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

If the title didn't already tell you, we're talking about grief and loss today. Suzanne Jabour is a transformational coach, certified Grief Educator, and grieving mom who has found meaning in her loss through opening up conversations about grief, including how we can support people experiencing it and how to help grievers to chart their unique “grief path.” Suzanne and I really get to th...

How does friendship affect introverts? This is a topic I’ve been wanting to bring to the podcast for a long time, and since I’m an extrovert who is constantly energized by having people around me, I’m bringing in Becky Mollenkamp, a self-proclaimed “hardcore introvert” who likes to be alone a lot of the time. Becky and I drop into the real, raw behind the scenes of how being an introvert has affec...

Today is one of those episodes where you get to sit on my big couch in my living room with me and Nkem Chukwumerije, having a late night conversation where we're trying to figure out life. And it's SO good. Nkem (she/they) is a Nigerian-American writer, transformational program designer, artist, teacher, and energy cultivation practitioner. Her style of being in the world is intentional,...

Men’s friendships feel like a big ball of yarn with thousands of strings that we have to untangle. In Part 2 of today’s episode, we’re delving into the small actions we can start to take to bring men back into the fold into community and into connection. Some of this work starts with having open conversations out loud. I’ll share some tangible questions you can talk about with the men in your life...

The more I think about men's friendships, the more fired up I get. If I could paint an analogy for you, men’s friendships feel like a big ball of yarn with thousands of strings that we have to untangle. There are a lot of narrowly defined stories about how a man should “be” in today’s society - they should be powerful, they should provide and be self-sufficient, and they should be in control....

As much as I love having the hard conversations and talking about the big life moments, sometimes it's just as fun to talk about how community and friendship are really working. Vickie Leuenberger traded cold Canadian winters to live full-time on a boat cruising the Caribbean Sea and its surrounding islands. She fuels her adventurous lifestyle through 4 different streams of income. Her storie...

Are you blocking yourself from making beautiful connections? My favorite thing is meeting people I never would have met otherwise and today’s guest, Manpreet Singh is one of them. He wears multiple hats as a father, son, husband, and friend to many beautiful souls. His definition of friendship? Comfort. This is one of those conversations where I really was IN it. Manpreet and I talk about breaking...

Can you imagine what it would be like to find “unicorn friends”? The kind you can have adult slumber parties with and just “exist” and do life with, unapologetically? You’re about to hear an incredibly inspiring story of friendship between two families. Dr. Erika Michalski is an aggressive optimist, fierce authenticity advocate, and the founder of Strategically Authentic, a consulting company dedi...

What is loneliness? It’s a feeling a lot of people are having nowadays. And if we can get to the heart of this question, we can come up with some strategies to minimize it for ourselves. Cigna conducted a study in 2022 and revealed that 58% (!) of people say they always or sometimes feel like people don’t know them well. So today I want to talk about loneliness. I want to talk about its definition...

When some of your closest people move across the world, there are so many things to learn - whether it’s a new appreciation for the beauty that can come out of people you love moving far away, or even getting to witness the new communities they built. Travel blogger Amber Haggerty is here to talk about the balance of building intentional expat friendships and making a new community of friends afte...

The pain from friendship break-ups is real. Society doesn’t give them the same weight as romantic break-ups, but sometimes they can leave you even more broken. When I had my own friendship break-up, I cried myself to sleep multiple nights a week for almost a year. Today’s guest is Patrice Poltzer, whose friendship break-up was with a high school friend who she remained close with until the birth o...

Today’s guest is life coach Brenda Bloczynski, who reached out to us to share about a friendship group she’s a part of with her church. It began as a “favorites” group that met via Marco Polo – a video messaging mobile app – right at the pandemic’s start. They shared favorite kitchen gadgets, make-up lines, hacks, etc. Over time, it grew to become so much more. After lockdown, the women began meet...

The past few years, loneliness has become the new normal. Yes, we want to learn how to self-soothe, to sit with ourselves, to be bored. What’s NOT good? Constantly wishing you had more connections. Society tells us that making friends is hard as an adult, but I believe we CAN impact this area of our life through small actions that build up over time. So today, I’m going to tell you how I’m trying...

A lot of us want direct beginnings and endings in friendship. But the reality is, most of us are just riding a wave. We control our friendships less than we think we do, and life’s major transitions inevitably affect our relationships – sometimes causing these friendships to drift apart. It’s important to remember these relationships – and how they existed during a period in our lives – will alway...

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,...

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 podcas...

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...

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, w...

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 Se...

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 con...

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 inter...

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...

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...

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 frame...

Today’s episode is about how to make friends – namely, the REALITY we find ourselves in when seeking friendship as grown-ups. How we do it now is going to be different from how we did it as children, teenagers, and young adults – but in a GOOD way. A friend recently said to me, “The way you talk about making friends sounds kind of like dating.” And, well, that’s because it kind of is. But it doesn...