Dedicating a weekend to friendship

Plus, Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s friendship breakup

Hello! I am just back from a long weekend in Chicago where the entire purpose was FRIENDSHIP. I mean, how amazing is that? For someone with little kids who I guess aren’t quite so little — 5.5 and almost 9 — this was a huge luxury. But it felt urgent, necessary. 

On this trip I saw three women: a college friend, the woman I met in New York City on 9/11 (it was nothing short of amazing to see her after 20 years; more on this in an upcoming newsletter), and Grace. Grace was the point of the trip. 

My list of New Year’s resolutions included meeting my 9/11 friend in person, and showing up in a real way for my “strong ties,” including Grace. If you read my resolution list, at the end of the email I linked to above, I mention two unnamed women, and one of those was Grace. 

Grace and I met in Florence, Italy, and both lived in NYC in our early 20s. In the past years, we’ve been catching up over long phone conversations perhaps quarterly. Last December, when I was brainstorming New Year’s resolutions, I thought of Grace. I missed her. I put a wish into the world and into my newsletter to fly to Chicago to visit her at some point in 2022. And then in early January, about a week after I wrote that list, I got a call from Grace. She had news: Her cancer was back. 

I need to back up for a moment and explain. I have always known that Grace is special — honest, hilarious, kind. Now many people know, because five years ago she shared her cancer journey in her popular blog, Grancer. This is not the typical staid cancer content you might be imagining; her Year in Review post is a good example. She is also the subject of an incredible documentary about, in part, the floral tattoo she got on her post-masectomy breast. Grace was a success story—in remission, dealing with emotional and physical repercussions but healthy, happy, thriving. 

And now, against all odds, the cancer was back. There were a few truly scary weeks when Grace didn’t know if she was stage 4. Thankfully, she’s not. But it’s going to be another shitty year for her and her family. 

So my wish for a weekend with my friend went from hypothetical to critical. I booked a flight, and spent this past Friday to Monday bonding with her kids (baking cookies, chopping vegetables, making eggs, joining a family singalong to “Careless Whisper”); helping her choose a console to brighten up the bedroom where she’ll be recuperating; watching movies and Top Chef and giggling in bed at night (huge thanks to Joe, who gave up his side of the bed for the weekend).

Grace had endured one round of serious chemo, with three more to go, and then comes 12 weekly rounds of less intense chemo (that is still very much chemo), followed by radiation. She is only at the beginning of this journey, and I caught her in a moment of relative normalcy. She still has all her hair. Her energy was slightly low, but we were able to take a brisk 30-minute walk. I had to keep my emotions in check when I would inevitably imagine what she might be looking and feeling like in just a few weeks’ time.

There’s something I’ve been thinking about this week, which is the squirmy way I’ve been feeling when people praise me for traveling to be with her. If someone compliments my writing, great. (Please do! Frequently! Ha.) But compliment my kindness or generosity, and I feel wildly uncomfortable. This isn’t false humility. I am wincing right now thinking about it. It’s hard to describe why, but I’ll try. Tucked into that “wow you’re such a good person” praise is an implication of obligation. It’s like, I see you’ve identified an obligation, and despite the personal hardship and sacrifices, you’ve decided to answer the call. But that’s not it at all. Obligation is not why I wrote 365 thank you notes, and it’s definitely not why I visited Grace.

Sure, keeping up friendships takes effort. It’s always easier to not do the thing you don’t have to do. I enjoy passive time as much as the next person (more?). There’s a part of me who could happily spend all my free time curled up somewhere cozy, reading rom coms and scrolling whatever, with no pressure to make conversation. But there’s a part of me that knows what is important—and it’s not achieving Genius level on the NYT Spelling Bee.

What IS important? Entering a real space with real people and having a real exchange. We live in a time when it’s easy and comfortable and sort of expected to settle for the ersatz version, to shoot a HBD text, to throw an LOL comment, to spend mere seconds maintaining a connection between you and someone you loved, or once did, so that the thread between you stretches and stretches until it’s so thin you’re not even sure if it’s there anymore. 

For me, seeing Grace was therapeutic. Waiting for cancer updates from thousands of miles away, I felt helpless, floundering, achy. I felt desperate to help, but sending trinkets and gift cards was not cutting it. I wanted more. I wanted to insert myself into her life. I wanted to make it clear that our friendship tie is not a thread but a rope.  

Right now, back in my own city, my own life, after being in hers, I feel grateful for my husband, my kids, and my in-laws who made it possible for me to go. I feel grateful for Grace’s husband and kids, who welcomed me and called me Mom 2.0 and allowed me to step in and mother them a tiny bit. Mostly, I feel grateful for Grace. Its unspeakably comforting to know our friendship is not one that we maintain simply out of habit. Through the decades, we’ve done what the moment called for, whether that was dancing on tables in Italian nightclubs or gossiping over mimosas and pancakes. Our current reality might look less sexy, but there’s a richness to it. 

When I was on Zibby Owens’ podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, Zibby read this passage from my book aloud:

“When time becomes scarce, why is friendship the first thing to be sacrificed? Maybe it explains social media’s skyrocketing rise: We are all craving the friendships we had when we were younger, and we settle for this faux version because it’s all we think we have time for. This month’s correspondence took a little time and effort, to be sure—but it meant more than a social media smiley face, and it was more efficient than scheduling twenty-six catch-up phone calls.

Who knows when those will happen? It could be years. Until then, I wanted to send these people my love and gratitude for our friendship, and I hoped that the gesture acted as a bookmark until we are able to sit down, face-to-face.”

And then Zibby and I talked about how friendship is one of my—forgive the marketing term—core values. And how I’ve decided that I need to dedicate time and energy to it in order to feel like myself. In my resolution list, I said that this year I wanted to go deeper. If my Thank You Year emphasized quantity—30 postcards to 30 friends—I wanted in 2022 to focus on quality. Hence, Chicago. 

ESTRANGED FRIENDSHIPS 

This month, paid subscribers received my guide to thanking friends. I got into the particulars of sending out what I call “Remember When?” postcards, which I did in my Thank You Year’s friendship month. When I am explaining my book for the first time to someone, I often talk about those postcards, and how they helped to repair a few fractured friendships. I then pause and wait for the person’s response, because it’s always personal, and interesting. Everyone can relate to a friendship breakup, and the pain always seems fresh.

In this profile, Adam McKay divulged some legitimately juicy details about his friendship breakup with long-time partner Will Ferrell. McKay says he’s written emails to Ferrell, attempting a rapprochement, but has never heard back. “I fucked up on how I handled that,” McKay laments. And then he says, “What are you going to do?”

I wonder if in those rapprochement emails, McKay tried a gratitude tack—thanking him for what he brought to their partnership. IF ANYONE KNOWS ADAM MCKAY PLEASE OFFER MY FREE SERVICES AS A LETTER-WRITING TUTOR. 

Related: I recently read this incredible article by Jennifer Senior titled (perfectly): It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart. She gets into the uncomfortable topic of envy in friendships, and talks about the importance of ritual in sustaining friendships, and offered up this relatable passage: 

“When you’re in middle age… you start to realize how very much you need your friends. They’re the flora and fauna in a life that hasn’t had much diversity, because you’ve been so busy—so relentlessly, stupidly busy—with middle-age things: kids, house, spouse, or some modern day version of Zorba’s full catastrophe. Then one day you look up and discover that the ambition monkey has fallen off your back; the children into whom you’ve pumped thousands of kilowatt hours are no longer partial to your company; your partner may or may not still be by your side. And what, then, remains?”

Friends. The answer is friends. Thank god for them.