Aminatou Sow

Ann Friedman

A close friendship is one of the most influential and important relationships a human life can contain. Anyone will tell you that! But for all the rosy sentiments surrounding friendship, most people don’t talk much about what it really takes to stay close for the long haul. Now two friends, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, tell the story of their equally messy and life-affirming Big Friendship in this honest and hilarious book that chronicles their first decade in one another’s lives. As the hosts of the hit podcast Call Your Girlfriend, they’ve become known for frank and intimate conversations. In this book, they bring that energy to their own friendship—its joys and its pitfalls. Aminatou and Ann define Big Friendship as a strong, significant bond that transcends life phases, geographical locations, and emotional shifts. And they should know: the two have had moments of charmed bliss and deep frustration, of profound connection and gut-wrenching alienation. They have weathered life-threatening health scares, getting fired from their dream jobs, and one unfortunate Thanksgiving dinner eaten in a car in a parking lot in Rancho Cucamonga. Through interviews with friends and experts, they have come to understand that their struggles are not unique. And that the most important part of a Big Friendship is making the decision to invest in one another again and again. An inspiring and entertaining testament to the power of society’s most underappreciated relationship, Big Friendship will invite you to think about how your own bonds are formed, challenged, and preserved. It is a call to value your friendships in all of their complexity. Actively choose them. And, sometimes, fight for them.

How We Keep Each Other Close

Big Friendship

… except for the fact that she really didn’t want to live in a swamp full of status-obsessed former debate champions

sofia mae

But it has been much harder for us to find a language for the difficult parts: The frustration of giving more to a friend than they’re giving back. The unbridgeable gaps in even the closest of interracial friendships. The dynamic of pushing each other away even as we’re trying to reconnect. The struggle to find true peace with a long-term friendship that is changing. 

At a cultural level, there is a lot of lip service about friendship being wonderful and important, but not a lot of social support for protecting what’s precious about it. 

And in our experience, periods of transition—at any age—have been opportunities to make friends. 

Our shared love language is making and keeping plans. We have both had our moments of feeling sad while sitting alone at home, but we also know how to channel that energy into reaching out to a friend. We are nothing if not proactive women.

Most families don’t just have beautiful rituals; they also have destructive patterns.

What’s so maddening about friendship is that you don’t always figure out simultaneously that a stretch is necessary. Sometimes one of you is stretched to the point of strain while the other friend doesn’t even realize it. When you’re not the one who’s feeling stretched, it can be hard to notice all the effort your friend is putting in to sustain the friendship.

We don’t have a squad. We have an ever-changing, interconnected web of friends. It’s not something that’s easily captured in a photo, but the friendweb is a helpful visual representation of the complex ways that the people we love connect and relate to each other. 

Big Friendship quotes

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