February Challenge: Start a Ritual or Tradition with a Friend
Think beyond "Friendsgiving" and "Galentine's Day"
Welcome to the 2025 Friendship Challenge, a monthly series here—and in the Dear Nina podcast—where I issue a “social wellness” challenge. Each challenge stands alone and every one of them WILL improve your friendships. Whenever you’re reading this, start today!
TO REVIEW: Why will these challenges improve your friendships?
In healthy, robust friendships, there’s less keeping score, less waiting for invitations, and less moralizing about who should have included you. You, dear reader, are in charge. YOU, will do the including. I’m not saying it’s easy to take charge of your social life, only that it’s the best way to get the results you may want.
The February Challenge: Start a ritual or tradition with friends
No shade to “Friendsgiving” or “Galentine’s Day,” which are both fun traditions that I fully endorse, because why not, but I want you to think beyond the obvious for this challenge. Not everyone is up for bigger events—either hosting them or attending them. This month consider a simple tradition or ritual you could begin with one friend or more.
If you have rituals or traditions you’re already doing with friends, share in the comments to help the rest of us!
Although you will hear Friendsgiving as an early example in the February challenge podcast episode, when I say “start a ritual,” please know there are endless possibilities from a weekly walk that becomes a permanent part of your schedule to an annual birthday breakfast with one or two friends. Perhaps instead of a book club, once a year you get together with neighbors to discuss their favorite books. You could do that for TV shows—or podcasts!
Anything that happens on some of kind of regular basis could be a “ritual.” I use “tradition” for the annual ideas. But really I’m using the words interchangeably.
I often get anonymous emails from people who feel they need to start over with their friendships or that they’ve never had good friends. So when you hear something like “start a ritual,” you might be thinking, “But Nina, I don’t have any close friends.” And that’s the point. These rituals and traditions can become the foundation of close friendships. In the episode, I shared a few examples of close friendships born from doing the same activity together once a year.
The power in rituals and traditions are not even about the activity itself. It’s about the anticipation and organization! Of course there are tricky elements of planning these traditions, too. For example, how many people should you include? I got into that too in my interview for this topic with Rachel Steinman and Rachel Winter, co-authors of STAY GOLDEN, GIRLS.
FIND EPISODE #131 on Apple, Spotify, Youtube, and anywhere you listen to podcasts!
Want some accountability for these challenges?
Over three years ago I started a Facebook group for the Dear Nina community, and it’s a wonderful, supportive place full of people who like talking about the good and the difficult of friendships. I’ll have a thread for each month’s challenge so people can report on how it’s going. We’re here to support you. Let’s do this!
You can comment on each month’s challenge post here in Substack.
You can email me at ninabadzin@gmail.com to say, “I did it!” Of course I’d love to hear what you planned.
Articles and Other Finds About Friendship
I see so many friendship-related things, either because I find them myself or listeners send them to me. I love hearing from listeners and readers!
My associate producer, Rebekah Jacobs, sent me a newsletter from Laurie Santos of “The Happiness Lab” about “How to Date Like a Scientist.” As Rebekah pointed out, these concepts apply to friendship, too.
“Why Friendships Feel so Hard in Midlife—and What to Do About It” I was on The Next ChaptHER Podcast this week talking about midlife friendships, reframing reciprocity (my favorite subtopic of friendship), and lots more. Listen on Apple or Spotify, or anywhere else!
Books, Shows, Recipes I’m Into These Days
Reading: I’m currently in the middle of three books, maybe four. Here’s the 2025 book list so far.
TV: I am not watching anything right now! But I will be watching the new season of White Lotus soon.
Cooking: We’ve been eating the chicken and rice soup from Shabbat by Adeena Sussman over the last few extra chilly days in Minneapolis. Tomorrow I’m trying a ground beef over hummus recipe from What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking by Caroline Chambers. I will report back.
Two anonymous friendship advice questions you might have missed
Let’s connect outside of this newsletter: You can find me most often in the Facebook group, Dear Nina: The Group. All the social media links are below.
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This is great - thank you! We’ve been really enjoying planning a neighborhood book group but keep getting stuck about it. I LOVE the idea of a book group where people get together and just talk about one of their favorite books.