Friendship IRL: Real Talk About Friendship, Community, and What It Actually Takes

When we were kids, proximity was the basis for our friendships.

As adults, we have more control over our friendships than ever before. We get to choose where we’re going, what we’re doing, where we’re living, who we’re calling. And I think sometimes we get overwhelmed with all the choices we have and forget that WE have the power here.

This episode is Part 1 of my conversation with today’s guest, Kristian, who reached out after finding Friendship IRL by typing “friendship” into Apple Podcasts. Kristian is in her 20’s, a phase in life in which we often find we can’t rely on proximity for our friendships anymore.

Our 20’s are full of so many changes – changes that will inevitably impact our friendships. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. These changes also allow us to better understand who we are, what we enjoy, and what we WANT – not only out of life, but out of our friendships, too.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• How you can be lonely even while having “friends,” and the importance of letting go of being our “best selves” and embracing our messy, unique, true selves
• Harmful societal messages around friendship: put your best foot forward; give a great first impression; the first seven seconds set the tone of your friendship forever
• Making friends as an adult, which often involves deciding who we are; what makes us unique; ways we want to show up; and how we want others to show up for us
• In our mid-20s, friendships often aren’t based on proximity anymore, so for a lot of people, it’s hard to know what friendship looks like during this stage of life
• How our own personal growth and “tweaks” impact our friendships; for example, deciding to stop drinking might affect relationships with people we go to the bar with
• The difference in being nice and kind, in friendships and in life

Resources & Links

Like what you hear? Visit my website, leave me a voicemail, and follow me on Instagram! 

Want to take this conversation a step further? Send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting and use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out!

WANT MORE?

My book, Are We Friends Yet? is here. Order your copy today!

Dive into The Connection Reset. A 10-day private podcast to help you see the abundance of connection that already exists in your day-to-day (Yes. Really. I promise you have more than you realize). Start today. 

Becoming more invested in our friendships is like becoming a runner.

At first, it takes energy just convincing yourself to get out the door. That first run feels exhausting and maybe a little awkward. The next is a little easier. Eventually, you get to a place where you can finally experience the runner’s high.

Today’s episode features Kristin Morrison, a business coach who also manages the podcast Business Pathfinder. Originally, our idea was to talk about making business friends, but our conversation quickly encapsulated so much more, focusing especially on intentional everyday actions we need to take to build the connections we want.

Typically, I’m the person in friendship regularly lacing up my shoes. I have great connections and friends I trust in. But I have spent the past few months so focused on work, I’m out of social wellness shape. It’s time for me to get back to it.

Friendship, social wellness, community, connection – it’s never-ending. There will be ups and downs, and that’s okay.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• The lack of feedback you get digitally vs. in person, and how technology allows us to control what we show our friends – which often doesn’t contain anything vulnerable
• The energy expenditure required of spending time with friends if you’re out of practice – plus, Kristin’s story about showing up for her friend who was dying
• Limiting beliefs in friendship, including: that you can only have so many friends; that investing in friendship is a struggle; that you’re too old to make friends
• Using feng shui to manifest friendships by making space in our schedules – similar to how Kristin used it to “manifest” her husband by making space in her home
• Inviting people into our existing experiences, like having dinner, wrapping presents or getting our oil change, and the friendships Kristin made through her business group
• How, if we BELIEVE we are contributing friends, we’ll naturally start to pick up the phone, call people, and take action

Resources & Links

Today, we referenced a previous episode – What is a Friend?, available on Alex’s website – that you should check out if you haven’t already!

Be sure to also visit Kristin’s website and check out her podcast.

Like what you hear? Visit my website, leave me a voicemail, and follow me on Instagram! 

Want to take this conversation a step further? Send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting and use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out!

WANT MORE?

My book, Are We Friends Yet? is here. Order your copy today!

Dive into The Connection Reset. A 10-day private podcast to help you see the abundance of connection that already exists in your day-to-day (Yes. Really. I promise you have more than you realize). Start today. 

Episode Description

I can't believe I recorded this episode. 

I hope this work – bringing more community + friendship-focused conversations to the world – causes a ripple of change. In my wildest dreams, we all see a societal shift in how we think, speak, and act regarding community + friendship in our lifetime.

But I'd be lying if I told you this work is all 100% selfless. 

At the core of this work is a selfish desire: 
I want my support system to be seen as valid. 

Presently, that isn't the reality. 

I am almost always met with resistance when telling people about the alternative support system I've built.

• "But those people aren't really your family." 
• "Your nieces and nephews… aren't those your friends' kids? You aren't their real aunt."
• "You aren't spending the holidays with your family...?"

 
"Family is everything" being accepted blindly as an absolute truth in society harms some people – myself included. 

Please listen to today's episode with an open mind. I am sharing a deeply personal perspective that isn't often discussed. 

I hope this episode challenges societal narratives and leaves everyone with a new perspective that causes us to approach each person's support system with compassion rather than judgment. It wasn't easy to record, but I'm proud that I did.

So here goes. My story. This one is for Little Alex.

Resources & Links

Like what you hear? Visit my website, leave me a voicemail, and follow me on Instagram! 

Want to take this conversation a step further? Send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting and use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out!

WANT MORE?

My book, Are We Friends Yet? is here. Order your copy today!

Dive into The Connection Reset. A 10-day private podcast to help you see the abundance of connection that already exists in your day-to-day (Yes. Really. I promise you have more than you realize). Start today. 

TRIGGER WARNING: This episode contains some sensitive topics around the loss of loved ones.

As you probably know by now, I’m no stranger to grief. My mom passed away when I was 13. It’s the club nobody wants to be a part of.

Today I’m with Aly Bird, a coach, therapist-in-training, and the author of Grief Ally, about teaching people how to support their loved ones through the long haul of grief, which she knows about all too well, having lost her husband to a hiking accident back in 2019.

When Aly’s inquiry showed up in my inbox, I couldn’t have said yes to having her on the show any faster. It’s exactly the kind of conversation I want to have on here. Grief hits people differently every time, and to be frank, it never goes away. It’s been 20 years since I lost my mom, and I still have moments of grief.

In this episode, Aly and I cover it all, from showing up for grieving loved ones to remembering that all kinds of emotions can exist simultaneously - and how, sometimes, the best thing to do is surrender and let yourself feel all the feels.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• How supporting someone who’s grieving a LEARNED skill set that takes practice and transparency
• The different kinds of grief besides losing loved ones, from new parents grieving their freedom to empty-nesters grieving their full houses
• Grief’s never-ending quality, and how it’s never too late to offer your support, condolences, and willingness to be leaned on
• One great way to support someone who’s grieving: sharing memories of the person lost, emphasizing that this person was real and seen
• Surrendering and letting ourselves to feel things like jealousy (but not acting on them), and how that can shorten the timeline of these unhappy emotions
• Navigating the duality of life, where grief exists for one friend and a happy occasion exists for another at the same time

Resources & Links

Be sure to check out Aly’s amazing book, Grief Ally, and check out her website.

Like what you hear? Visit my website, leave me a voicemail, and follow me on Instagram! 

Want to take this conversation a step further? Send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting and use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out!

WANT MORE?

My book, Are We Friends Yet? is here. Order your copy today!

Dive into The Connection Reset. A 10-day private podcast to help you see the abundance of connection that already exists in your day-to-day (Yes. Really. I promise you have more than you realize). Start today. 

I am not from a military family. So to me, deployment sounds terrifying.

Think about it: you’re moving to a place where you don’t know anyone. If you’re part of a couple, one person is going to be alone a LOT.

But that wasn’t the experience for my friend Laura, who in this episode describes what it was like moving to Spain with a toddler and baby for her husband’s deployment in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

Upon her arrival, Laura was immediately enveloped in a warm welcome and greeted by a list of contacts and invitations to numerous events, get-togethers, and clubs. Throughout her husband’s many deployments, she learned this was the normal welcome for military families.

The military is essentially a formal community. Participation in formal communities has dwindled over the years, but I think there’s major appeal to them. When you join these groups, you’re not only eased into meeting other people, but you also take on a sense of belonging to the group. I think it breaks down a lot of western beliefs about support systems.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• Individuals getting over social barriers vs. people in the community taking on the responsibility to reach out
• What constitutes a formal community – rules, structure, organization – and the importance of a common bond within them
• Downsides of expecting reciprocity in friendship, and instead, thinking of what we do for each other as nourishment
• Going into new friendships curious instead of via structured paths, and how to get past hierarchy in formal communities
• The disappointment that will come from expecting one friend to be your EVERYTHING when you’re a grown-up
• How scarcity can create more awareness of the importance of time well-spent

Resources & Links

Like what you hear? Visit my website, leave me a voicemail, and follow me on Instagram! 

Want to take this conversation a step further? Send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting and use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out!

WANT MORE?

My book, Are We Friends Yet? is here. Order your copy today!

Dive into The Connection Reset. A 10-day private podcast to help you see the abundance of connection that already exists in your day-to-day (Yes. Really. I promise you have more than you realize). Start today. 

All right gang. Here’s to nights that turn into mornings, and friends that turn into family.

This episode features my friend Jeffrey, whose voice you MIGHT recognize from the Friendship IRL introduction! We’ve known each other as long as I’ve been with my husband Michael, and we’ve been saying that “cheers!” for more than a decade.

Jeffrey is part of my “chosen family,” which as you know, is a concept I lean on heavily. For me, it’s a necessity. But one of the things that’s so interesting about Jeff: he has a strong, supportive family of origin, but also naturally leans into the idea of a chosen family, too.

In this episode, Jeffrey and I talk about our relationship and this idea of chosen family – with emphasis on the word “chosen.”

These days, the time we spend together is different from that of our college days – there are stays with three-week old babies, now – but we CHOOSE to keep in touch, to be there for each other, and that’s what keeps our chosen family intact.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• Trust, which is the foundation of our friendship; we don’t second-guess our intentions or whether we want to hear from each other
• Being OK showing up in sweatpants, and how that can set the precedent of coming as you are (AND eliminate reasons to not hang out)
• When chosen families expand to your friends’ families, and the things we do because we’ve decided to add someone to our chosen family 
• How sometimes, adding someone to your chosen family means you’re committing to work harder – to fix problems and be there during the hard stuff
• Spending time together without plans instead of formalized settings or big events in place
• How being honest about what you’re looking for in a friendship can make all the difference in building your own chosen family

Resources & Links

Like what you hear? Visit my website, leave me a voicemail, and follow me on Instagram! 

Want to take this conversation a step further? Send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting and use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out!

WANT MORE?

My book, Are We Friends Yet? is here. Order your copy today!

Dive into The Connection Reset. A 10-day private podcast to help you see the abundance of connection that already exists in your day-to-day (Yes. Really. I promise you have more than you realize). Start today. 

I feel like everybody wants the easy button to friendship.

And while there isn’t an easy button, I do think managing friendship dynamics is something you can get better at. I also think a lot of us are making it harder than it needs to be.

A lot of people tell me they want friends who are in the same place as them. Maybe that means they want friends who are parents. Friends who have the same interests. Friends who are in similar financial situations. Couple friends.

It makes sense; managing differences is difficult. It’s easier to be friends with people doing the same things as us. But even if you make friends with people who are in the same life moment as you, at some point, if this is a lasting friendship, you will have to manage differences with these friends.

So that’s what today’s episode is about: managing differences with new and established friends, and how staying open and curious can actually SUPERCHARGE our friendships.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• How friends are some of the only people we don’t necessarily factor into big life choices – which means we’re constantly making different life choices than our friends
• Putting your best foot forward – i.e., morphing ourselves to become desirable friends – and how this is inauthentic and takes more energy in the long run
• Managing differences within friendships that already exist – and why it can be more difficult with these friends than with new ones
• The importance of staying curious and seeing our friends’ lives as windows into other ways of living, which can help alleviate problems and SUPERCHARGE friendships

Resources & Links

Like what you hear? Visit my website, leave me a voicemail, and follow me on Instagram! 

Want to take this conversation a step further? Send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting and use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out!

WANT MORE?

My book, Are We Friends Yet? is here. Order your copy today!

Dive into The Connection Reset. A 10-day private podcast to help you see the abundance of connection that already exists in your day-to-day (Yes. Really. I promise you have more than you realize). Start today. 

Friend groups get a lot of attention whenever I post about them on social media, and I’m not surprised. The group itself is like a story root. You feel like you BELONG inside it.

But what do we really KNOW about friend groups? Where did we learn about how they should operate? Sometimes they’re modeled to us, and sometimes, we imagine them to be what we see in books or TV shows.

So that’s what I’m tackling in today’s episode: how to join one, create one, strengthen one, and how to use them to enhance your life. I’m sure there will be more episodes on this topic, but today, I just wanted to lay down some thoughts.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• The strength of a friend group – and how it’s actually based on the strength of the individual relationships and connections within it
• How to join an established friend group and become a more permanent member by taking initiative, showing up, contributing, and investing in the relationships
• The pros and cons of joining a group – for example, you don’t have to start from scratch, but you might feel behind! – and the evolutions friend groups go through
• Effort, energy, trial and error required to create a friend group – and the importance to remember other people might not be as invested, which is OK
• Utilizing open-ended invites – for example, “I’m going to the bar at 4 p.m. tomorrow; stop by if you want to!” – and making it something you were going to do anyways
• Picking an interest and creating a group around it – for example, a movie group!

Resources & Links

Like what you hear? Visit my website, leave me a voicemail, and follow me on Instagram! 

Want to take this conversation a step further? Send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting and use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out!

WANT MORE?

My book, Are We Friends Yet? is here. Order your copy today!

Dive into The Connection Reset. A 10-day private podcast to help you see the abundance of connection that already exists in your day-to-day (Yes. Really. I promise you have more than you realize). Start today. 

TRIGGER WARNING: This episode contains some sensitive topics around the loss of a parent.

Today I’m with my dear friend, Lizzie Braicks-Rinker, a wellness brand strategist and holistic health and fitness coach.

We met in college, baking pie in the dorm basement, and bonded quickly; I told Lizzie my mom had passed away. She told me hers had cancer. We were at different stages in our lives than our peers, and because of this, had different needs and perspectives on wellness than they did, too.

In 2022, Lizzie gave a TED Talk on Mother’s Day about the difference between wellness and physical health. Her beliefs stemmed from her experience in college, when, on paper, she was extremely healthy – she was vegan, she was on the rowing team – and yet, she was having panic attacks and chronic pain due to the wellness pieces that were missing in her life.

In this episode, Lizzie and I talk a lot about holistic wellness – especially social wellness, of course – and how, really, there is no one-size-fits-all recipe.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• The eight pillars of holistic wellness (emotional, physical, occupational, social, spiritual, intellectual, environmental, financial) vs. the wellness industrial complex
• How self-care looks different for everybody – it could involve playing with your dogs, getting your finances in order, or building a community support system
• Why social wellness is often left off the priority list of wellness
• How health (especially social health) – doesn’t have to be linear; for example, your social needs might be higher in the summer than they are in the winter
• Creating the “third option” instead of accepting social obligations you’re just not into – or, creating INTENTION in these obligations so they feel fulfilling to you
• Who is your true self vs. your ideal self? Plus, the importance of taking baby steps

Resources & Links

Like what you hear? Visit my website, leave me a voicemail, and follow me on Instagram!

Be sure to check out Lizzie’s TED Talk and the book she recommended in this episode, The Worthy Project by Meadow DeVor, and follow her on Instagram and check out her website.

Want to take this conversation a step further? Send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting and use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out!

WANT MORE?

My book, Are We Friends Yet? is here. Order your copy today!

Dive into The Connection Reset. A 10-day private podcast to help you see the abundance of connection that already exists in your day-to-day (Yes. Really. I promise you have more than you realize). Start today. 

About three years ago, many of my friends moved away within a six month period.

While I was excited for these friends, I also grieved; my friends are my main support system, my family. How would I keep these friendships alive? I invested a lot of energy into thinking about it, through which I developed what I’m tentatively calling the “Your People” framework.

The best way to think about this framework is to imagine a tree. Trees start as seeds, and then you provide them with nutrients and soil. Over time, trees grow roots. Some roots get really thick and strong; some grow deep. Some grow offshoots. The more roots that grow, the more stable the tree.

In my friendship theory, there are three kinds of roots, which I’ll dig into today. My hope is that this framework and language helps people think about these relationships and consider what actions to take to build better versions of our friendships.

Want more information? Visit my website!

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• SHARED EXPERIENCE ROOTS and their offshoot roots – i.e., when you’re doing something related to the shared experience root, but in a way you’re comfortable
• EMOTIONAL INTIMACY ROOTS – what we know about our friends and our shared memories – plus shared/overlapping history roots and big/small intimacies
• STORY ROOTS – the beliefs you have about your friendships, and how we come to develop those beliefs
• How letting roots (i.e., friendships) die is not a bad thing – we can’t be in high school geometry class forever – but it doesn’t mean it’s not a sad thing
• How to keep these friendships thriving as we grow and change, and how to replace dead story routes with simpler, more straightforward story roots
• One of the biggest problems when it comes to adult friendships – plus, the REAL foundations of these friendships

Resources & Links

Like what you hear? Visit my website, leave me a voicemail, and follow me on Instagram! 

Want to take this conversation a step further? Send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting and use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out!

WANT MORE?

My book, Are We Friends Yet? is here. Order your copy today!

Dive into The Connection Reset. A 10-day private podcast to help you see the abundance of connection that already exists in your day-to-day (Yes. Really. I promise you have more than you realize). Start today.