The Impact of Friendship as we enter into 2026

Family has always been important to me. It has shaped the fiber of my being, it has rooted me, it has sustained me. Family drew me closer to my faith, encouraged me, and gave me a launching pad to begin my own family.

In college and early on in our marriage, game nights with friends, group dinners, events with our young adult group at church, and nights of grading papers over mugs of coffee in bookstores were the staple as we started building our friend support system. 

When we began our own family, our focus was inward and friend gatherings were not as frequent because most of them did not have children yet. As a homeschooling family, though, we grew together, learned together, and focused on one another. We kept family traditions, and our friendships looked different. They were peripheral. Important, but peripheral.

We lived through an isolating pandemic. We continued to focus on family and our children. In 2025, though, life felt different. 

We had been through significant health issues with our parents, there were job issues, car issues, our own health issues, and deaths in our circle. Our children were getting older and doing more things on their own with friends. Their concerns were becoming more like the adult concerns and needs we experienced in our dating years.

In the midst of it, though, our family life organically began to change.

You might recall a show from a few years ago where a group of young twenty-somethings, out on their own, became one another’s family, celebrated holidays and accomplishments together, mourned together, and walked through life together.

Despite everyone’s longing for a reboot, in 2019 the creators were credited with saying that could never happen – because the show centered around a very specific time in the characters’ lives where friends were their family. And, once they began to start their own families, that powerhouse dynamic that made the show so popular would never work again. 

Whenever my mind drifted to nostalgia in the midst of the stresses and loneliness of parenting, I remembered that quote, and it resonated with me.

But, this year, the statement hit different. 

As our extended family traditions have waned due to changing family dynamics, the bonds that once grounded us felt … looser.

We started gathering with a friend on random days throughout the spring and summer. It started to become more regular, and then our children’s friends began to join. (Now that they drive and are becoming adults, they just show up – and it is such a joy!) These nights started to evolve into a more regular occurrences and others slowly began to be a part of it. And it felt right. Dinners around a table, different generations sharing a meal, starting in prayer, and sharing our day. Conversations flowed easy, games were played, and lives became intertwined in a palpable way.

In a way, as we all dealt with the stresses of life that were evolving in similar ways … aging family, work, and trying to hold on to a peace within our own lives that seems so difficult in the prime of social media, we have slowly and purposefully been creating a family.

I’ve long had friends who are like family. Those friends will pick up a phone call or text or enjoy an in-person visit as though no time has passed. We will show up in the critical moments without hesitation. We genuinely love one another. We are family.

Slowly but surely, these table-gathering friends, from different walks of life, rapidly became the same. Cherished, true, genuinely deep friendships. 

And there were new friends made this year. One has become a staple in my life … just because our lives intertwined by happenstance and we instantly felt a bond. I couldn’t imagine life without her.

So, when I think about what the creators of that hit sitcom said said, I understand what they meant, but, I think their statement was painted with too broad a brush stroke, and too rashly.

I think it can find its way back.

As the family we once relied on begins to age or our children begin to start their own “friends who become family,” life begins to look different for us. The value of friendships is insurmountable.

These friends will walk through life with us, they will celebrate with us, they will mourn with us, they will encourage us, and they will support us when the family we would have experienced these things with might not be able to. These friendships remind us that, even as we experience family loss, and, in particular, the loss of the family who has loved us despite all of our rough edges, there is hope for us to be loved unconditionally on this earth. These friends see us as God sees us.

And, because of that, we can be less self-conscious, less fearful, and more fully alive as St. Catherine of Siena reminds us, to “be who you were meant to be, and you will light the world on fire.”

Sometimes being vulnerable is scary. But my 2026 advice is, "Don't be afraid to gather at the table -- wherever it may be."