Two uni besties had a falling-out. An unusual project came to their rescue

Miriam Hechtman, 50, a writer and arts curator, met comms manager Ella Mitchell, 53, when they were uni students in Melbourne. When their decades-long friendship faltered, they devised a novel way to heal the rift. Ella: Mim and I met in a cinema studies tutorial at RMIT University in our very first week of a communications degree in 1994.

We locked eyes and broke into a grin. I remember her blonde haircut. You know how people say, “When you know, you know”?

We became a tight duo, going to films, festivals, weekends away. We were often separated in tutorials for laughing too much. After uni, she moved to Sydney and our friendship existed through phone calls, emails, texts and occasional visits, fuelled by conversations about ideas, philosophy, creativity, the world.

It was easy and breezy – until it wasn’t. I remember feeling some frustrations in our 30s when Mim became immersed in motherhood and I was focused on work and travelling a lot internationally. We weren’t as available to each other.

But I still felt shocked when communication became difficult, as though messages were scrambled, intentions misunderstood. It was nebulous, like we were longing for each other but couldn’t quite hear or see each other clearly. Conversations didn’t land and we had difficulty locking in times that worked for both of us.

What once felt flexible and exciting became unreliable. After months of silence, I began sending her the occasional line from a song whenever something reminded me of her. She started sharing lines from songs and poems, too.

For about six months, we communicated in this way, exchanging fragmented lines from Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Dylan Thomas, Patti Smith, Mary Oliver. One day, I wondered why she had chosen a particular line. Then she responded to one of mine with a question.

Something shifted. Then she suggested we share our own words: four lines of original writing each week. That became our Four Lines Project.

We wrote and sent them for the next five years. One of mine was: When you visitedWinter felt warmerAnd todayI’m aching for your sun. A few months in, I received a quick text back from her: “Who’s that one about?”

One question led to another and, slowly, our connection started to return. These small offerings held an unexpected emotional weight, becoming a steady thread, a way to stay connected, a meaningful example of commitment and care. Miriam and I have always been curious about what lives beneath the surface.

We don’t rush to tidy away grief or uncertainty. Neither of us is afraid of the shadows; we hold each other’s hands and stare into the abyss. What stands out most is the ease of returning to each other.

Even when life has taken us in different directions, the connection waits, intact, a conversation that never ends. What has grown between us is something radiant, rooted and alive. Mim has often said our bond feels old, as though we share some ancestral thread.

Maybe we do. Sometimes it feels as if the connection is being remembered rather than formed. Miriam: I remember seeing Ella in the classroom, catching her eye and thinking I wanted to know her.

I was 19. She became one of my first “adult” friends, the ones that you choose yourself after high school. Unlike me, she hadn’t grown up in a Jewish community, which was new to me: I came from a very Jewish world.

University was a real growing-up for me, a stepping stone to self-discovery. We shared philosophical conversations, ate at health-food shops in the city, watched movies and shared our poems. Whenever Ella travelled, she would send me a postcard or letter, or return with a gift.

I kept them all. They always felt like a huge affirmation. She saw my true essence without all the childhood and teen masks.

Our best times have always been when we’re in conversation, analysing a film, a book, a cultural moment, history, astrology, a relationship. We listen, engage, rely on conversation as our keeper. None of our discussions are shorter than an hour; we open our minds to each other.

It gets to the biggest questions, “Who are we? What are we doing here?” About 12 years ago, when I was a new mother, we found it hard to communicate.

Our lives had become so different and it was harder to empathise with each other. I was very focused on my children, while Ella was more career-focused. My hours revolved very much around my daughters’ needs.

I was always on a clock and couldn’t talk endlessly with her any more. I felt I was disappointing her. It was hard and led to a break.

Anger overshadowed our true feelings, which I think were a deep grief that our friendship was changing because of our different circumstances. After a while, Ella suggested we send each other bits of songs and poems – pieces written by other people. Then, one day, I listened to an interview with the poet Mary Oliver and, crying through it, I remembered that Ella and I had once shared our own poems with each other at uni.

I wrote to her and suggested we do it aga