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I've been a parent on both sides of friendship exclusion. I've had kids who were left out, and I've had other parents upset with me. And I know how hard it can be to watch your child struggle socially without letting your own emotions take over. Sometimes our kids move on from a friendship disappointment long before we do!
My guest Andrea, founder of Strong Mom Strong Girl, knows what it's like when a child is deliberately pushed out of an established friend group. She now helps other mothers navigate these painful situations. Andrea and I make an important distinction between not being invited to everything (a normal part of life!) and being purposely dropped from a group. We also discuss why your child's friendship drama is not yours to "fix" in the way you might assume, even when it's affecting your own friendships, your sleep, and the atmosphere in your home.
Andrea reminds parents: "What you can do is show up as the best version of yourself so that your child can borrow your peace rather than pick up on your panic."
WE DISCUSS:
Andrea is sharing only her first name, and this episode is audio-only, to protect her family's privacy.
LINKS MENTIONED:
LEARN MORE ABOUT STRONG MOM STRONG GIRL
Andrea is the founder of Strong Mom Strong Girl, where she helps moms support their daughters through friendship drama, exclusion, and mean-girl behavior with more calm, confidence, and clarity. Everything she shares is based on actual lived experience and years of both research and trial-and-error. Follow her on Instagram, where you can find resources, actionable advice, community and more.
!! Catch up on all Dear Nina episodes on Apple and Spotify
📢 How to promote your service, business, or book on Dear Nina
🔎 Information on any upcoming "Dear Nina Live" events
🎈 Celebrate your friend on the show by dedicating a week of episodes!
📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack
❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, & the Dear Nina Facebook group
📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question
📪 email: [email protected]
🔎 Want to work with me on your podcast, your friendships, or need another link? That’s probably here.
Are we too quick to decide a friendship isn’t working?
That’s the question running through this conversation with bestselling author and podcaster Melissa Radke. Melissa and I have both ended important friendships in ways we later regretted, and we spoke about what we wished we had done differently before deciding it was time to walk away. To quote Melissa, "Because a friendship can be hard without being wrong."
We got into the things that can make people want to run from a friendship: jealousy, uneven effort, changing life circumstances, fear of rejection, and seeing a close friend become close with someone else. Are those signs that a friendship is ending, or are they just normal parts of having long-term relationships with imperfect people?
We also talked about the friendship “tests” we give without telling the other person they’re being tested. Maybe you stop reaching out to see whether your friend will finally initiate. Maybe you say nothing about your birthday because you want to see if they remember. Instead of asking for what we need, we collect evidence.
Melissa and I discussed what can happen when we give our friends a little more room, say what’s actually bothering us, and let them respond before we decide we already know how they feel.
There are certainly friendships that need to end. But before we decide we’re done, it may be worth asking: Is this friendship truly wrong for me—or are we just going through something hard?
LINKS MENTIONED:
MEET MELISSA RADKE:
Melissa Radke is a bestselling author, speaker, and media personality known for blending sharp humor with heartfelt honesty and Southern charm. She first gained national attention through her viral storytelling and memoir, Eat Cake. Be Brave., and is the author of Chicken-Fried Women: Friendship, Kinship, and the Women Who Made Us This Way, which celebrates the relationships that shape who we become.
Through her writing, speaking, and podcasts, Chicken-Fried Women and The Radke Show, Melissa explores faith, friendship, women’s empowerment, and the beautifully imperfect parts of everyday life, connecting with audiences through her relatable stories, wit, and authenticity.
Website | Instagram | Books | Podcast
!! Catch up on all Dear Nina episodes on Apple and Spotify
📢 How to promote your service, business, or book on Dear Nina
🔎 Information on any upcoming "Dear Nina Live" events
🎈 Celebrate your friend on the show by dedicating a week of episodes!
📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack
❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, & the Dear Nina Facebook group
📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question
📪 email: [email protected]
🔎 Want to work with me on your podcast, your friendships, or need another link? That’s probably here.
Dr. Miriam Kirmayer is back on Dear Nina, and this time we did something different: we each brought friendship questions the other person had not seen in advance.
No prep. No polished answers. Just two people who think about friendship constantly digging into the kinds of questions that rarely have a clean yes-or-no answer.
Dr. Miriam is a clinical psychologist and a well-known friendship researcher. She also now hosts the friendship podcast Two Peas on a Pod.
WE GET INTO:
And finally, we turn the questions on ourselves: Does talking about friendship professionally make us self-conscious about our own friendships?
LINKS MENTIONED:
MEET DR. MIRIAM KIRMAYER:
Dr. Miriam Kirmayer is a clinical psychologist, leading friendship expert, and one of the most influential speakers on human connection and social support. See more about Dr. Miriam's courses, keynotes, articles and more at www.miriamkirmayer.com. Listen to the podcast: Two Peas on a Pod. Find Dr. Miriam on Instagram on @miriamkirmayer.
!! Catch up on all Dear Nina episodes on Apple and Spotify
📢 How to promote your service, business, or book on Dear Nina
🔎 Information on any upcoming "Dear Nina Live" events
🎈 Celebrate your friend on the show by dedicating a week of episodes!
📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack
❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, & the Dear Nina Facebook group
📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question
📪 email: [email protected]
🔎 Want to work with me on your podcast, your friendships, or need another link? That’s probably here.
When good intentions aren’t enough in a friendship
What happens when you genuinely care about friends, but your behavior isn’t showing it?
That’s the question at the center of my conversation with writer and podcaster Laura Tremaine, author of The Life Council: 10 Friends Every Woman Needs and Share Your Stuff: I'll Go First. I’m bringing this episode back because Laura’s honesty about her own friendship missteps feels just as useful now as it did when we first recorded it.
Laura realized that she had been relying on the history, chemistry, and closeness she felt with certain friends without doing enough to maintain those relationships as work, family, and other responsibilities increased. She wasn’t always texting back. She wasn’t checking in. And eventually, several friends cared enough about the friendships to tell her that it hurt.
One of Laura’s biggest realizations was that there was a disconnect between what was in her heart and what her actions were communicating. She deeply valued these friends, but they couldn’t know that if she wasn’t showing it.
So Laura did something surprisingly practical: she started putting friendship on her actual to-do list.
WE DISCUSSED:
I especially love Laura’s emphasis on noticing—noticing what makes a particular friend feel cared for, noticing the patterns in our own behavior, and noticing when our intentions and our actions aren’t lining up.
And no, this episode isn’t an argument that you have to answer every text immediately or be endlessly available. It’s about something much more basic: If you want the friendship, are you behaving like you want the friendship?
LINKS MENTIONED:
Laura's books: The Life Council: 10 Friends Every Woman Needs and Share Your Stuff: I'll Go First.
MEET LAURA TREMAINE
Laura Tremaine is a writer and podcaster based in Los Angeles. She’s the author of two books about connection and friendship, is the co-host of the SLOW READ podcast, and she writes and hosts regular conversations on her Secret Stuff substack. You can usually find her on Instagram @Laura.Tremaine.
!! Catch up on all Dear Nina episodes on Apple and Spotify
📢 How to promote your service, business, or book on Dear Nina
🔎 Information on any upcoming "Dear Nina Live" events
🎈 Celebrate your friend on the show by dedicating a week of episodes!
📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack
❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, & the Dear Nina Facebook group
📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question
📪 email: [email protected]
🔎 Want to work with me on your podcast, your friendships, or need another link? That’s probably here.
Dr. Marisa G. Franco is back on Dear Nina! This time we spoke about her new book, Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment, and how our sense of self-worth affects the friendships we build, keep, and sometimes struggle to trust.
Marisa’s first book, Platonic, focused on how we create and maintain strong friendships. Worth goes a step further inward: What happens when the way we see ourselves makes it harder to believe that other people genuinely like us, value us, or want to be close to us?
One of my favorite ideas from our conversation is Marisa’s argument that the goal isn’t to become perfectly secure. It’s to become secure-ish—aware of the anxious, avoidant, insecure parts of ourselves without pretending they’ve disappeared.
We discussed:
Marisa shares the story of Esme, who carried one devastating friendship moment from middle school into adulthood and became afraid to initiate with people she genuinely wanted to know. We expand on Esme's story to talk about reciprocity, rejection, memory, and the possibility of changing the meaning we’ve attached to experiences from years ago.
I also share one of my own “open memories” from college and what came up for me while working through one of Marisa’s exercises in the book.
And we get into something I talk about often on this show: sometimes a friend’s lack of initiation really does mean something—and sometimes it doesn’t. Self-worth, fear of rejection, disorganization, and all kinds of other factors can sit underneath behavior we’re very quick to take personally.
LINKS MENTIONED:
MEET DR. MARISA G FRANCO
An enlightening psychologist, international speaker, and New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Marisa G. Franco is known for digesting and communicating science in ways that resonate deeply enough with people to change their lives. She works as a professor at The University of Maryland and authored the New York Times bestseller Platonic: How The Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends and Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Secure Attachment.
She writes about friendship for Psychology Today and has been a featured connection expert for major publications like The New York Times, The Telegraph, and Vice. She speaks on belonging at corporations, government agencies, non-profits, and universities. For tips on friendship, you can follow her on Instagram (DrMarisaGFranco), or go to her website, www.DrMarisaGFranco.com, where you can take a quiz to assess your strengths and weaknesses as a friend & reach out for speaking engagements.
!! Catch up on all Dear Nina episodes on Apple and Spotify
📢 How to promote your service, business, or book on Dear Nina
🔎 Information on any upcoming "Dear Nina Live" events
🎈 Celebrate your friend on the show by dedicating a week of episodes!
📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack
❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, & the Dear Nina Facebook group
📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question
📪 email: [email protected]
🔎 Want to work with me on your podcast, your friendships, or need another link? That’s probably here.
I have real concerns about AI, and one of my biggest is what happens when we start treating it like a person—especially a friend.
My guest, Sarah Baldeo, is a neuroscientist and the author of 100 Ways to Future Proof Your Brain in the Age of AI. She has spent more than 20 years working at the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence, so I wanted to bring some of my biggest worries about AI and human connection directly to her and I appreciated her treating my concerns with seriousness and respect. My biggest takeaway remains the same: we need to be very careful not to confuse something that can imitate human connection with the real thing.
We discussed:
MEET SARAH BALDEO:
Sarah Baldeo, PhD (c), Executive MBA, is a bestselling author, neuroscientist, AI futurist, TED speaker, and CEO of ID Quotient Advisory, whose work explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping human cognition, executive judgment, and leadership decision making and what that means for how we connect, trust, and relate to one another; she is also the world’s foremost doctoral researcher on AI and cognition. She is the author of 100 Ways to Future-Proof Your Brain in the Age of AI, and has been featured on CBC News, CTV, NBC, SiriusXM, and Yahoo Finance. A global keynote speaker with more than 1,300 appearances across North America and Europe, Sarah advises organizations on the future of human intelligence in the age of AI. Connect with her on Instagram and LinkedIn.
!! Catch up on all Dear Nina episodes on Apple and Spotify
📢 How to promote your service, business, or book on Dear Nina
🔎 Information on any upcoming "Dear Nina Live" events
🎈 Celebrate your friend on the show by dedicating a week of episodes!
📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack
❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, & the Dear Nina Facebook group
📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question
📪 email: [email protected]
🔎 Want to work with me on your podcast, your friendships, or need another link? That’s probably here.
I’ve spoken before on Dear Nina about neurodiversity and friendship with several fantastic guests, but I wanted to have a conversation that could speak both to parents raising neurodivergent kids and to neurodivergent adults navigating friendship themselves.
Caroline Maguire is an internationally recognized expert in social-emotional learning, ADHD, coaching, and relationship development. She’s the author of Why Will No One Play With Me? and most recently, Friendship Skills for Neurodivergent Adults.
We talked about encouraging friendship without forcing it, finding environments where connection comes more naturally, handling rejection, understanding the difference between an acquaintance and a friend, and taking those sometimes-awkward next steps that help a friendship grow.
What I especially loved about Caroline’s approach is that friendship skills aren’t about becoming someone else. They’re about understanding yourself, building confidence, and finding the people who appreciate you as you are.
LINKS & RESOURCES:
MEET CAROLINE MAGUIRE:
Caroline Maguire, M.Ed., ACCG, PCC is an internationally recognized expert in social-emotional learning, ADHD coaching, and relationship development. She is the author of the award-winning book, Why Will No One Play with Me? and FRIENDSHIP SKILLS FOR NEURODIVERGENT ADULTS (Balance Books), and hosts The ADHD Social Playbook podcast. An educator, coach, and sought-after speaker, Caroline developed a comprehensive Social Emotional Learning (SEL) training methodology that equips parents, clinicians, and educators with practical tools to build self-awareness, emotional regulation, social understanding, and meaningful relationships. As a neurodivergent person with ADHD, dyslexia, and learning disabilities, she brings both professional expertise and lived experience to her work.
!! Catch up on all Dear Nina episodes on Apple and Spotify
📢 How to promote your service, business, or book on Dear Nina
🔎 Information on any upcoming "Dear Nina Live" events
🎈 Celebrate your friend on the show by dedicating a week of episodes!
📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack
❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, & the Dear Nina Facebook group
📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question
📪 email: [email protected]
🔎 Want to work with me on your podcast, your friendships, or need another link? That’s probably here.
Harlan Cohen on friendship, social courage, and finding places where you belong.
Finding friendship—at any stage of life—requires the risk of hearing “no.” And that “no” rarely comes directly.
That’s one of the ideas I dig into with Harlan Cohen, a New York Times bestselling author and founder of Best First Year, a college success coaching program for students and parents. So much of what Harlan teaches incoming college students and their parents applies just as much in your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond. This episode was so popular last year that I was waiting for the right time to play it again. The week I'm dropping off child #2 at college is the right time for sure!
If you’re starting over socially, hoping to expand your circle, or just tired of feeling bruised by the ups and downs of friendship, this one’s for you.
We get into:
LINKS & RESOURCES:
MEET HARLAN COHEN:
Harlan is the New York Times bestselling author of The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run Into In College and six other titles (over 1 million copies in print). His social media accounts have over 1.5 million followers and he hosts the popular podcast, The Harlan Cohen Podcast. He is the founder of Best First Year, a college success coaching program for students and parents. Harlan lives in Chicago, Illinois with his wife and three children.
!! Catch up on all Dear Nina episodes on Apple and Spotify
📢 How to promote your service, business, or book on Dear Nina
🔎 Information on any upcoming "Dear Nina Live" events
🎈 Celebrate your friend on the show by dedicating a week of episodes!
📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack
❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, & the Dear Nina Facebook group
📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question
📪 email: [email protected]
🔎 Want to work with me on your podcast, your friendships, or need another link? That’s probably here.
Some friendship habits start much earlier than we realize. The way we react to being left out, how much security we get from being part of a group, whether we avoid conflict, and even how willing we are to be vulnerable with friends can all have roots in our teen years.
My guest Sheri Gazitt has spent more than 30 years working with teen girls and their parents. She’s the founder of Teen Wise and the author of Girl Drama Decoded: Empower Your Daughter Through The Ups & Downs of Girl Drama & Friendships. What struck me throughout our conversation is how easily the friendship issues she sees with teenagers translate to adult friendship.
We spoke about the difference between being deliberately excluded and simply not being invited, why being part of a friend group isn’t always the same thing as having close friendships, and what Sheri calls creating “parallel friendships” instead of putting all of our social energy into one group.
We also got very practical about conflict. Sheri shared a four-step approach to having a difficult conversation with a friend, including one step I especially appreciated: considering whether there’s any part of the situation you need to own yourself.
And we talk about what can happen after friendship disappointments pile up. Sometimes the way we protect ourselves is by keeping future friendships at a safe, superficial distance without even realizing we’re doing it.
This episode is useful whether you’re watching your own teenager navigate friendship or recognizing some very familiar patterns in your adult life. The good news is that these are skills—and we can keep getting better at them.
MEET SHERI GAZITT
Sheri Gazitt is an international friendship expert, speaker, and founder of Teen Wise. With over 30 years of experience and a background in counseling psychology, she’s helped thousands of girls navigate friendship struggles, social anxiety, and the emotional ups and downs of growing up. She’s the author of Girl Drama Decoded and supports moms through her Mom Wise Collective while also working directly with teen girls through private coaching. Coach Sheri is known for making complex social dynamics feel understandable and giving families practical ways to build confidence, connection, and healthier friendships. Find Sheri on Instagram @BeTeenWise and on Facebook.
!! Catch up on all Dear Nina episodes on Apple and Spotify
📢 How to promote your service, business, or book on Dear Nina
🔎 Information on any upcoming "Dear Nina Live" events
🎈 Celebrate your friend on the show by dedicating a week of episodes!
📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack
❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, & the Dear Nina Facebook group
📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question
📪 email: [email protected]
🔎 Want to work with me on your podcast, your friendships, or need another link? That’s probably here.
Alcohol is so woven into social life that choosing not to drink can change how you spend time with friends, which invitations come your way, and what you begin to notice about the way you connect.
My guest, Suzanne Warye is the author of The Sober Shift: An Empowering Exploration of Sobriety, Parenting, and the Joys of Alcohol-Free Living and the host of the popular podcast The Sober Mom Life. Suzanne's decision to stop drinking was not a “rock bottom” story. She could drink moderately, but she hated how much mental energy alcohol took up in her life as well as the after effects. Once Suzanne stopped drinking, she had to figure out what friendship and socializing looked like without it.
In the episode Suzanne and I spoke honestly about the friendships that remained strong, the friendships that faded, and the hurt of being left off an invitation because someone assumes a sober friend would not want to come.
We also discussed learning to sit through the first awkward minutes of a gathering without numbing your anxiety and why Suzanne’s standards for connection changed once alcohol was no longer the main event. We briefly chatted about THC drinks and gummies, phone use as another form of escape, and motherhood and “mommy wine culture.” And we talked about what happens when you start wanting your time with friends to feel more present and less "numb."
Past episodes related to this one:
#17. Friendship and Sobriety: Jen Veralle
#130: The Sober Curious Lifestyle and Your Friendships: Hallie Sawyer
Meet Suzanne:
Suzanne Warye is a sobriety influencer and the host of the popular podcast The Sober Mom Life. Residing on the North Shore of Chicago with her husband and three kids, Suzanne spends most of her time reheating her coffee and rocking her “whole heart, half ass” parenting philosophy. Her new book THE SOBER SHIFT: A Modern-Day Guide to Living an Abundant Sober Life is currently available in hardcover, audio and e-book and the paperback will be available on Sept 29, 2026. To connect follow her on Instagram @suzannewarye or visit www.thesobermomlife.com
!! Catch up on all Dear Nina episodes on Apple and Spotify
📢 How to promote your service, business, or book on Dear Nina
🔎 Information on any upcoming "Dear Nina Live" events
🎈 Celebrate your friend on the show by dedicating a week of episodes!
📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack
❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, & the Dear Nina Facebook group
📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question
📪 email: [email protected]
🔎 Want to work with me on your podcast, your friendships, or need another link? That’s probably here.
From the publisher's feed
“Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship” is for anyone who wants to make sense of the gray areas of adult friendship: changed closeness, uneven effort, group dynamics, hurt feelings, and what to…
And Dear Nina is a top 1% podcast so people of all ages are listening!
Whether you've agonized over a text, wondered why you're always the one reaching out, found yourself drifting away from an old friend, or you want to make (and keep!) friends at ANY stage of life—this show gets it. It’s serious and practical, but you’ll laugh a lot too as you recognize the universality of human behavior when it comes to friendships.
"Dear Nina" is hosted by Nina Badzin, who has been answering anonymous questions with "warm directness" in her friendship column since 2014 and in other writing about friendship for over 20 years. Every episode digs into the questions adults don't always want to ask out loud. Should you salvage a friendship that's fading or let it be? How do you kindly turn down an acquaintance who wants to be closer, but you're just not feeling the same chemistry? With over 200 episodes, the examples are endless.
Nina has been writing about friendship in various capacities for two decades, and her advice has been featured in NPR, Real Simple Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Time Magazine, The Skimm, and many other outlets.
Every episode leaves room for the fact that there are no perfect answers. There's only real talk, a lot of warmth, and the reminder that if you're overthinking your friendships, you're probably just someone who cares deeply about the people in your life.
Social connections MATTER deeply for your health and happiness! Let's talk about how to make it all easier.
!! Catch up on all Dear Nina episodes on Apple and Spotify
📢 How to promote your service, business, or book on Dear Nina
🎈 Celebrate your friend on the show by dedicating a week of episodes!
📱 Subscribe to my newsletter “Conversations About Friendship” on Substack
❤️ Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, & the Dear Nina Facebook group
📪 Ask an anonymous friendship question
📪 email: [email protected]
🔎 Want to work with me on your podcast, your friendships, or need another link? That’s probably here.
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