Forevers Information

Co-founded by two best friends, editorial leader Erin Greenawald and multi-disciplinary artist Samantha Amberg, Forevers facilitates workshops, retreats, community outreach, and archival efforts in service of this mission. We envision a world where friendships are valued and represented at the same level as romantic and familial relationships. ----- The longest in-depth study of human happiness, The Harvard Study of Adult Development, revealed close friendships as one of the greatest predictors of a long, happy, healthy life. Loneliness is now known to be as bad for our health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, leading the US Surgeon General to declare an epidemic of isolation in 2023. And, according to the American Perspectives Survey, the percentage of adults who report having no close friends has quadrupled to 12% since 1990. Yet, in contemporary culture, there are powerful and rigid assumptions about the primacy of work and family over friendships. With only so many hours in a day, and countless demands on our attention, we have shifted friendships to a low priority. Holidays and weekends are reserved for family, while workdays are a hamster wheel of survival. Friendship slips to the bottom rung, lacking the scripts, rituals, structures, and routines of our other relationships. Forevers exists to support the 78 percent of Americans whose best friends are not related to them by blood or marriage. Our activities aim to shift close friendships back into the center of our lives and directly address detrimental societal norms that prevent people from prioritizing friends. True connection cannot be manufactured or optimized; it can only be achieved through mutual vulnerability and trust, built slowly and deliberately.