This week's friendship topic is the frenzy of college admissions and how it affects friendships between teens and how it potentially affects friendships between those teens' parents, too. Most importantly, we discuss how to approach the college admissions world with a level head!Meet Kate Proger:Kate Proger, is a college planning consultant and admissions expert. With degrees in both psychology and educational testing, as well as executive function coach training, Kate has helped hundreds of ...

Episode: #111 It's another letter spotlight episode! This week's anonymous letter is from a woman with two friends who never ask about her. She's fed up doing all the listening and none of the talking. She wants to know how to handle this friendship dynamic and whether other Dear Nina listeners deal with this same issue. Let us know in our facebook group, Dear Nina: The Group. In The Letter Spotlight series I'll be reading one anonymous letter from my inbox every six weeks or so and sha...

Episode #110: "Neurodivergent friending" Thrilled to welcome Dr. James F. Richardson, author of Our Worst Strength: American Individualism and Its Hidden Discontents, who explains how his neurodivergent friend difficulties inspired a deeper exploration of, "how our American value of self-reliant individualism encourages us to be way too independent, undermining many relationships, including our friendships." Listeners will appreciate James's sense of humor, heart, and practical tips for ...

Episode #109: Let's say you know that a friendship has run its course, but the friend has done nothing wrong. How do we go about distancing from a friend or ending a friendship? How do we process it when we feel a friend withdrawing? How do we negotiate conflict or transitions that are going to come up in many friendships?"Quiet quitting" is the latest term for withdrawing from a friendship, phasing out, or disengaging completely. In this episode with the insightful Dr. Miriam Kirmayer, a cli...

Episode #108: Talking to friends about money has always been a taboo topic. What if, instead, discussing money with friends could deepen a friendship? Money can be an enormous issue between friends, which is why I'm revisiting my conversation with Shondaland.com staff writer, Mia Brabham Nolan. We discussed ways to make talking about finances with friends less awkward. Some of the solutions apply to any topic that's normally private and therefore tough to handle in friendships. Keeping so man...

Episode #107: I rarely cover family relationships on Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship, but I consistently receive letters about sisters-in-law so I realized it was time to broach the topic. Let me first say, I have a wonderful relationship with my sisters-in-law. I'm lucky! I was still able to take what I know about getting along (or not) with friends and relate it to the sister-in-law problem that listeners and readers keep writing to me about. In this new series, The Letter S...

Episode #106: Welcome to Dear Nina, Conversations About Friendship. Today is a tough topic, and I'm not going to promise you that we come to an easy solution at the end. The fallout from losing the friendship of an entire group is a heartache that takes tremendous time to heal. Today's guest, is still in that healing process. I spoke to writer and podcaster, Meghan Judge, about her experience being dropped by an entire group of friends in a small community. This happened in her adult life (an...

Episode #105: After a trip to Chicago to say goodbye to my childhood house, I appreciated how even one meal with your long distance friends means so much. You need time with your long distance friends, but not as much time as you think. You don't need full weekends away, though of course those are nice. You don't need long retreats in fancy resorts or expensive rental houses.Yes, it's true that with extra time you can cover more ground, but it's still worth making an effort to hangout in pers...

Episode #104: Jill Smokler is the creator of Scary Mommy, one of the most original and successful mom blogs ever. She was also the first mom blogger to sell her site to a major media company. But Dear Nina is not a business podcast, and this is not a discussion about business regrets or rebranding. Jill was recently diagnosed with brain cancer. And since Jill is also my real-life friend from college, this episode is personal. Jill and I had a candid conversation about her diagnosis, her decis...

Episode #103: Friendship meet-cutes, the perfect jacket or blazer, fashion emergencies solved by our friends, making the first friendship move, and more. I'm talking to Rachel Levy Lesser of Life's Accessories: The Podcast for a fun crossover episode. We covered:Some personal friendship "meet-cutes" that mean more to us than our former romantic meet-cutes. Yes, our stories include blazers and jackets. The leather jackets in my best friend Taryn's closet that I coveted as a teen.The very ...

Episode #102: Shasta Nelson, friendship expert extraordinaire, joins me to discuss how and why to be honest with friends when we're upset with them. Our friendships CAN survive tough conversations, hurt feelings, and conflict. AND, our overall social health will improve when we learn to get through the hard stuff with our friends. Meet Shasta Nelson:Shasta Nelson is a leading expert and author on social relationships, speaking across the country and facilitating events to build belongingness ...

Episode #101: It's the first official "ask me anything" episode in honor of 100 episodes! The questions came from my anonymous inbox, my Facebook group (Dear Nina: The Group), or through Instagram and TikTok-- both @dearninafriendship.I had a great time answering questions and I couldn't even get to everything so I will keep doing these every so often. Some of the topics I covered in under 30 minutes:Be more direct with friendsAwkwardness after ending a friendshipFriendship trios, r...

Episode #100: They say camp friends are the best friends. Why? At camp there are no screens, you take risks, parents aren't breathing down your back, and the magic ingredients of endless hours + constant proximity make it possible to create intense, close bonds with kids your age. In this special episode of Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship, I have voicemails from campers and former campers ages 15-50, and I have a fantastic in-depth discussion about the highs (and lows) of camp frien...

Episode #99: Welcome to the 14-day friendship (mindset) cleanse, brainchild of previous Dear Nina guest, Anna Goldfarb, whose book Modern Friendship: How to Nurture Our Most Valued Connections, is finally out in the world. Don't feel put off by the word, "cleanse." This discussion is about reconsidering how you're approaching friendships and how you're treating your closest friends. (And that particular list shouldn't be too long.) By the end of this episode, you will have a healthier f...

Episode #98: There are five questions I want us to be asking ourselves to get a sense of where our friendships stand. Even if you're not a student or a parent, thinking in school months is a helpful measure of time. Maybe you got some grades. Maybe your kids got grades. Maybe at work you got an evaluation. It's also worth your time to evaluate your friendships and give yourself an honest assessment. And if you DO have kids of any age all the way through college, this is a good short episode t...

Send us a Text Message.Episode #97: Invisible disabilities can turn into a source of shame and unknowingly get in the way of friendships. What is an invisible disability? It's any condition that is not obvious, perhaps even to the closest of friends. Some examples are depression, anxiety, other mental health diagnoses, as well as physical conditions such as chronic pain, fatigue, and too many other examples to list where symptoms are felt but not seen.This week's guest, Estelle Erasmus, share...

Send us a Text Message.Episode #96: I have been a Gretchen Rubin fan since 2009 when I read The Happiness Project the week it came out. Who could resist that cover and concept? And I cannot believe this, but I got to discuss my favorite topic, friendship, with Gretchen Rubin on Dear Nina. In celebration of Gretchen's paperback release of Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World, I am replaying our episode from about a year ago. I found my favorite...

Send us a Text Message.Episode #95: Oversharing, overtalking, undertalking, undersharing, small talk, deep talks, mismatches in vulnerability, and the art of listening---these are the tricky friendship topics we are dealing with today. I'm joined by Micaela Blei, a GrandSLAM-winning storyteller and former founding Director of Education at The Moth.Topics we covered:There is no right or wrong in how much to talk or how much to share. The words "over" or "under" signal a potential mismatch in c...

Send us a Text Message. Episode #94: Everyone runs into bumps in their friendships. Trust me, I have a decade's worth of writing material from readers and listeners to prove that point. But when are friendship issues getting to the point where addressing them with a therapist is highly recommended? I'm joined by award-winning psychotherapist, Roxanne Francis, who responded brilliantly and graciously to the five areas of friendship dilemmas I hear about most often. Meet Roxanne Francis,...

Episode #93: A quick conversation about the subtle hurts that can make friendship difficult. It's the small slights I cover on Dear Nina in general, not the giant betrayals. Why? The big "stuff" is much more black and white, and we don't need much conversation around whether to stay friends. Today I also have a big instagram tip if you're looking to change your Instagram handle. I changed mine to @dearninafriendship. Instagram doesn't make it all that simple if you have tons of links in the...

Episode #92: For anyone who has been hurt by a friend--or a group of friends--recently or in the past, this 14-minute episode is for you. It's a solo episode that came from my reaction to a TikTok video I saw by a woman who was left out of a group trip years ago and has decided she will never trust anyone with her friendship again.  Other titles I considered: (and all relate to this 14-minute episode!) Not All Women Are Vicious Don’t Let Being Left Out Dictate Your Future FriendshipsDon't...

Episode #91: Dr. Lisa Damour's latest book, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers , is out in paperback. On this episode we revisit the best nuggets of my previous conversation with Dr. Lisa, focusing on teen and tween friend groups and all of the anxiety that goes along with parenting a teen who is dealing with not being in a group. We cover teens not liking their place in a group, wishing they had a group, wishing they had a smaller group, and so on. We also discuss the reality that every kid...

Episode #90: Many of us say we would be there for our friends in an emergency, but that's often theory until it's tested. Not everyone can rise to the occasion. And crisis is a time when the friends you want around you and the ones you may need to leave behind (even for just a while) becomes very clear. Kelly Lang, co-author with her husband, Mike, of The Miracle Child: Traumatic Brain Injury and Me is a brain injury survivor and caregiver to her daughter who sustained a traumatic brain...

Episode #89: Do you ever feel like you or someone you know is just not “good at” friendship? It's never too late to address negative patterns in our friendships or any relationship. Today's guest, author Christie Tate, author of B.F.F.: A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found, set out to break decades of unhealthy cycles in her friendships. Do you think you "suck at friendship" as Christie thought before she started this process? There is hope! Christie is here to prove it. We...