Fresh Reads: Are We Friends Yet? How to Deepen Your Relationships and Create the Community You Need by Alex Alexander

At some point, most of us have stood on the edge of a new chapter — a divorce, a move, a loss, a reinvention — and felt the quiet, aching realization that we have no one to call. Not no one, exactly. But no one close enough. No one present. No one who really knows the texture of your everyday life. That loneliness isn't weakness. And according to author Alex Alexander, it isn't permanent either. But fixing it requires unlearning almost everything society has told us about what friendship is supposed to look like.

In this episode of A Fresh Story: Book Talk, Olivia sits down with her longtime friend and fellow community-builder Alex Alexander to celebrate the release of Alex's debut book, Are We Friends Yet? How to Deepen Your Relationships and Create the Community You Need. Alex didn't set out to write a book — she set out to write 40 pages. What she discovered in the process were two foundational frameworks that had been quietly shaping her entire life's work: the idea that we aren't looking for one perfect person to fill every role, but a whole constellation of people, each showing up in the specific way that only they can. Alex's own origin story is woven into every page. She was the kid who desperately needed more adults in her corner, who felt the weight of having no one to turn to — and who eventually, through rock bottom moments and radical openness, built herself a family out of friends.

What makes this conversation — and this book — so essential for anyone navigating a life transition is how radically it reframes what it means to belong. Alex dismantles the myth of scarcity that runs through so much of how we talk about adult friendship ("finding a good friend is like finding a four-leaf clover"). She makes space for the online friend, the long-distance friend, the friend who shows up at 10 p.m. with a crisis script for a devastating text. She talks about the "do less list" — a permission slip to stop performing friendship in ways that drain you, and start showing up in the ways that actually fit your life. If you've ever wondered whether you'll ever really find your people, this book will convince you that you already have more than you know — and show you exactly how to build more.