Podcast Episode 386: How to Make Friends as an Adult When You’re Tired, Busy, and Out of Patience Transcripts

Please note: Transcripts for the No Guilt Mom Podcast were created using AI. As a result, there may be some minor errors.

Anna Goldfarb (00:02)

The story I wrote cracked a hole in my dad’s soul. It made him think about a dear friendship that he had, but they had lost touch. And he said, I really want to reach out to my friend Marty. And I was like, dad, I am a superhero at finding people’s information. Like, here’s his email. And he kept putting it up. He’s like, no, I haven’t reached out. haven’t reached out. Six months later, my dad got very sick and had to go to the hospital. And while he was there, he contracted COVID. And within three weeks, he died.

JoAnn Crohn (00:29)

Welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast. I’m your host JoAnn Crowe, joined here by the brilliant Brie Tucker.

Brie Tucker (00:40)

Hello, hello, how you doing?

JoAnn Crohn (00:43)

Well, and I have been friends for how many years now?

Brie Tucker (00:47)

my God, well, our daughters are seniors 

JoAnn Crohn (00:49)

They met in kindergarten. were four. My daughter was four when she met your daughter and she’s now 16, so that’s 12 years.

Brie Tucker (00:55)

Yeah, my daughter had turned five, I think, like two days before school started. So yeah. Yeah, it’s kind of crazy.

JoAnn Crohn (01:03)

It is kind of crazy and it is rare today in today’s society to have friendships that long. Did you know this, Brie?

Brie Tucker (01:11)

I can believe it for sure. Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn (01:14)

Our guest today, Anna Goldfarb, wrote an entire book about it, and that’s where I learned that. And let’s get this show started. Anna Goldfarb is a journalist, author, and speaker. Her work explores the nuances of friendships, relationships, and pop psychology. And her book, Modern Friendship, is a step-by-step guide to understanding friendship. As a seasoned journalist, she has reported hundreds of stories for the New York Times, the Atlantic, Time, Vice, The Cut, Vox, and The Washington Post, among others.

So without further ado, let’s get on with the show.

You want mom life to be easier. That’s our goal too. Our mission is to raise more self-sufficient and independent kids and we’re going to have fun doing it. We’re going to help you delegate and step back. Each episode we’ll tackle strategies for positive discipline, making our kids more responsible and making our lives better in the process. Welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast.

Welcome to the podcast, Anna, how are you?

Anna Goldfarb (02:24)

Oh my gosh, I’m doing smashing. It’s so good to see you guys.

JoAnn Crohn (02:28)

I love this because you came on with such energy and I think it’s like so important when you’re first meeting groups of people to have that energy, have that excitement. And so I knew you were our people right away and this is going to be just a fantastic interview.

Anna Goldfarb (02:45)

Yeah. mean, what could be better than talking about my number one obsession, which is friendship? It’s like, what is going on? What’s the deal? We’re all Jerry Seinfeld. What’s the deal with friendship nowadays? What’s the deal with friendships? No ships. Yes, there’s no ships. We were lied to. We’re the ships. And that is what I’m here to talk about.

JoAnn Crohn (03:03)

I’m fascinated by the subject as well. I know that a lot of people in the No Get Mom community and a lot of Alola’s in balance. Friendship’s a big deal. A lot of people feel very isolated this day and age and they feel it’s really hard to make friends. And starting your book, Anna, I’m noticing that that is a common theme among many people having a hard time making friends as an adult. So I’m excited to get into it. But first, I kind of want to dig into why you wrote the book.

in the first place. And you start out with this story of your dad trying to find his friend Marty.

Anna Goldfarb (03:49)

Yeah, I started the book off with an unusual way, kind of an emotional gut punch, like the beginning of up. just prepping people. You know, I had been reporting on friendships for the New York Times for a few years at this point. I think I started in 2016 or 2017. And with the pandemic, amazingly, historically, all of us at the same time, we’re asking the same questions about like, 

Who do I distance myself from? Values really came to the forefront of do we share the same values? What does it mean if we don’t share the same values? Friendships felt very fraught. And I had just written an article for the New York Times about should you reach out to that friend right now? If you remember, lot of the advice was reach out. We’re all home, locked down. This is the time, reach out. But I thought that that thinking lacked nuance.

And it made me question, well, why did you lose touch to begin with? And what do you expect to happen once you have this great two hour catch up? What’s going to propel you to seek each other out? It’s like, my friend’s doing great. She’s baking bread and her kids are fine. OK, why should I reach out to her again? It’s almost like it was satiated. That curiosity was satiated. You felt that connection. ⁓ my God, I do love this friend. All right, I it’ll be another eight months till I talk to them again. OK, like, where did this go?

Yeah, so that was me.

Brie Tucker (05:17)

How do you do that?

JoAnn Crohn (05:18)

Yeah.

Anna Goldfarb (05:20)

So that’s basically where all good journalism starts is what’s up with that. So I was like, well, what’s up with that? And the story I wrote, it cracked a hole in my dad’s soul. And it made him think about a dear friendship that he had, but they had lost touch. It’d been about 10, 15 years. He couldn’t even remember how long it’s been. And he said, I really want to reach out to my friend Marty. And I was like, dad, I am a superhero at finding people’s information. Like, what do you need to know? Here’s his email. Here’s his wife’s.

Facebook, here’s all the information. think this is his email. I think this is his number. Here, write him a message. Here, I’ll write the message for you. I didn’t get to help him very much with these kinds of interpersonal.

Brie Tucker (06:00)

Yeah. Are you kidding me? Like our dad’s generation does not ask for help. ⁓

Anna Goldfarb (06:05)

No.

There aren’t many times that your journalism skills can save the day. Like, I’m not really a Batman. It was like my one Batman moment. like, Dad.

JoAnn Crohn (06:15)

Good job on that. Good job on it.

Anna Goldfarb (06:17)

Like, oh my God, I’m a great kid, love me. So I tried to, I wanted to solve it for him to submit my place as his favorite daughter. And he just like kept putting it off. He’s like, no, I haven’t reached out. haven’t reached out. Six months later was when the first pandemic in the winter, it was when, right after Thanksgiving, when infection rates were really high and my dad got very sick and had to go to the hospital. And while he was there, he contracted COVID.

And this was months and months before we had a vaccine. And he deteriorated rapidly. It just like happened so fast. Within three weeks, my dad had died.

And it was a shock. mean, he was 74. He’s active. Like, he was a scientist. He observed every precaution and he still did everything right, but still, still victim to the pandemic. And in my shock and sadness, and like, I can’t believe this is happening to my little family, that I just lost my dad to this. My mind went back to our conversation about his friend, Marty. And I reached out to Marty’s son on LinkedIn.

and said, hey, I need to talk to your dad ASAP. And 45 minutes later, I was on the phone with Marty. ⁓ wow. And there was this moment where I knew that I was going to tell him that his best friend from childhood had died. Like, I knew that. And he was so happy to hear from me. He knew exactly who I was. He’s like, my god, Anna, like, what up, girl? And it’s like, you know, are you sitting down? Are you somewhere quiet? He’s like, yeah, what’s up? And I told him, you know, my dad died two days ago.

And he was crumpled. And I explained what happened. And I explained that we had this really great conversation six months prior that my dad wanted to reach out to him. My dad was missing him. And Marty interrupted me. said, I bear responsibility too. I could have reached out to him as easily as he could have reached out to me. And we talked for a while. We caught up. He shared stories about my dad growing up going to

football games together, how they annoyed my grandma, tracking mud on the carpet with their sneakers. And that night was my dad’s online shiva. And I saw Marty’s face in the ocean of names. I don’t think my dad had many regrets. I mean, he died so suddenly. None of his friends knew that he was sick. Like it was just a real shock. And that I got to connect with his friend Marty was just really, really special. So that’s after that happened.

The next week I said, I want to write a book about friendship. I don’t want anyone to talk themselves out of connection with the people that they love the most. You know, I watched my dad talk himself out of it. Like you think you have more time. And I just felt this immediacy, this like, I am put here to do this and help people understand this so that they can, they don’t have to let anxiety get in the way.

JoAnn Crohn (09:23)

Right. Because your dad expressed a lot of reluctance to reach out to Marty, even though you technically gave him the tools and you gave him everything he needed to do so, there was still like these roadblocks. And I think a lot of people experience those roadblocks when trying to reach out to their friends. And we’re going to talk about some of those roadblocks right after this.

So Anna, we want to talk about some of those roadblocks, because I know that if you’re listening right now in the No Get Mom community, you probably have a bazillion roadblocks that are keeping you from reaching out to friends. And a lot of people I’ve seen, they put shame on themselves for those roadblocks. But in your book, you lay out all of these reasons why it is so hard in today’s society to sustain friendship.

Give us a few of the most impactful ones that you found why it’s so hard to sustain friendships.

Anna Goldfarb (10:18)

You know, that’s a great question. We are in historically new times and I think people forget that or they don’t think about it. You know, our lives are so wildly different than just even our grandparents’ lives, even your grandmother’s life. My grandma was married at 18. You know. my God. My mom was married at 21. I was married at 39.

You know think about the time I’ve had to develop closeness with friends, know outside of being in a couple like I’ve gotten to be Friends. I have almost infinite choice of who I can befriend my grandma Did not have male friends. I’m sure she did not have Friends that were probably different religions or different class different sexual orientations that wasn’t available to people but now

You know, modern friendship is all about trade-offs. We have the ability to befriend anyone, but the trade-off is that it’s easier to shed friendships because it’s so easy to pick up friends and leave them. One of the most important things I learned is the role desire plays in a particular friendship. When I was writing the book, I was thinking about questions like, why would someone want to be my friend? Why would they pick me over anyone else?

And I think that that’s something we don’t hear spoken aloud of like, what am I bringing to the table? Yeah. You know, everyone’s like, well, I want friends. It’s almost an entitlement. Well, I want friends. I want people who knew me when I was 15 to care about me indefinitely forever, regardless of if I help them practically or emotionally or financially. I just want someone to care about me. My last breath and a lot.

JoAnn Crohn (12:02)

Yeah, until-

you wrote in your book, and I think it’s like really applicable to moms, because you say the more things you are to more people, the more precious your free time is. And it is in that free time that you’re told, reach out to friends, go find your friends. But here, especially in this community, I mean, as a mom, you are a daughter, you are a sister, you are a professional, you are a partner, you are all of these things.

And these friendships have to happen in your free time when you might be exhausted and overwhelmed.

Anna Goldfarb (12:41)

Yeah, it’s a lot of pressure. My hope with my book is that I lay out the case of, well, this is how modern life is. Modern life is very fluid. We move around more and we have so many different parts of our identity that didn’t necessarily exist generations past. Yeah, I’m child free. Even the fact that I don’t have children is a choice and that choice will impact who I bring close and why. So before it was like assumed, you’re

woman of an age, you have children, you’re married. And now it’s like, well, am I separated? Am I divorced? Am I a single mother? Am I a stepmother? Am I a non-apparent? There’s so many different ways that we, different directions we can go, but that also makes it harder in a way to find people who are similar to us in those ways.

JoAnn Crohn (13:31)

Yeah.

Brie Tucker (13:33)

Especially when you’re trying to find like the perfect person. Like you just said, like, she wouldn’t want to be friends with me because she’s divorced, remarried now and has her own kids in her stepkids. And I probably won’t make the cut. It’s like almost like we talk ourselves out of it before we even try.

Anna Goldfarb (13:36)

Yes!

JoAnn Crohn (13:53)

Dig into this a little bit more, because I never have that thinking, I won’t make the cut as a friend. I always go into friendships thinking like, okay, this is going to take so much work to become a friend with this person, because I’m all about the mentality. You have to spend a lot of time around a person to actually encourage a friendship. And if I just see them once, it’s not going to happen. It has to be repetitive, repetitive, repetitive. And so I’m always thinking from that standpoint, like,

I don’t want to say who’s worth my time. That sounds really bad. This sounds like the person that I’m the person doing the cutting and like, yeah, like I don’t want to be like, maybe I am.

Brie Tucker (14:31)

Yeah, because what I was going to say is like when I’m thinking about this and I meet somebody for whatever, wherever, and I’m like, they seem cool. We should be friends. I reach out once. And if they shun me, then you’re not my people. Also part of it is because of my personality. And JoAnn understands this. I’m not the best at following up with things. I forget stuff all the freaking time. So I need somebody who is totally fine.

following up with me on stuff. And I feel like if you’re not gonna follow back, then…

Anna Goldfarb (15:04)

Well, what I learned, and this is the diligence part of modern friendship, is what’s the quality of your invitations? If people are getting back to you, what are you proposing? And was it unclear? In the book, I talk about how people say, we should get together sometime, and that leads to nothing. It never leads anywhere. And the reason it doesn’t lead anywhere is because it’s too vague.

JoAnn Crohn (15:26)

No, never leaves anywhere.

Anna Goldfarb (15:34)

get together to do what to talk about what you can’t evaluate. Is this compelling to me? So then these invitations go nowhere. And people are like, my god, I have no friends. Like, I reached out to a bunch of people, nobody got back to me. I’m like, well, what did you say to them? Was it compelling? What’s in it for them? Are they interested in that thing? Did you ask?

Brie Tucker (15:56)

single friends to come to your one-year-old’s birthday party?

Anna Goldfarb (15:58)

Yeah. It’s like, is it compelling to them? It’s like, well, yeah. When you look at it through that lens, it’s not so personal. It’s the most important thing I learned writing this book is that every friendship needs an about and the about needs to be clear and compelling to both people. About is the reason that you make time to keep the friendship active. What is the reason abouts can be outdated?

JoAnn Crohn (15:59)

Yeah.

What do mean about?

Anna Goldfarb (16:28)

They can change and they can be absent. If we don’t have a reason to get together, I really like you, we should get together sometime. It doesn’t happen because the about was absent. There’s no reason to. But a reason could be like, hey, like I love that you guys are in a podcast. I’ve been doing podcasts lately. I want to talk to you about me being starting a podcast group in our city. ⁓ that sounds great. I would do that. show up for the podcast gathering. Whatever.

But if I’m just like, should get together, it’s way too big. And when things are uncertain, it creates anxiety. When you don’t know what the reason is, it’s like, well, why me? Why get together? Do you want to sell me an MLM? Do you want to sell me like a legging? do you have a unique hand soap? what do you want? Like, why should I tell my family?

JoAnn Crohn (17:16)

It’s so interesting because you have just verbalized why I say no to some invitations and not others because it’s the vagueness of it all. It’s too vague. You don’t know what’s going on. You don’t know what you’re signing up for. It’s why I won’t go to PTA meetings because I’m like, don’t know what’s going on there. There’s no agenda. There’s nothing there. So we have a group of friends who now we are meeting monthly again.

Anna Goldfarb (17:26)

Too big.

JoAnn Crohn (17:45)

because we realized how hard it was for us to like hang out and meet. And it’s our happy hour girls time. We just met at Postino, but at the start of it, like you talk about vague and I have been working on like my reach out and friendships since I went into therapy when my daughter was young and I was just like so, so lonely. So this has been going on a few years, but I’m like at the end of it, I’m like, everyone take out your cell phones. We are scheduling another date.

right now and Brie can attest I do this and I’m very forceful about it and I make sure everybody does it because that’s just that’s the kind of person I am.

Brie Tucker (18:23)

But you kind of need that person though in the friendship I feel like sometimes.

Anna Goldfarb (18:27)

The diligence. You know, I talk about basically the some more of friendship, which is desire, diligence and delight. Those are the three components of a healthy, active friendship. Desire, we’ve talked about it’s the about. Studies show that people make friends for five reasons. Generally speaking, first is career. People can help them with their job. Seconds, mating. You want to meet people to, you know, increase your chances of finding someone compatible.

Third is desirable qualities, which means you have compatibility in hobbies and passions. Fourth is emotional support. You want advice. And the fifth one is what they call sociability, which means you’re in the mix. They invite you out. They do a book club. We’re having a pool party. Come on over. So those are the reasons people make friendships, but those are also the same five reasons that friendships can feed. we’re not in the same career.

meeting, I’m not dating, like I’m not looking for people anymore. ⁓ know, hobbies and passions, like what are we doing together? Compatibility, like I don’t, our values are different. That would, you know, rupture our friendship. So when you understand that those are the musical notes of friendship, okay, so we can lean into that. If that’s what people are looking for from a friend, well, we can up our emotional support skills. We can learn how to support our friends. If that’s what your friendship’s about, if you want to get together for happy hour to like share.

JoAnn Crohn (19:53)

emotional support. It is really emotional support because we we go deep fast. Everyone knows about everyone’s X’s and problems and challenges and all of these things. We go deep fast.

Anna Goldfarb (20:06)

There’s a lot of like mind fields with emotional support. So if your friendships are about that, you might want to learn, well, how can I make my friends feel emotionally supported? Because that’s why they keep me around. That’s what our friendship’s about. So that’s the picture I put together with this book, Modern Friendship, is this is why people make friends. Here’s why they fade out. How can I figure this out to get the results that I want?

JoAnn Crohn (20:31)

Yeah, so I want to make this really, really actionable for everybody. So coming up next, we’re going to go into some action stuff people can take if they really want to have more friendships in their lives. So that’s coming up after this.

Okay, Anna, so far we’ve talked about the minefields in friendship and how friendships can fade and also why friends get really well together. I want to get into action now. So say someone listening right now, maybe it’s you listening right now, that wants more friends and wants to be more sociable. What’s one thing they can do?

Anna Goldfarb (21:09)

Well, I mean, it depends on their personality. know, researchers call this trait agreeableness. OK. And it means if you’re agreeable, you think people generally are good, trustworthy. If you’re not as agreeable, you’re more like skeptical, like, well, let me see who they are first before I open up. Big Bird is agreeable. I’m a big bird. I to everyone in my block. Oscar the Grouch is not agreeable and is like, get out of my trash can.

JoAnn Crohn (21:38)

It’s me and my husband.

Anna Goldfarb (21:43)

So a lot of it’s personality. It’s like, you putting yourself in positions to make friends? You know, what are your hobbies and passions? Do they necessitate other people to be involved?

Brie Tucker (21:54)

What if you have no hobbies or passions?

Anna Goldfarb (21:57)

Well, then you’re going to struggle.

Brie Tucker (22:00)

Yeah, because like, let’s say that you have wrapped yourself up in something else in your life and that piece has taken over everything. I know that’s what I was going to say.

JoAnn Crohn (22:09)

It’s no-go momland looking at you, even though it’s audio talking to you. Brie tries to skirt around the issue. I do not.

Brie Tucker (22:20)

But we get stuck in our day-to-day life. So like how do they move forward? What’s that first step when they’re like, I don’t even have any hobbies. I’m totally uninteresting. Like I can’t think of any reason somebody would want to hang out.

Anna Goldfarb (22:35)

You know what you do? You say, you find the coolest person you can, someone you admire and say, what do you care about and how can I help? Not in that particular wooden language, but that’s the vibe of how can I help you? Like, what are you working on? What do you care about? And I do this with my work friends since writing a book, being an author, I have cultivated a deep network of other authors. And I start by saying, I love your work. How can I help you? What are you working on? Let’s get on a call.

And in my personal life, I do that with my best friends of like, how’s it going? Like, what are your pain points? What do need help with? Do you want to move your body more? We can start a walking club. Do you want to like, you know, pump up your Etsy store? I can leave reviews. Like, what do you need help with? That’s where you start is what do you care about and how can I help you?

JoAnn Crohn (23:24)

And they’re very like low effort kind of helps too. Cause when I think of like, can I help you? I’m like, my gosh, I am signing up for like a two month thing that isn’t going to give me any more free time.

Anna Goldfarb (23:34)

Bravo!

Brie Tucker (23:36)

But you can say no if they’re like, well, I really need three more people to sign up at my MLM.

Anna Goldfarb (23:42)

Right, right, sorry. It’s negotiation. It’s a negotiation of like, well, what do you want to do? What’s the season? What are you working on? What do you need help with? Anything come to mind? It could be, I want to talk about the valley with someone on Bravo. It’s like, I’m obsessed with Bravo. want to do that. We do a Bravo brunch every other week. Like, great. We have a Bravo brunch. I hadn’t even thought of that. That’s so cool. I actually have that with another couple. We call it a Bravo summit. we get together at a tavern and just like talk about.

Bravo news. But that’s the about. That’s the magic. What are we going to talk about? What is clear and what is compelling? you want to talk about Bravo with another couple? Get together, get fries for the table.

JoAnn Crohn (24:26)

That’s awesome. So find the coolest person you know and ask them what they’re into and how you can help and come up with ideas from there. Yeah.

Brie Tucker (24:34)

feel like the secret sauce to that is that it’s a person that you find cool. So you’re taking out the piece of, I going to find this person interesting enough? You already find them interesting, not knowing much about them. So I think that already gives you that built in motivation to follow through for people that are like Bri, that procrastination of just doing anything.

Anna Goldfarb (25:00)

A lot of friendships don’t go anywhere because there’s no goal. And it’s like, should get lunch. Okay, well, that was all right. I’ll see you around. It’s like, well, we’re not working towards anything. You know, in Survivor, there’s always these like alliances. I wondered like, well, how do you make friends in an environment that’s so cutthroat that someone will, you know, you out the next night. And it’s like, well, you have a common goal.

Brie Tucker (25:12)

Yeah, you’re right.

Anna Goldfarb (25:26)

And it’s like, well, I want to win a million dollars. I can help you win a million dollars. Let’s be friends. ⁓

JoAnn Crohn (25:31)

That’s it works. it’s us against you and then friends anymore on Survivor.

Anna Goldfarb (25:34)

And you were not

Brie Tucker (25:36)

We’re friends, but not friends in competition.

Anna Goldfarb (25:39)

Right.

It’s about goal. It’s about being like, how can I be of assistance? There’s a bunch of different flavors of friends. There’s two categories. There’s active and nostalgic for those friends from your childhood that, you know, you don’t speak very often, but you you care for them very deeply. And then the active friends that you see all the time, you talk all the time, you create memories together. There’s also agentic friendships and communal friendships.

And those are big words. Agentic means it’s task oriented, usually about career. You’re working towards something together. Those friendships tend to detach when the costs outweigh the benefits. So like, you know, if your coworker starts acting up, it’s easier to detach from those friendships because it was about the goal. But communal friendships are the ones based on emotional support. Those are your Saturday night friends.

My friend asked me how to tell the difference, how to know if you’re in an agentic or communal. And I say, well, think, do you wear your bra around them? If you wear your bra around them, it’s an agentic friendship, probably. You’re working on a goal. If you are not wearing a bra, that means you can hang out, be your authentic self. It’s like a leisure friend where it’s about the emotional support aspect.

Brie Tucker (26:53)

That’s a makeup, no makeup friendship for me.

Anna Goldfarb (26:55)

Exactly.

I can’t think of the equivalent for men yet of like what is their let your hair down friend versus your buddy.

JoAnn Crohn (27:06)

Yeah,

I don’t know. I was thinking like, you wearing a cap around them or?

Anna Goldfarb (27:11)

My sister suggested if they show their bare feet, like if men share their bare feet with another man

Brie Tucker (27:15)

You need to ask your husband this, Yeah. We need a deeper dive on this one.

Anna Goldfarb (27:19)

Yeah, I know. I’m still workshopping that. But when you think about this friend, do we wear our bras together? Do we wear makeup together? It’s probably an agent tech friend.

JoAnn Crohn (27:28)

For my husband, I know, are you masking 100 % around them? Because if you are, then it is an agentic friend. And if you aren’t, then they actually know your true self.

Anna Goldfarb (27:40)

Yes, and that can help you understand what you’re seeing too of what kind of friendship is it? That’s one of the things I learned about modern friendship is it’s so ambiguous. I mean just the word friend, it’s meaningless.

JoAnn Crohn (27:54)

Well, it’s also like, are you able to show your bad side? Not bad side, but are you able to show your less attractive side around your friend? Brie has seen every side of me that I do not portray. Yeah, but then I do not portray outwards to many other people like, oh, you’re so successful and you’re so like confident and happy, da da da. And Brie see me like, no, I don’t wanna do that. So it’s interesting looking at friendships that way. 

Anna Goldfarb (28:22)

Yeah.

Yeah. And I hope by having this conversation, people’s wheels will be turning of, I never thought about this before. Like there are really different kinds of friendships. when you think about your past, you think about friendship breakups. You’re like, what helped me understand them better was writing this book of what was our friendship about? Did it change? Why did it change? Why did our friendship fade?

Anna Goldfarb (28:49)

okay, we weren’t in the same career field. Okay, our compatibility was on the fritz. And then you can start diagnosing your friendships in a really interesting way. That’s my hope for people is that they’ll understand what they’re seeing.

JoAnn Crohn (29:04)

It is phenomenal. Your book is phenomenal. And I am still into it and I have to give you a little confession. Usually I don’t finish books that we do podcast guest interviews on. It’s like, I read enough, get on the interview. And then like I talk about it, but I’m still reading yours. I want to devour everything. So just know that go get Modern Friendship from Anna. We’ll put a link in the show notes. And Anna, tell us something right now that you’re excited about that’s happening in your life.

Anna Goldfarb (29:06)

Thank you.

You know, Forbes just named the top 10 must read books on friendship and they named my book as one of them. Congratulations! Thank you. And it was like books, all books, fiction, nonfiction, any book. And they chose my book as one of the best books that explained the importance of friendship. And that just means so much to me. My book is on an independent publisher. I’m a one woman team. You know, I’m driven.

almost like an evangelist from watching my dad agonize over a friendship that was so special to him. And this really is very, very important to me to help people. I’ve heard from people saying that they’ve repaired 20 year friendships that they were about to walk away from, that now they understood what was happening more and they just couldn’t be more thankful to have this knowledge. And that’s what I want to feel.

for people to feel as empowered of, yes, it’s harder. Here are the reasons why, but here’s how people work and here’s how you can work within it. So I’m really excited about modern friendship. My goal was to not be boring. Actually, my mantra was don’t be boring. Don’t share. I didn’t want to share stories that you’ve heard a million times. I’ve interviewed over a hundred people and they shared their experiences. So hopefully as a reader, you’ll feel like seen and.

held and safe reading it. like, yeah, this is my experience and someone gets me.

JoAnn Crohn (30:56)

It is awesome. It is awesome, Anna.

Brie Tucker (30:59)

Okay, so not only is Anna a freaking ball of delight, she is just like a ball of little happy energy, glowy, warm, I love her. I love her. She is amazing. I love the book talking about all the different types of friendships and everything. However, I want to share that she has inspired me. She has inspired me to reach out to my oldest and bestest friend.

And I say best is because like we were inseparable when we were younger. Her name is Lisa. It used to be Lisa Liker. I follow her on Facebook, but we haven’t reached out in a while. I know she’s a pediatrician now in Kansas City. She works at, I believe at Children’s Mercy out there. And I miss her. I really miss her. I know why we like drifted apart. We like had different friend groups come high school, but I miss her. She was just really awesome. So much fun.

Yeah, so I’m gonna try to reach out to her. Text her Facebook.

JoAnn Crohn (31:59)

Yeah. Well, like Anna gave us so many tips too. And like she helped indulge me a little bit because I’m looking for this long lost friend of my husband’s because I could usually find people online pretty well and I cannot find this guy at all. 

Brie Tucker (32:14)

Let’s tell everybody, Anna said she’d help you. Yes. And one of Anna’s questions was, what color is his hair and what did your husband say back?

JoAnn Crohn (32:22)

General color? Like, he doesn’t remember.

Brie Tucker (32:27)

 I get that, yeah.

JoAnn Crohn (32:29)

I get that because I’m thinking of like some of my friends from elementary school and one of them, Justin, who since passed away, unfortunately, he had red hair. So I definitely remember that hair. But like my friend, like Cherry, let say it was like blondish brown. No, I can remember all the hair colors. I don’t know why this is not.

Brie Tucker (32:47)

The other thing to think about though is that in this day and age, hair color is not a solid thing, right? I have another friend from high school, one of my really good friends that I was friends with all through high school, her name’s April. And I remember we reconnected in like the mid 2000s and she’s like, my God, you’re blonde now. Cause I used to have like pretty dark brown hair. And she’s like, you’re blonde now. And I’m like, I’m not blonde. I just have blonde highlights. Yeah. All over the top of my hair.

So I do understand how somebody would look at me and be like, would I say she’s blonde or brunette? I don’t know.

JoAnn Crohn (33:21)

Yeah, that is true.

Brie Tucker (33:23)

Yeah, especially when comes to women. We’re famous for changing our hair color.

JoAnn Crohn (33:27)

It’s true. People would say I have red hair and I’m like, I don’t have red hair. I have brown hair, but it is a lot redder than it used to be. Right? My normal hair is like a dark brown, black, dull color, which now would probably be salt and pepper color, honestly. Cause I do this thing so much. I mean, let’s be honest.

Brie Tucker (33:49)

I do the same here. I keep asking my stylist if I have gray hairs and she’s like, no, you don’t. However, I am having these weird freaking white hairs coming into my eyebrows. Anybody else have white hairs in your eyebrows?

JoAnn Crohn (34:03)

Yeah, I do. do. One white hair. One white hair that keeps coming up. 

Brie Tucker (34:08)

I have a ton. That’s why my eyebrows keep getting further and further apart. They keep turning white in the middle and then I pluck them and then they don’t come out.

JoAnn Crohn (34:16)

But I have a ton of gray here. Ton of gray. I don’t even ask my stylist. I just sit down and I’m like, cover them up Danielle. I want them all gone.

Brie Tucker (34:25)

Understand that though because it doesn’t always fit your personality so

JoAnn Crohn (34:29)

No, anyway, hate it right here because right here this is where it’ll gray guys. I’m pulling up the sections that hang over my face on the sides, but right there. if I put it, if I go too long without getting my hair colored, you can see the gray hair there. It’s like Benedict Cumberbatch old man, gray kind of Benedict Cumberbatch isn’t an old man, but it’s something I associate with men. Okay. That’s why I say that. But yeah, anyways, Anna go get her back modern friendship.

Brie Tucker (34:32)

It’s amazing. Link is in the show notes. We absolutely loved it. 

JoAnn Crohn (35:01)

We are up for a People’s Choice Podcast Award and to be actually nominated to get it, can you go do us a favor? Can you go to the website that we have in the show notes and nominate the No Guilt Mom podcast under, what’s the category we were under?

Brie Tucker (35:17)

It’s for best female hosted podcasts.

JoAnn Crohn (35:20)

Best Female Hosted podcast. So please go sign us up for that. would so appreciate you. And until next time, remember the best mom’s a happy mom. Take care of you. We’ll talk to you later.

Brie Tucker (35:31)

Thanks for stopping by.