Dear friend,
A great deal has happened over the past few years. First, my adult life began. This month, on September 15th, I picked up the keys to my first office. My opening party was today.
I should mention, I’ve had a career change. For less than the last two years, I’ve built a jewelry business called Simon & Gloria. In the spring, I spent time on 47th Street in New York at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA). It’s there, in the stores that fill the Diamond District, where I observed the socially healthiest people.
Self-proclaimed as uneducated, men primarily, who from Monday to Friday sit close to one another in their booths selling watches, or trading diamonds, or doing something that could bring home money. Their conversations follow similar patterns.
“You bother me more than my wife.”
“Why can’t you do anything right?”
“You know, you’re my friend, I love you.”
I bought a watch, the largest luxury purchase I’ve ever made for myself, from a father-and-son business at the start of the street. “Miriam, are you married?” the father asks me with a smile.
“We’ll pay you more for her,” he tells my dad, who is with me. His son looks away.
“Are you going to stand here and think about work your entire life, think about yourself, Arthur?”
Mostly, I admire them, all of them. I glance through the store window at the corner of 47th and 6th Avenue to catch glimpses of the father-son duo anytime I pass by.
I made new friends at the GIA. The classroom setting tends to lend itself well to that. My friend Michelle from Miami moved back to her hometown and photographed me one day in the West Village—I use the photos to promote my business.
You must understand, friend, when I began writing this blog, I was much different from who I am now. I wrote from my kitchen table in Miami and then from my bedroom in Toronto as if it were my life’s calling to understand loneliness. I wrote, trying to understand how to make love.
Friend after friend, I’d ask questions to satisfy my own cravings for thoughts that preceded my life’s experiences. What made up love? Does love in its many forms teach us how to love romantically? Why are we setting boundaries instead of trying to be more compassionate with our friends?
In December 2022, I shared an indulgent post on LinkedIn about my mental health and 52 Friends. Luigi, my former university classmate, whom I barely spoke to, reached out ot me and became friend #10.
December 19, 2022… How it started…
We met for coffee the first week of January 2023. A Starbucks at an equally convenient location, where we shared secrets, and he admitted that I knew more than 99 percent of the people in his life.
Between then and now, the new chapters of our lives began. We became friends. Luigi met his lover, Sophia. I built a business and created their engagement ring.
He proposed on a trip to Newfoundland last week. I find it funny that through this project and life’s own whimsy, I became part of such a momentous occasion in his life.
September 9, 2025… How it’s going…
My mom asked me the other week, as we set up my office, what my takeaway from 52 Friends was.
I replied by explaining that there is no shortcut to the time and care needed to cultivate genuine friendships, but that to find close friends, we may need to meet many people—especially in adult life.
Candidly, I find that the friends I’m closest to are not even the ones that I have been the most compatible with throughout my lifetime, but those who value my friendship as much as I value theirs—or rather those who prioritize friendship as much as I do. This fact itself creates compatibility over time.
52 Friends also shaped me into the woman I wanted to be. Before the project, I felt like I walked at the outer edge of a circle, scared to fully be myself. As I met people, I gained insight into new perspectives, and people became less scary.
I used what I had learned about relationships to build a community in my personal life, but also to build my business, as it is at the core of everything we do. Community is the basis of growth.
You may have noticed that, following the conclusion of making 52 friends, I went back and forth about what to do with this blog. I knew I wanted to keep writing. A book was on the table.
It felt premature to keep going because I needed time to build my life. To figure out my career. To grow up a bit. I’m still friends with or remain in contact with many of my original 52 friends. This year, as I repeat the project, I’m excited to catch up with some of them, to make new friends, and to reach out to lost connections.
I’m sure my work will feel different in a good way. As a writer, I know that I document the human condition, but as a human, I’ve learned that there is no how to make love.
In 2018, as an exchange student at the University of Strasbourg in France, I enrolled in a course called Luxury Brand Marketing taught by a man named Claude. “If you remember one thing from this course, please let it be to watch the movie In the Mood for Love,” he said.
I obliged his request years later. The film, a co-production between Hong Kong and France, tells the story of two people whose spouses are having an affair with each other. Even though they are falling in love, the two can’t allow themselves to reach the same level of betrayal.
They never do more than brush hands. It’s considered one of the greatest romance films ever made.
Months ago, in the kitchen, I had an argument with my parents. “You analyze everything and take everything in life so seriously,” I said.
“But we’re happy,” my mom replied. “Maybe we do, but we’re happy and we have a good relationship.”
In September 2023, when I published my 51st and 52nd friends, my parents. I began at the top with a line that has come to mean more and more to me, “To my friends, you are the loves that have made all love possible.”
It is because of the love of my parents, my brother, my extended family, and, of course, my friends that I’m able to understand love.
To another year of exploring it.
Love,
Miriam
“There are days, months, endless years in which nothing happens. There are minutes and seconds that contain the entire world.”
―Jean d’Oremsson