If you have ever poured years of your life into something and then watched it walk out the door into the world… you probably understand what I mean when I say: I had no idea what came next.

The book is out. Are We Friends Yet? Six years in the making. And within 48 hours, I was curled up on my couch, messaging friends, googling corporate jobs, questioning everything.

My panic wasn't because of the reviews. The reviews were good. One reader wrote that she "felt seen instead of discouraged"… which is everything I wanted.

So why was I paralyzed and hiding from work?

I was on the couch because I am a planner. I spent six years staring at to-do lists for this book. Every day felt like I wasn't doing enough. And then… it was done. Out. Unchangeable. Which is fine… but what now?

Every time someone asked me, "How does it feel to have the book out in the world?" I always responded with this: I was a wedding planner for ten years. If you forgot the place cards, they were no good the day after the event. The event was done. That is how my brain was wired. Hard deadline. One shot. Done.

A book launch is not a wedding.

There is no day-after where it is over. The launch was the beginning of a new phase. I just did not know what that phase looked like yet. I still don't, fully. And that uncertainty is what put me on the couch.

Here is what is wild to me: I talk about this ALL the time in the context of friendship. Small actions add up. You can only keep showing up. I say this constantly. I believe it.

And yet. When it comes to the areas that don't come naturally to me: the book, a new fitness journey - those are the areas in my life where I desperately want the end result NOW. Forget small actions adding up. I want the full, ideal outcome immediately. And when I don't have it, my brain goes a little haywire.

So then I have to remind myself of the areas of life where I am good at taking small actions. I think back to 2021 when five sets of friends, ten of my closest people, moved away in a six-month window. I panicked. (As in… I had actual panic attacks). And then, slowly, I started taking small actions. I kept showing up. And I adjusted to the changes + built myself some new support locally.

That is what this phase of the book is. I just have to keep taking small actions. Some days that looks like a podcast interview. Some days it looks like a DM conversation. And some days it looks like writing a newsletter to a list of people I have not emailed in a while, because that is also a small action that adds up.

So. Hi. I'm back.

And the book is out in the world.

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Are We Friends Yet? is a 272-page, 15-chapter book (plus a bonus chapter you come back to a few months later) built around two frameworks I have spent years developing: the Wheel of Connection and the Roots of Friendship.

It helps you understand where you are now, where you want to go, and how to get there. Not through some big overhaul, but through small shifts that add up over time.

A librarian who read it said it felt "more like having a conversation with a friend who genuinely understands how complicated relationships can be." A reader named Lexi said she was "only sad it wasn't available to her in her 20s", and ended her review with "yall cooked with this one." I mean…..!!!!

You can buy it anywhere books are sold online. You can also request it at your local library. And if you do, that actually helps get it on the shelves, because as a self-published author, I have to get libraries to know it exists first.

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Talk soon,
Alex

P.S. If you want the entire backstory of how this book happened, I recorded a whole episode on it. Where it started, the Big 5 publishing deal I turned down, and what it actually took to get it out into the world. It's here: friendshipirl.com/episode182