How I’m Staying in Touch Right Now
I was an angry pregnant woman. You can blame the hormones if you want, but honestly, there’s just a lot to be angry about in the world, so I think it really just got rid of the filter. But after 9 months of pregnancy and 8 months of having a child, when I did my year in review, I realized enough is enough. I was lonely.
Everything felt – and feels – like it’s in transition right now. And while I’m not searching for “mom friends”, it still feels like a turning point that requires a new plan for staying in touch and building community. There’s not a lot of time, so I need activities that feel easy, accessible, or can be done on incredibly low amounts of sleep. The world is falling apart, so I’m looking for people who can help light me up and approach the world from a perspective of abundance. And I truly miss my blogging days, when I felt like I was building and creating something bigger than myself, so I’m looking for people who turn ideas into action – so I can see how I can help, but also, to be inspired.
One thing the book Belong and Danielle Bayard’s from Friendship Inventory course talked about was putting yourself in spaces where folks like the ones you’re looking for are hanging out – or creating them yourself if they don’t exist. Through my work on a non-profit Board, being back at the office, and by opening my eyes to who was already on the edges of my universe, I feel like I’m heading the right direction. So I wanted to share what’s been working well right now in my building my community of awesome people universe.
Sending mail
Sending mail will always and forever be one of my favorite ways to stay in touch. (I’ve been told many times I should be part of a USPS fan girl program.) It’s cheap (less than $1 to send something to Hawaii – bonkers), it can be done asynchronously (no calendar coordination!), and it can be as intense as you want it to be (a “wish you were here” post card vs a Hamilton-length letter). I send Christmas cards (almost) every year, but on years where I’m feeling extra motivated, I also send Valentine’s Day cards. I’ve even been known to send Halloween cards back in the day.
Now, here’s the thing. People don’t really care when they get mail. This year, I way too ambitiously decided to send 50 Valentine’s Day postcards. I ordered them, they arrived in early February, and I proceeded to write them and send them through mid-March, mailing them three at a time every time I finally sat down to write. The “when” doesn’t matter. Everybody loves getting mail that’s not junk.
I did, someone even get it together to send a few Valentine’s Day packages this year though – some to children (Fun Dip and stickers!) and some to people who got me through the last year (journals and trinkets!). And you know what, I don’t think it would have mattered when those arrived either.
Don’t have the energy to actually package something and get to the post office? Just send it direct. Giftwrapping is overrated.
Google Calendar Birthday Reminders
Is anybody else one of those people that when somebody tells them to do something it makes them want to do it less? (Obliger/Upholder-Rebellion problems.) There were three years that I sent 150 birthday post cards each year. I was tired. Then my mother (👋🏻) continued to text me for major family birthdays. And the more she texted, the less I wanted to text anyone back.
Actually. I have many thoughts on birthdays. For some people, being wished a happy birthday is actually very important to them. (I am not one of those people.) Ask your friends if this is them though. I have at least one that I know I can’t miss. And I put it on the calendar.
Which led me to finally using Google Contacts to get all of the important birthdays in my life to show up on my Google calendar, which in turn sends me notifications. I went through my 50 most-talked-to contacts and added their birthdays into Google Contacts. For some reason, they didn’t show up the first year I did it, but this year they seem to have kicked in, and it’s been great to have a reminder that I put on the calendar myself there to greet me in the morning. That way I can send the message out before my day gets crazy (and the only person I can be annoyed with is myself).
That said – I also have a hot take on this. It feels like there’s some kind of conspiracy that happens in the world where everyone’s in 100 different group chats, but nobody utilizes those chats to wish anyone a happy birthday? That all seems to be done one-on-one. I think we need to start using the group chats for happy birthdays. It helps the people that forget out and feels like more of a celebration.
So, in conclusion, if you want to wish your friend a happy birthday in a casual way that does not involve mailing something, consider using Google Contacts. It’s been working out great.
Google Contacts Labels
Speaking of Google Contacts, I’ve been using another feature recently – labels. In Anna Goldfarb’s book, Modern Friendship, she updates the lingo on the Dunbar’s number conversation and talks about your bathtub friends, your jacuzzi friends, your swimming pool friends, and your bonfire people – highlighting the different levels of intimacy in friendship groups from best friends to acquaintances.
I took these categories and added them as labels to my Google Contacts as “1-Closest”, “2-Close”, and “3-Connected.” Now, while I understand that Dunbar’s theory is that you can only maintain 150 connections in life, I don’t subscribe to it. So my closest has 16 people in it, close has 48, and connected has 104 - and this doesn’t include family or the coworkers I talk to on the regular.
Having these buckets has been incredibly useful and can help you create systems for staying in touch. You may want to connect with the closest folks every week, the close every month, and the connected every quarter. When I’m inviting people to an event, or sending mail, or thinking about who I haven’t spoken to in a while, having these groups makes it easy to go back and make sure I’ve hit everyone that I need to. I’ll be updating this list every December when I do my annual year in review.
Professional Networking List
As I mentioned, this is not my only list of people though. I also have a professional networking list that stays on my work computer. I’m one of the rare humans these days who has been with the same company for 15 years, so very early on I started a networking list of who I met, how I knew them and what level they are. I open this list 5-10 times a week for various things. Sometimes I’m looking for someone for a project, sometimes I’m looking for a confidant, and sometimes I’m looking for someone to connect me to someone else. I’ve used this list to help do everything from plan vacation activities to putting together dinner parties, networking events, and even my wedding guest list. Through the years my co-workers have become such a pillar in my life, staying in touch with them is equally important as staying in touch with my personal connections.
Through the years, I should have done a better job of maintaining a “client” list, but it’s so hard at the beginning of your career because you’re not the one to actually build and own the client relationship, someone else is.
Quarterly Newsletters
Another column in that professional networking spreadsheet is the quarterly newsletter list column (yes/no). I love a quarterly newsletter – it gives me time to critically think about the happenings in my life and allows me to connect with others. These days I lean on my professional quarterly newsletter instead of my personal one as those connections have play a more prominent role in my day-to-day, but it’s probably about time that I send a personal newsletter again considering the last one I sent was in October 2025. (So much for quarterly.)
The big thing about sending a quarterly newsletter is to make sure that you’ve processed things before you share them with people, otherwise you’re just creating space for a bunch of (possibly unwanted) outside opinions. I think that’s why I’ve been holding off lately – because as I said, everything feels like it’s in transition.
Maybe we can blame the stars.
Penny Prints
Something else I do quarterly(-ish) is print photos. Either Snapfish or Shutterfly usually has a deal going on to print photos for a penny. (And if they don’t just wait a week and they will!) I love going through and printing my favorite recent photos and putting them on the side of my refrigerator – they’re fun to look at and it’s a great talking point when people come over to visit. I also print out extras to give to the friends in the photos and then mail a copy of them to the other person. (Yay snail mail!)
Honestly, if you’re just paying a penny for prints, it’s silly not to keep ordering. Order them for all the people! They will be happy that you did. (And then when you go to their house there will probably be a photo of you on their refrigerator.) It’s fun to relive your favorite memories on more mundane days.
It’s also been very fun to see how fast our small human is growing. There are photos on the fridge that feel like they were just yesterday, but now our small human can stand and has some teeth – every photo is just a good reminder of how far we’ve made it so far. (And as someone who is not a baby person, that’s a good reminder for me that even if I don’t see progress every day, it’s there.)
LinkedIn Scrolling
When I’m looking to do something more in-the-here-and-now, my scrolling platform of choice has become LinkedIn. As far as I can tell, it’s currently the least political social media platform and people mostly seem to share good news on there (because who wants to promote themselves negatively to possibly clients and future employers?). So LinkedIn has become my safe place in a time of chaos in the world. There’s always something to celebrate and cheer on. Plus, it’s a great way to stay in closer touch with the acquaintances in your life.
I’d love to make some more time to stay in touch with these contacts, but for now a congratulatory text message feels like a step in the right direction!
Thursday Morning Coffee
This was an initiative that I started after reading Radha’s book Belong. I was looking for a nearby community of like-minded people to see on a consistent basis, and so I built my own. It originally started as Wednesday Morning Coffee group and we have now evolved into Thursday Morning Coffee. (If you want to learn more about how I started the group, you can read about that here.)
It is wild how different it feels to see someone every week (rather than quarterly or even monthly). You can skip the pleasantries, you don’t need to do any catch up, and you can just talk about how you’re feeling right now because the foundation is already there. This has been a constant in my life for the last three years, and I’ve been so grateful for this group. After giving birth on a Friday, I made sure that I showed up at coffee that following Wednesday, because I needed that for me. So grateful to have these folks in my life.
Badass Babes Dinners
Years ago, based on the brilliant Ann Shoket, I hosted a number of badass babes dinners. Then I got sent on a long-term work assignment in Puerto Rico, then a pandemic happened, and then there were only a few years before I was an angry pregnant person. So it’s been a little bit. But this year, as I sat there writing down my goals I realized that one thing I could to in order to inject more enthusiasm into my life is to bring cool people together to share ideas. So it was time to bring back the badass babes dinners. The goal: one per month. So far I’ve only missed April, but I plan to be back on track for May!
It’s a space for folks to gather, be vulnerable, and talk about life’s complications. And doing this in my 30s feels a little different than it did when I was doing it in my 20s and so I’m interested to update that “how to host a badass babes dinner “party post above after I make it through the year.
And here’s the thing. I feel the need to tell you all that even though I talk about building your awesome community and even though I’ve hosted hundreds of events in my life at this point, I still get tense before sending an invitation. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and click send. Because I’m still sitting there thinking – what if no one comes to my party? Or, what if this person thinks I’m weird for extending an invitation? And I’ve got to tell you, that is never, ever the case.
This time around specifically, I’ve been noting how much people have appreciated the invitation. After the first invitation I sent, one person – who I only see once a year at a friend’s birthday party – said, “this holiday season has been one of the hardest of my life; please thank whatever divinity had you add me to this invitation.” After the second party, a woman who I think is incredibly cool shared “I told my kids that my new friend invited me to her house and they said, whoa, that’s a big deal. And she responded to them, I know.” That felt so nice to hear. And after this third dinner, one person texted the next morning to say that she loved the experience so much that she wants to start hosting her own and continued to ask me 20 logistical questions about my experience hosting. The moral of the story here is, send the invitation. Someone has to be the one to send the invitation, it might as well be you.
Related: here is the progression of the five thoughts that every hostess has every time they host a party.
“Say Yes” to the Group Event
And my final favorite way to stay in touch right now is to “say yes” to the group event. When I get tired, it’s so easy for me to not see all of the communities and support systems I’ve already built in place in my life. I hosted a virtual leadership event in January and told people I was looking for cool friends, and was immediately told – uh, Chrystina, we think you probably know the people you’re looking for and just need to reach out to them.
Touche.
So true. If you’re already hanging out in certain spaces, look around and see what frameworks are already in place to help you better connect with others. For me recently, I finally said yes to going to weekly young adult church choir breakfasts. Two thoughts on this -
1) The definition of “young adult” really feels questionable these days. From what I can tell, it’s ages 25 – 45. This title is going to have to change eventually, but until then, I’ve accepted that this universe thinks I’m a young adult.
2) Going to any kind of religious event can feel like a lot. Especially if you’re someone who does religion, but also kinds of picks-and-chooses which parts of the religion to opt-into and possibly swears too much; walking into a room where you’re not sure exactly how far people have opted into things can be daunting.
BUT, I’ve been pleasantly surprised. While I tend to spend a lot of time focusing on the things I don’t believe when it comes to religion, when you’re standing in a room of people who have a foundation of “treat others how you want to be treated” and “be kind to people,” it at least can’t start badly. So go ahead and dip your toe in, you may like what you find.
This has also worked well for work events, networking lists I was already on, and saying yes to in-person invitations. (There’s probably another blog post that needs to be written about setting boundaries, but for now, let’s just talk about saying yes.)
--
That’s it. The 10 ways I’ve been staying in touch these days. As a 30-something year old adult with a small human at home. As someone who’s really craving community in a time of transition, who’s looking to grow into this next phase of life.
How are you finding community these days? How do you make it work logistically? I’d love to hear more.
