We got the huge news that
Big Friendship is a
best-seller! This is exciting and joyful and satisfying. "Best-selling author" is a designation that will benefit me for the rest of my career (and Aminatou's too, of course), because people who work in media and publishing
really care about such things. But I am mostly stuck on the fact that it is a community achievement. Friends and colleagues—many of you reading this newsletter—did
so many favors to help us get here. People ordered multiple copies, had us on their
podcasts, talked up the book to their friends, connected us with resources. I get to reap the benefits of this collective effort, so the least I can do is recognize it.
This give and take, of knowing how to receive help as well as offer it, is a deceptively tricky thing to learn. On today's episode of CYG, we talk to
therapist Jordan Pickell, who notes that many of us have grown up with the idea that independence is the greatest marker of success: Can we live alone? Pay for things alone? Take care of ourselves?
Write a book and make it popular on our own? But the healthiest adults are those who are interdependent, supporting the people they love and allowing themselves to be supported in return.
Here's how the writer Mia Birdsong
puts it: "The way I’ve come to understand it, freedom is both an individual and collective endeavor—a multilayered process, not a static state of being. Being free is, in part, achieved through being connected." Thank you for being connected with me.