Summer of Friendship

By Maria Shriver
June 06, 2026

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I was overwhelmed this week.

Not by the elections taking place across the country. Not by the unraveling of one of the most legendary news programs in American history. Not even by the back-to-back earthquakes here in my home state.

What overwhelmed me was you.

You responded to last week’s column in droves. You responded with kindness, honesty, and a vulnerability that took my breath away. You wrote about your own loneliness and life upheavals, and the friendships that have carried you through them. You reached out to others who shared their pain, their hopes, and their discoveries. You reminisced. You offered practical suggestions. You stood up, asked to be counted, and offered to be of service to others.

You asked how to include single friends at couples' dinners. How to make real friends when work takes everything. How to start over when old friends have moved away, passed away, or drifted away. Whether it’s okay to rely on the friendship of your adult children. Whether you can really be friends with someone of the opposite sex.

I was deeply moved. More than I expected to be. And in response, we here at The Sunday Paper are going to step into something big this summer. We are calling it the Summer of Friendship.

Because everyone I spoke to this week—of every age and from every walk of life—seemed to be reaching for the same thing. A longing for community. A longing for friends. A longing to know that we’re not alone. That we matter. That everything will be okay.

We hear you. And we are going to show up for it together.

As I was thinking about all of this, my brother Bobby told me a story that I haven't been able to shake. We have recently started having regular Monday night dinners, and so far it’s been one of the best decisions I've made. It’s become one of the things I count on most.

This week, Bobby had just returned from his college reunion. He told me about wandering the streets of his college town, thinking about the eighteen-year-old version of himself. How little that version knew about life. About what it would actually take to get from there to here. He talked about seeing people he hadn’t seen in decades and the flood of memories that came rushing back. He said he felt sad and happy at the same time. He wondered whether he still had anything in common with the people he’d spent such a formative stretch of his life with.

I have been thinking about that conversation ever since. Because here’s the thing about reunions—and I mean that word in the broadest sense, not just the kind with name tags and a cash bar—every time we reach back toward who we were, we learn something about who we still are.

Every time we sit across from someone who knew us before life shaped us into our current selves, something loosens. Something remembers.

Bobby’s story sent me back to my own eighteen-year-old self. I’ve been thinking about that girl a lot lately. She had big green eyes, wild, unruly hair, and so much pep in her step. She thought everyone and everything was wonderful. She was optimistic, aspirational, driven, wild, and free. She laughed a real, deep belly laugh every single day. She lived in community. She loved her work. She loved her friends. She was up for anything. She had no idea what was coming. But she showed up for her life with her whole heart wide open.

I don’t need to be that exact girl again. Life has given me things she didn’t have: depth, resilience, hard-won grace, and children and grandchildren I am absolutely crazy about. I wouldn’t trade any of it.

But I do want to tap back into something she knew instinctively. The belly laugh. The belief that the person in front of you is interesting and worth knowing. The willingness to show up without knowing exactly how things will go. The wild and free part. That part especially.

This summer, I want to call her back. Not to recapture the past, but to bring something forward. I want to reclaim something inside myself that I have let grow quiet.

Now, I know how hard this might seem. It’s a tall order to reclaim parts of yourself from the past when the world today is so heavy. You might also have family situations or heartbreak that present as obstacles standing in your way.

As we get older, we start to harden. We start to believe that our days of being wild and free are over. You may fear it sounds silly or inconsequential at a time when we’re facing so many big issues—rising gas prices, the destruction of the Voting Rights Act, the climate crisis, our shaky media landscape. (If you do anything today, please take a moment to read longtime CBS newsman Dan Rather’s essay about what has unfolded over at 60 Minutes. He reminds that while good journalists are losing their jobs, our entire country is losing something as well.)

Look, it’s exactly because we face all of this right now that connection is more important than ever. That’s why we are deeming this the Summer of Friendship. We want to encourage ourselves to stop living in fear and push ourselves closer to one another.

This past week gave me glimpses of just how joyful and important that can be. I took my granddaughter to school and felt crystal clear about what matters. On the way in, she instructed me firmly not to cheer for her on the playground or stop to talk to the teachers the way I normally do. I obeyed. And I loved her more for it.

I also joined a game night with people three-quarters my age and felt included. Felt joy. Felt genuine hope.

In a few weeks, I'll travel to Minneapolis for the Special Olympics USA Games. And when I look ahead to that trip this week, I feel something rise in me. It's a feeling that the world is full of people simply trying to find one another. People who need to be seen. People who need to know they matter.

That is what we are all looking for, isn’t it? Every single one of us. We want to matter. We want to belong somewhere. We want to believe there is a place in this world that is ours.

Look, I know deep connection can feel hard, but it doesn’t have to be. So if you’re wondering where to begin, read community builder Radha Agrawal’s piece where she offers easy tips for creating community.

Here is my other invitation to you this week. Think about who you were at eighteen. Or twenty. Not with nostalgia, but with curiosity. What did that person know that you have forgotten? What did they do easily that you now talk yourself out of? What made them laugh? What made them reach out without overthinking it? Is there something in that person you’d like to reignite, no matter how old you are today?

Whether you’re heading to a high school reunion, a college reunion, a wedding, a game night, or simply a dinner with your family, bring a little of that person with you.

Let them remind you that connection was never as complicated as we’ve made it. That friendship was once as natural as showing up. That belonging often begins with a willingness to say yes.

This is the Summer of Friendship.

And maybe it starts with remembering who you were before life convinced you to become so careful.

That girl with the green eyes and the belly laugh? She’s still in there. I’m going to let her out.

P.S. Tell us what you’re doing this summer to invest in friendship. We want to hear your plans, your ideas, and your stories. We are building this Summer of Friendship together, and we need you in it.