When's the last time you saw your friends?
Dear Grand Community,
I've been thinking a lot about friendships 👭while planning my wedding. During this process, the concept of friendship gets tested and you have to make some difficult decisions. You have to think long and hard about the people who mean the most to you in your life. As someone who's never had just one group of friends, it's been a challenging exercise – who do I want by my side celebrating this special milestone with me? I have people that I cherish from all parts of my life, but in reality, there are some whom I haven't talked to in a long time. Someone once told me that the best way to make the decision is to think about it in terms of "past, present, and future". If any person fulfills two of those three categories, then they should get an invite. In reality, it's about who you want to be part of your future.
This made me wonder, why do we wait for weddings to think about who we want to spend the most time with? Each of us has limited time already, so this can be a great heuristic for friendships in general. What would it look like if we were more intentional about our friendships? Is it okay that friends from our past are no longer part of our present or future like this recent NYT article addresses? If this topic is on your mind, join us for our Grand Session on July 24th with Kathi Shaw, a self-proclaimed introvert who's learned the significance of cultivating friendships that last. We'll discuss things like making friends as a grown-up, investing in friends who live far away, and building new communities of belonging.
We have a few seats available for our next session, Using Enneagrams to Understand Yourself and Your Relationships with Akhil Jaya Sathyan on Thursday, July 11th. Don't miss this session since we're going to learn more about ourselves and build empathy with others by discovering our type within this model of the human psyche.
Another Grand Session that we're hosting on July 16th is To Have Kids 🤱🏽, or Not 🙅🏽♀️ with Tresa Eyres. Choosing to have kids, or not to have kids, is probably one of the biggest decisions we'll make in our lives. Come to this Grand Session to discuss and gain insights into crafting a meaningful life – with or without kids – and to connect with others on a similar journey.
Finally, in the last newsletter we previewed our first Guidebook with you on How to Nurture Interracial Relationships. I'm thrilled to share the full version with you today below. If it resonates with you, please share it, tweet it, and forward it to a friend who might enjoy it.
At The Grand, we believe in making wisdom more accessible, so stay tuned for future sessions on the topics that are close to your heart 💖.
Warmly,
Anita