Big Friendship, How We Keep Each Other Close, by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, Simon & Schuster 2021

 When two young women planned what they knew would be an incredible spa weekend away filled with mud baths and massages, they had already known each other for years.  And they fully expected - or dreamed - a luxurious time of sharing stories and relaxing with great dinners and a movie.  What a special getting away time!  What could possibly go wrong?

What could go wrong?  Certainly not the resort that offered a long menu of services and treats; and not the spa, with its equally endless list of healthful and expensive treatments.  No, it was what was NOT there that turned this glorious and expensive weekend getaway into three days of misery - silence, frustration, awkwardness for two women who really believed they shared a deep and long-lasting friendship.  They could not wait to leave.

But the authors, these two getaway girls, well advanced in their careers and family lives,  still value long friendships, and they wanted to come to some sort of understanding about what had changed.  And mostly they wanted to re-find that special caring connection they had hoped to share throughout their lives.  Its funny how the pandemic has outlined certain special human tribe characteristics, one of them being our ability to make and lose and re-find friendship.  As the authors of the podcast Call Your Girlfriend they have learned some invaluable habits that have helped to preserve and grow the kind of deep friendship that has taken them from "sorority sisters" to mature and very busy women.

Along the way the authors address some basic elements we have all re-discovered during the pandemic - loneliness and distanced friendships.  "Loneliness is not the condition of just being alone... lonely people don't necessarily lack friends...Social media is playing a role, allowing them to 'peer in' at people they once truly felt connected to."  In fact, friendships that we thought were life-lasting and deep may only be dreams or memories.  But knowing that friendships cover a lot of territory helps explain the diversions that appear along the journey.  They believe the experts who say that ages 30 - 50  tend to be the low point for friendships as people inevitably pick up speed and focus on careers or family.  But in 2018 the UK government, well before Wuhan, appointed a minister of loneliness!  And an earlier quote from Vivek Murthy speaking in Harvard Business Review emphasizes this basic challenge - " During my years caring for patients, the most common pathology I saw was not heart disease or diabetes; it was loneliness."  So when the authors offer a variety of recommendations for what they call The Long Haul with Big Friendships, they also warn that sometimes, despite good practice, we will feel out of sync, or stretched into exhaustion.  "Showing up, in good times and in bad, is the only way to stay in it."  You decide.

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers,  patriciaemoody@gmail.com