Photo & © Peter Knutson
Amelia 2022-11-03
By: LINDA NEWNHAM
Together, the artists Helen Sjöholm and Anna Stadling can be insecure and even let a little envy seep out. Between them, even the less beautiful feelings are allowed. For 40 years they have been friends, through successes, crises and cancer.
– The relationships that last and deepen are those where you dare to show yourself small and vulnerable, Anna Stadling says.
People often talk about marriage in need and desire, and there are thousands of relationship bibles on how to meet the right one and then develop your love relationship. But for many, it’s the friendship that lasts while relationships come and go. And even though friendships are such an important part of life and have such well-documented positive effects – they improve our physical and mental health, strengthen our sense of security, extend our lives and make us happier – we talk quite a little about how to nurture our friendships . Perhaps because for many it is such an everyday phenomenon that we rarely reflect on it.
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Two who have been together for 40 years and understand the value of friendship are Helen Sjöholm and Anna Stadling.
– We talked about it in the taxi here, how important it is to have someone who has followed you for many years, who knows what your childhood was like, who has known your parents, especially now that they are getting older, Anna Stadling says.
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– Over the years, I’ve better understood that this relationship also needs to be nurtured. Just as in a love relationship you say to each other that I love you, I think it’s important that in a friendship relationship you express that you are important to me, Helen Sjöholm says.
We meet at Hotel Hasselbacken on Djurgården in Stockholm. Helen points to Cirkus and says that she and her husband, sound engineer David Granditsky, met there and got married at Hasselbacken.
– What a party it was, Anna remembers.
These two sang together already as teenagers, especially before Christmas. Now they are going out on a Christmas tour again with a new album. But their life threads were intertwined even earlier, yes, they were actually on BB at the same time.
– I’m a day older. We are two Cancers, Helen says.
Raised in Sundsvall, they lived in the same area from middle school onwards, went to parallel classes and sang in the same girls’ choir.
– Our choir leader Elisabeth Modén Hallgren wanted to strengthen the woman in us. We both grew up with amazing mothers in different ways, but here we got to see a woman who strutted around in stilettos, wore a boa and laughed out loud. And to all the girls she came into contact with, she urged “stretch yourself, stick out your chest and remove your bangs so we can see your eyes”, Helen says.
Anna comes from a musical family, Stadlings was a term in town, where everyone played music. Her father was even awarded the first Jussi Björling scholarship in 1963. So when it came time to choose a high school, the music track in Härnösand felt obvious.
– I was surprised that you so clearly had a direction, when I myself felt divided. I was also jealous of the community your family had at church, where there were superb musicians and exciting existential conversations. My home environment was more worldly, and there was an attitude that you should work with something tangible, Helen says.
– And I, who had heavier thoughts in my teens, was attracted by the humor in your family, Anna says.
– I come from a kind of crazy family, my father belongs to a family where most things in life are filtered through humor. Laughter in need and pleasure, as it were, Helen says, smiling:
– Sometimes I think of us as Hasse and Tage. There is a strength in Anna, she has the courage to remain serious. I can do it sometimes, but need a certain insanity to pull it off.
The girls came to form a duo, encouraged by Kjell Lönnå, and even got to make a few television appearances.
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They both moved to Stockholm and describe a phase where the friendship was not always so simple, in a period when you are looking for yourself, must find your direction and platform both in your career and privately. Anna studied at the Academy of Music, and then was in the band “Hovet”, where Idde Schultz also played.
Helen, for her part, was about to give up music just before her breakthrough, when she got the lead role in Björn and Benny’s musical “Kristina from Duvemåla”. She had applied to the acting school several times but had not been accepted.
– I remember exactly where I was standing in my apartment on Roslagsgatan when Helen called and told me about the role. And I felt “shit, now she’s flying”, says Anna.
That’s exactly what happened, Helen went from an unknown find to stardom almost overnight, and the musical became a formidable success with almost 500 performances.
How did it feel for you, Anna, when you too were aiming for the big stages?
– To be honest, I was happy at the same time as there was a desire to experience that big breakthrough myself.
Could you talk about this?
– Yes, when I’ve felt jealous, I’ve turned to Helen and asked to be in her world for a while, to hang out on the red carpet. I also understood that it must have been both wonderful and terrifying, Anna says.
– For me, it was nice to talk to Anna who knows what it means to be on stage and perform, because you also have to live up to something. Our industry feels full of good-looking, confident people, and sometimes you kind of have to pump yourself up to be able to participate in it. But you also need to be able to talk about your insecurities with someone, Helen says.
– That type of conversation, where we have talked about the weak points, has humanized us in front of each other, which bridges a bit of envy, Anna says.
Yes, according to the friendship book “Long live friends” it’s not really the frequency of socializing that produces the good effects of friendship, but the degree of intimacy. Helen and Anna say that they never felt forgotten by each other, even if they were sometimes heard very sporadically. They have never had that daily contact, but have easily docked in each other and the heartfelt conversations when they met.
– I think that we are two northern mountain birches that need to stand a bit apart, Anna says.
Anna and her husband Pecka knew early on that they wanted children, but learned that one’s greatest wish does not always come true. There were many trips with hormones and IVF, just as many disappointments and some tough miscarriages on tour.
– After that, an adoption process began which was really hard, we had to wait until it was almost done before our little Jonte arrived.
– I felt great happiness when my first son Ruben was born, but I also thought a lot about you, Anna. You shared my joy, but at the same time life felt so unfair. And we haven’t actually talked about this much, it was almost too painful, Helen says.
– There have been moments when I felt that you are born under a golden star. But sometimes the best medicine for jealousy is to be able to share in the other’s world, to be able to hold the baby and understand that having children is not only wonderful, and maybe express that oh, I would like to be a part of this someday. Just having it said can burst the balloon, Anna says and continues:
– And you, Helen, have met me in this, even though we haven’t talked much about it. I remember when you came to visit just after we had Jonte. Your joy and tearful eyes held so much. Then few words were needed, because I felt how you shared my sadness, and how it was a relief to be able to rejoice with me instead, Anna says.
– Yes, sometimes wordless communication is all that is needed, Helen says.
In 2015, Anna’s world came crashing down when her husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and she herself only a few weeks later was told she had breast cancer. At the beginning of 2016, they were operated on two weeks apart.
– It was at the same time that we were renovating the apartment and our five-year-old son was under investigation, so everything was chaos. Yes, it was surreal, absolutely horrible. Above all, the uncertainty was hard to live with, the whole existence is shaken but you cannot influence your future. In such situations, you are taught to be patient, Anna says.
Many who have had cancer testify that friends have disappeared during the period of illness, but Anna remembers how Helen and another friend rang the doorbell and brought breakfast.
– You were newly operated and incredibly tangled, so thin and fragile. It was difficult to see, but also important, because if you dare to see reality, you can understand a little better and support in a different way, Helen says.
Yes, the best way to get a close friend is perhaps to be one, they reason.
– At the same time, that’s what true friendship is. Life is not always easy, and you can never get to know a person if you only see the surface. We struggle so hard to show that surface, which is actually insane, because the relationships that last and deepen are the ones where you dare to show yourself small and vulnerable, says Anna, adding that both she and her husband managed.
How did this change you and your relationship?
– It’s easy to believe that after a cancer journey you find a new truth and really take advantage of life, but after a while you go on as usual, even if sometimes it strikes me that “shit, I’ve been through this”, Anna says.
– But even if life rushes by, I understand better not to take life for granted. We have both lost people in recent years and our parents are getting older, and this thing about us living and dying feels increasingly tangible, and life and genuine relationships thus more valuable, Helen says.
(The entire interview is not reproduced for copyright reasons)