The Current Blaxit Book Club Selection

Friendship has been following me around lately.

It’s permeating my algorithm, coming up in conversations with friends, and making its way into exchanges with folks who are reconsidering who they trust, who they feel safe with, and who they want beside them in this next season of their lives.

Apparently, many of you have been thinking about it too.

When it came time to choose our next Blaxit Book Club read, The Company We Keep won the vote, and it felt like such a natural progression from the conversations we’ve already been having about belonging, survival, migration, the lives we’re trying to build, and the people we want around us while we build them.

Because eventually, all of that brings us back to a pretty fundamental question: Who are your people?

And that question feels especially important at a time when the word community is everywhere.

Brands build “community.” Creators curate “community.” Companies cultivate “community.” And it feels like the term has become shorthand for audiences, customers, followers, networks, proximity, and all kinds of relationships that can mimic the feeling of intimacy and belonging.

These days, though, I’m interested in the real thing…

The people who know us. The people we can trust. The people we can bare our souls to. The people we can call when life gets lifey and know they’ll pull up.

One of the questions I get asked most often about living abroad is some version of: But what about community? And I get it.

You can find housing. Learn another language. Figure out visas. Discover your favorite grocery store and the restaurant where they already know your order...

But at the end of the day, you still need people. Your people. Good people.

Whether you’re already living abroad, dreaming about making the move, or perfectly happy where you are, that part of the equation doesn’t really change. We all need connection. We all need people we can count on.

At almost 40, I can feel my own definition of friendship changing, too. I’m thinking about the relationships that have grown with me, the ones that may need new agreements, and the ones that were chosen by earlier versions of myself and may have simply run their course.

I first read The Company We Keep while several of my own relationships were transforming, and it met me at exactly the right time. Alex Elle’s reflections on friendship, loyalty, people-pleasing, self-silencing, honesty, endings, and becoming a better friend to ourselves helped me form language around things I was already feeling.

Now, I want to ponder some questions with you, like:

• What does community actually require of us?

• Who gets to call themselves our friend?

• How do we know when a relationship needs deeper care, a different agreement, or permission to end?

• What do we owe the people we love, and what do we owe ourselves?

These questions matter wherever you live. And in a moment when so many of the systems and institutions we’ve been taught to rely upon feel increasingly unstable, one thing feels especially clear:

We are going to need each other. Really, we always have.

Which makes this feel like a good time to take a closer look at the relationships we’re building, maintaining, renegotiating, and sometimes releasing, along with the kind of community we actually want to be part of.

That’s what I hope The Company We Keep helps us explore together.

And I have a feeling we’re going to have plenty to yap about with this one.