The Friends at 13
What Middle School Friendship Feels Like with Emma Meade and Sierra Bascio | 🎙️ Episode 11
There is just something about middle school girls that brings all the feels.
The emotions, the giggles, the hormones, the fierceness with which we clung to one another and the heartbreaking ways we hurt.
Something small can transport me back to 8th grade, the hardest year of my young life, when the new girl - quickly making her move toward idol status, with my friends in awe of the pretty new human in the hall - found it insufferable to stand next to me in cheerleading formation and not a single soul would talk to me for three days.
Being 13 is a unique and formative time of life, and nothing shapes it like our friends.
So it was with great joy that I sat down with two 13-year-old friends: one, my daughter and favorite human, the other, the best friend she found and we got to keep.
They came with note cards. Prepared and eloquent in a way that moved me.
These were not the girls I knew from middle school, and so much about our conversation gave me hope.
One of the quiet, constant worries of being a parent is whether your child will find their people. Not just friends, but real ones, the kind who show up, who call, who notice when something’s off. You watch them go off to school every day and you hope. You hope they are seen. You hope they are not alone. You hope someone chooses them the way you would choose them, if you were thirteen and standing in a recess line and you had to decide.
I know what it felt like when nobody did.
So witnessing Emma and Sierra unpack their friendship was a joy.
They talked about what their 8th grade is actually like. The friend group they’ve carefully built. The way not having social media has made them closer to the people right in front of them. The fact that they’ve never gone a whole class period being mad at each other - they always figure it out before the bell. The late-night phone calls that start with solving math problems and go on for hours about nothing and everything.
Their experience is so different from mine that it made me want to cry, in the best possible way. (I mostly held it together because my crying makes Emma uncomfortable.)
There is a particular kind of relief that comes from watching your child be loved well by her friends.
Not performative friendship but the real thing, where someone calls you their rock and means it, where you’d rather lose a boy than lose each other, where you show up with note cards because you take the conversation seriously. Watching Emma and Sierra together gives me a feeling I don’t have a perfect word for. Pride is part of it. Gratitude is part of it. Something like hope is the rest.
If this is the state of some teenage girls and their friendships right now, then I have more hope for this generation than I sometimes let myself feel.
There was also, for the record, a lot of laughter.
We also talk about Riverdale and the Mothman coincidence that had them both losing their minds in class. What they really think about their moms being friends. What they’d say to any kid still looking for their people. And what they each want the other to know, said out loud, on mic, at the end. I will not spoil that part.
This one is for anyone with a 13-year-old in their life. For every parent who has ever sent their kid off to school and quietly hoped someone would choose them. And for anyone who remembers their first real teenage friend - the one you’d call at nine at night just to talk.
Meet my Friends, Emma & Sierra 💛:
“You’re influenced by the people around you, and it matters who you surround yourself with. I’m so grateful I surrounded myself with you.” — Emma, to Sierra
For Kids Still Finding Their People:
Emma & Sierra’s Friend Picks:
The Keeper of the Lost Cities series, Duolingo streaks, thrifting, and late-night phone calls.
Also, Riverdale on Netflix. (Emma’s mom recommends the old school Archie and Betty comics, which she still has stacks of in her parent’s cottage basement.)
Join the campfire:
Do you remember your 8th grade friendships? Was there someone who showed up for you the way Sierra shows up for Emma?
Tell me in the comments. Or just go text them right now.
Leave a comment below, or come find us on Instagram @theyeahnoforsureshow.
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✱ They approved all the photos before we started. Sierra had notes on the lighting for two of them. She has a future in photography. Emma has a future in public speaking and making everyone around her feel like the most important person in the room. I grew one of them in my body and I am still not over it.