On the “Ya, Maybe” — Mid-Month Check-In | Read Together August 2026

Read Together · August 2026 · Mid-Month Check-In

On the "Ya, Maybe"

A mid-month pause to reflect on what's stayed with us — and open the conversation.

We're halfway through August and a phrase keeps popping up for me — three different people said to me this month — unprompted, independently, in three separate conversations.

"Maybe one day we'll make it out to Belgium to visit you."

I've lived in Belgium for over five years now. I've heard some version of this sentence more times than I can count. And every time, I say some version of the same thing back: "ya, maybe."

Not sarcastically. Not with resignation. But with a kind of quiet permission — the offer of an open door that doesn't demand to be walked through.

The through line thread: Connection doesn't require perfection. It requires presence.

What I'm reading

This month I've been sitting with Platonic by Marisa Franco — a psychologist and friendship researcher who has spent her career studying why adult friendship is so hard to make and keep, and what to do about it.

Her central argument is one I keep returning to: that adult connection doesn't happen by accident. It requires intention. It requires someone willing to reach first, to make the plan, to show up even when showing up is inconvenient.

This month I got on a plane to Oregon with my daughter to visit three of my closest girlfriends. I didn't wait for "maybe one day." I made it a Monday.

And sitting in their homes, watching their “babies”, eating their food, being inside their ordinary lives for a few days — I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time. Not just the joy of being together. But the specific, irreplaceable feeling of being known by people who have known you long enough to know the difference.

On the maybe

When each of my friends said "maybe one day we'll make it out to Belgium" — I knew exactly what that phrase was holding.

It wasn't an empty promise. It was love wrapped around logistics. It was the longing to be where I am bumping up against the reality of passports and flights and children and work and money and the hundred other things that make "I want to" different from "I will."

I've lived far from most of my people for over five years. And in that time I've learned something about the maybe: it's not a rejection. It's not a measure of how much someone loves you. It's just an honest reckoning with how complicated life actually is.

And here's the thing — I'm not a saint in this either. There are friends I forget to reach out to when I'm planning a trip somewhere. Friends I've thought about calling and didn't. Friends I've let drift not because I love them less but because there simply isn't always enough time for everyone, and sometimes priorities have to lie where they lie.

Platonic would say that's the most honest thing you can admit about adult friendship. That we are all, at various points, the friend who didn't reach out. The friend who said maybe. The friend who meant to and didn't.

And maybe — if we're lucky — we're also the friend who eventually gets on the plane anyway.

What The Invisible String taught me about all of this

There's a line from The Invisible String that keeps resonating — the idea that love travels the string even when we can't.

I think about that when I'm in Belgium and my friends are in Oregon and California and wherever else life has brought them. The string is there. It doesn't break when months pass without a proper conversation. It doesn't snap under the weight of a missed visit or an unreturned message or a "maybe one day" that never became a Monday.

It just stretches.

And sometimes the most loving thing you can do is hold your end of it loosely enough that the other person doesn't feel strangled by the distance between you. To say "ya, maybe" and mean it — genuinely, warmly, without guilt or grief — is its own kind of grace.

As long as we keep reaching. As long as we keep trying. As long as we value the time we have with each other when we have it — that's enough. That's more than enough. That's the whole practice.

Let's Discuss

This is the part I look forward to most. You don't have to have finished your book. You don't have to have the perfectly formed thought. Just bring what's stayed with you.

Here are some additional prompts for this month. Take what resonates, leave what doesn't.

Discussion prompts

One question for each reader in your life — or all four for yourself.

For your little one

When you miss someone who is far away, what does it feel like? If you had an invisible string connecting you to the people you love most, where would all your strings go?

For your teenager

Is there someone in your life you've let drift — not because you stopped caring, but because life just got in the way? What would it take to reach back?

For you

Think about the friendships in your life that have survived distance, time, or long silences. What kept them alive? And is there someone you've been meaning to reach out to — someone whose string you've been holding without pulling?

For the fiction reader

Elena and Lila's friendship survives decades of distance, silence, and complication. What's the friendship in your life that has surprised you most by surviving — and what do you think held it together?

A note on where to buy

Every book mentioned here links to Bookshop.org — buying through these links supports independent bookstores in your community, not a warehouse. Same books, same price, a better place for your money to land.

There's no right place to begin. Just the place you're drawn to today.

A gentle reminder

You don't have to have finished the book to have something worth saying. You don't have to have the most insightful answer or the perfectly formed thought.

Come as you are. Share what stayed with you. Reflect in your own way.

That's enough.

Start where you are.

Read what you can.

Reflect in your own way.

I'd love to hear where you are with your reading this month — which book you reached for, what's landed, what's still sitting with you. Leave a comment below and let's keep the conversation going. This is what Read Together is for.

Here's to growing together this month.

A deep breath in a beautiful life.

— Britt