service to how we can be more fully connected and fully self-expressed in the world. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

I I've never heard someone say hilarity and silliness and being in service in the same breath. But when you say it, it makes so much sense because if we're not living in service of ourselves and others around us, then we're not being with integrity first, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:12

So laughter is the medicine.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think so many people that are professional are like, oh, no one can see that side of me, or that's not my brand, or what have you. And what I thought was so moving, and I rewatched this video more times than I want to admit. Um it's funny because there's there's many videos of women singing and being silly, but there's truly, truly something different about the two of you. And Mel, part of it for me is not just the song choice or the costumes, but when Shannon's singing and she's, you know, in right close to the camera, you're in the background, like fucking unhinged. Like the joy and the hilarity. I mean, like, there's no like I'm doing this for the camera. Like you're doing that for you in that moment, expressing your love. And I can't, I literally can't watch it without crying. Oh, but it's like, it's like joyful and like it makes me feel hopeful, like, okay, that's out there because like I know I had that when I was a little girl, you know. Um but then as as an adult, I mean, I've had very serious things happen to me and they've changed me. And it's like I think I'm it's hard to talk about, but I think I'm starting to realize how much it's changed me. And yes, I've grown and yes, I'm better for it, and you know, divorce is horrible, it happens to everyone, I get that. But like my divorce was unique to me. I had little kids. It was 2009. The recession happened. I had to sell everything I owned to start this business that everyone told me was never going to happen and was impossible. At a same the same time, they're telling me no one will employ me because I hadn't been in the workforce for seven years. So I was like, okay, so everything's true. I'm just unemployable and I'm what? I die? No. I sell everything, I start this business, but I didn't have time for friendships. You know, I didn't have time to be silly. Like I had the weight of the fucking world on my shoulder, you know, and three children and all of these things. And then coming out of that was like, you know, you're I mean, ah, you know, so watching that I just felt like it really um it hit me in that way. And so I'm wondering, Mel, like you have this effect on people. Like there is a magic in like I'm crying, but there's like a magic in you, and I can only imagine if that's what I get out of watching this on Instagram. Like, what kind of responses do you get from your keynotes and these electric events that you I mean with MasterCard and Red Bull? And I mean, like, you're you're out there, you know. But how do like what do people have to say after they hear you in person?

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Thank you for your sharing, by the way, first and foremost, because I personally believe, and obviously Shannon knows this, uh knows all everything I'm about to say. Basically, Shannon already knows about me, so feel free to comment at any point, my love. Uh yeah, I thank you for mirror, like reflecting me back to me. Like that is a wonderful thing, just for me to experience, just sitting here today, being like, wow, what I believe is possible actually is possible, and I'm seeing it now. I'm experiencing it through through Rachel. Like, that's wonderful. Just so you know that that's like, I think part of being a good friend is like, how do we help our loved ones be as in the world as themselves as they can be, and then show them that we see them, we know them, that they are held, that they are loved, regardless of what they are going through. Like, I'm right there with you. I got divorced, and man, was I as funny during those times? Was I crying all the time? Yeah. Was I not like I wasn't as funny to the to be clear. You know, and because you have those chapters in your life, you know what I mean? Um, one thing people have said to me to answer your question, like what response do I get from people when I'm either on a stage or whatever? I think there's a lot I could say about that. First, and I'll just say a couple of things. First, I love the people. I love people. I deeply, deeply love people, and I'm f infinitely fascinated by our human experience, which is why I talk about what I talk about in terms of accessing on tap potential and these ideas of what is the unfathomable extreme of what we can do in this life. Like I'm very, very interested in all of that, and that's very true to me. So I am both calling people into that for themselves, but I am living it myself. And Shannon, we talk about this about our friendship as to why we are so drawn to each other, is that we both care about that in our own ways. Like you talk about if you get Shannon talking about her facilitation work with plant medicines and how much she has done with her own work and how much space she has held for others. It is extreme in nature. And I mean that as a high compliment from coming from me, right? Like, and the things that I do, I take them really far. So, same goes for my comedy. I'm like, I believe so strongly that it's actually sucks the whole we have to fit into a corporate box. Watch this. I'll get hired by MasterCard, BCG, yada yada, yada, all these big companies because, precisely because I am not that. Right. And I embody the messages that I espouse. So people, when they see me and when they're around me, they I've had people at first kind of reject my positivity, my energy, it's a little too much, my intensity is not for everyone. But for people who stay with me over time, they realize that it's real. And when they're like, whoa, this is actually a real person, and she's not messing around, she's not fucking around, she this is her. Then it's like, cool, I can trust this person. There's an integrity there. And so I'm gonna pause and let Shannon dive in. But I have I could go on and on and on about all of these things.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Uh first, I absolutely make so much sense because as a recovering people pleaser, you know, I think that I would. And it's weird to even hear me say that because if you had told me I was a people pleaser, I'd be like, no, I'm not, but how are you? You know, like you know, but um I think it's like, am I gonna offend someone or will somebody not like this, or you know, that kind of a thing. I tend to hide behind humor, and that's been pointed out to me. And so I can come across as dismissive or laughing something off.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Um, which is I'm a recovering people pleaser as well, by the way. Which is why I'm such a rebel, which is why my soul, my heart, my being needed rebellion, right? That's why that's one of the reasons why is that my inner like soul, my my core essence rejects that, right? And so it even when you're dealing with the people pleasing stuff, you're at least for me in my experience. I can only speak from my experience, it's it's both uh both of those things. You know what I mean? So it's like when it in my early years, when it was unconscious, there was a lot more sort of more reckless, unconscious rebellion from it. Whereas now that I'm quite aware of it as a pattern, I get to self-select with power with power, with positive power, with self-awareness. What are my values and how am I living into them? So I'm just a lot more consciously aware and as such, consciously more powerful as a result of that. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Oh, it makes so much sense. And I love that you said consciously because I was not aware, but now I'm aware. And once we have awareness, it's our responsibility to turn that into power.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

And I wouldn't be this person, this this healed version, this more conscious and clear and and um radiant version of myself without Shannon. Like there's no way I would be here without her. And I want to give her a chance to talk.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Well, and I was gonna say that's such an interesting thing because like you skydive, and so you're up in the air. Shannon is like in the dirt in the plants. Like you skydive too, but I just picture like this like kind of global world, you know, sphere of friendship because you see the you know, earth from high above. But Shannon, I'm so curious about how like what you've learned from nature about harmony, obviously, lessons abound, but how would you apply that to living human friendships?

SPEAKER_02 19:20

You know, one of the things that I mean, nature's taught me so much, but one of the things that nature has taught me is that it doesn't lie. Like, you know, the only time I could I've thought about this, the only time I could find that nature is inauthentic is when an animal's in pain, they'll hide it, but that's a survival instinct. But for the most part, nature's pretty honest. It doesn't lie, it isn't inauthentic. A cat as a cat as a dog, a bird is a bird. Like they are what they are, and they may be really annoying, but they just are. Like we used to have these guinea fowls, and if you've ever heard guinea fowl, they can be obnoxiously loud. And it would like, I would be trying to do business calls during the day, and they would be outside my window going to shut the up. Like, and then like my guides, my spirits guys are like, just being guinea fowl. And I was like, Oh trying to change something from what it is to something else. And I think that that transfers over to our friendships because one of the most priceless gifts that we can give the people that we love and everyone in the world, like that's we can talk about Melani's template for the world, but is to let them be who they are and to love them as they are, and to stop trying to change people. You know, we can have boundaries and be like, you know, that doesn't work for me. So, you know, if your friend's always late or always canceling, then there's a boundary to be set there. You can accept them as somebody who's kind of flaky or really flaky, and then you're responsible for how much you and teacher interact with that person, but you can still love them from a different distance, you know, and so we learn to accept people as they are, and in loving them as they are, then they have the power by being loved to transform whether consciously or unconsciously and to show up differently because they feel loved and accepted in some of those internal dynamics of our psyche that you know want to play games or be inauthentic or you know, that that get us in trouble with these cyclical patterns and like operating systems in our mind that don't serve us, or maybe they serve parts of us, not the whole, the whole of us, then they kind of go offline in the space of love, in the space. Space of unconditional love. And that is Mel and my template.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

You mentioned that you have a friendship template. Is that just like a like a theoretical thing, or is there an actual template for your friendship? Like what do you mean when you say template?

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Yeah. So Shannon and I have have a template for our friendship. We just came up with it kind of back in the day when we were in the early stages of our friendship and we were feeling this real depth of connection from the beginning and basically giving each other permission to lean into it and to acknowledge its truth, right? And so we were writing on a sticky note. I have it in the other room. I should have brought it to this interview, but it's basically in this space of unconditional love, of unconditional friendship, we are the template for the world, one person at a time. And so Shannon and I have over the years, like it's like a mantra of any kind. It's like a core value. How are you living into that? Right. So that for sure informs how we love each other, how we treat each other, the level of respect. How does unconditional love look in this experience we're sharing? How does unconditional friendship look and feel? What is it that I say from that frame? And also carrying that forward, if we're talking about being positive impacts in the world and radiating out this love and unconditional, this true, genuine love to the world, it also shows up in the microengagements with other people. Again, not that it's easy, not that we don't set boundaries, not that everyone gets access to us. That's not what that means. But we can love universally and believe in our sort of core, core selves and know that that's making a positive difference in the world because of how we're showing up in it.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

That was so important for me to hear because something that I feel like I have gotten wrong about unconditional love, because if you would have asked me, I'll call her Gina, it's not her name. I would have said I love her unconditionally. Because there was stuff that, like, not my same values, but like I don't care, I love her, or she's going through a hard time, or you know, that to me was unconditional love. What I think I did with unconditional love is sweep in unexcusable behavior under that unconditional love. And then that built up resentment. And then I started judging her and then internalizing things that she said and that meta, meta, meta, meta, meta perception of like, well, I think she meant this and I think she thought I, you know, huh? And under that umbrella of unconditional love, I never sat her down and said, This is ridiculous. Why did you do this or why did that? I turned that what I would have called unconditional love into a toxicity. And, you know, people throw around toxic friendships, toxic friendships. I do feel like I became toxic because of my resentment, and then I poisoned our friendship waters and she pulled a drain on it and was like, okay, I'm out. Oof. I had to pause that episode right there because I was starting to spiral. You could hear me start to list off all the things I had done wrong, what she had done wrong, and this is a pattern. This is what I do. I get frustrated, I get my feelings hurt, I don't say anything, I internalize it, and it is just something I'm working on and I need to change. Fortunately, this project has exposed me to so many different types of friendships, Melanie and Shannon included. As you'll hear in part two, they talk about a time that their friendship was in a similar, you know, make or break moment and how they handled it. Which is not how I would have handled it, which is why I'm alone and they're over there with this amazing friendship. Shannon goes on to teach me what a shadow friend is. Melanie goes on to explain in greater detail what keeps their friendship literally together and what they prioritize, which I hear her say and then I get wrong when I repeat it back to her. So it's it is complex because friendship is complex, because love is complex, because women are complex. But that's why we're here. And I am so grateful that you're listening to this episode. Um, please tune into part two. You don't want to miss it.