We don't like her - NAMITA MAHINDRU

Welcome back to another issue. This week is a love letter.

✦ LIFE — The girl who chose me

I met Brittany through my friend Lisete, and I am so grateful — because Brittany has always been like my own personal hype person. I have never felt a drop of negativity from her, not once, not about anything going on in my life. Not a flicker of judgment either. Just her, fully in my corner, from the very beginning.

She is truly a girls’ girl. And I want to sit with that for a second, because I had never had that before. A certain kind of loyalty — the kind where if I don’t like someone, she doesn’t like that someone either. No explanation needed. No reason required. We just don’t like this person anymore. Done.

She is beautiful inside and out. She is so wonderfully, unapologetically goofy — and on Halloween, genuinely one of the most interesting dressers I have ever encountered. I love her for it. I cannot believe it has been almost five years since Lisete introduced us, and nearly four since we started getting close. It still feels new and it feels like forever at the same time.

Some of our best moments make absolutely no sense on paper. She was managing an event and somehow — I still don’t fully remember how, we were quite drunk — I ended up behind the bar with her, making drinks for strangers with zero awareness of how much alcohol we were actually serving. People loved it. She and her husband Ben spent Christmas dinner with me when I was living alone in Georgia, and it felt exactly like it was supposed to. We have danced to Taylor Swift’s Love Story being played by a live rock band.

When I was moving away and completely overwhelmed by packing, she came in like a storm — throw this, why are you keeping that, I’m taking this — while I stood there wanting to pack every single pin and paperclip I owned. I was being such a baby. She did not care. She got it done.

She also once brought chocolate hummus to a girls’ night, and that girl really hooked me up — I am fairly certain I finished almost the entire thing by myself. That is how she learned about my love for dark chocolate. And for my going away, she made me a chocolate lava cake. She always remembered. She always showed up.

But there is one moment I keep coming back to. One that I don’t think she fully knows the weight of.

I was at an all-time low. My injury had taken a toll on more than just my body — I didn’t feel good in my skin, I wasn’t going out much, I was stressed about work, and I was carrying something heavy and close. A common friend had been unkind to me during a time I was already going through so much — toxic, manipulative, hurtful — and I had made the decision to step away for my own mental health. I shared this with Brittany over dinner.

I am not someone who opens up easily. I am usually the one who is supposed to be there for everyone else, and being vulnerable — letting someone actually be there for me — has always been the harder thing. But I chose to share this with her.

When she saw me walk in that evening, before I had said a single word, she looked at me and said — oh my god, your hair looks amazing. She lit me up like a match. Then, when I struggled to find the words at dinner, she just sat there. In silence. Waiting. Not pushing, not filling the space — just sitting with me until I was ready to speak.

And when I finally did, she didn’t ask for the other side of the story. She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t even blink. She just looked at me and said: “We don’t like her.”
Possessive. Loving. Certain. All at once.

I hadn’t even expected it. I would have understood completely if she had still wanted to be friends with this person — I truly would have, because I know what our friendship holds, and I believe people show up at different depths with different people. It would have been okay. But she chose me. Without asking. Without needing a reason. She just chose our friendship, blindly and immediately, and something in me exhaled that I didn’t even know had been holding its breath.

That dinner. That conversation. It made me feel like I wasn’t alone in being so loyal to my people. It took a weight off me. And it cracked me open in the best way — I started being more vulnerable with her after that, more myself, because she had shown me what it felt like when someone simply picks you.

I didn’t have to ask for it. I didn’t have to earn it. She just showed me — with her actions, the way she always does.

Happy birthday, Brittany. You taught me that real loyalty doesn’t need to be earned first.

✦ GROWTH — No invoice

I have always been a loyal friend. I show up, I stay, I hold things for people. I have also spent years on the receiving end of what happens when that loyalty gets taken for granted — when you give and give and the giving goes unnoticed, or worse, gets used against you.

So somewhere along the way, quietly, without realizing it, I started to believe that loyalty was something you had to earn. That belonging in someone’s corner required proof. That being chosen — really chosen, without strings — was something other people got to have.

Brittany corrected that for me. Not with a speech. With four words over dinner.

Real loyalty doesn’t come with terms and conditions. It doesn’t ask you to justify yourself or make a case or show up perfectly. It just arrives. And if you haven’t experienced that yet — I want you to know it exists. And you deserve it without having to try so hard.

✦ ACTION — Let someone in

This week, let one person in. Share something real — something you have been holding close, something you haven’t quite said out loud yet. Not because you need them to fix anything. Just to see what happens when you stop being the one who carries everything.

You never know who might surprise you in exactly the way you have always wanted to feel heard. And even if they don’t show up the way you hoped — you will have been brave enough to be vulnerable. That counts for something all on its own.

Hit reply and tell me — is there someone in your life who has ever chosen you the way Brittany chose me? I would love to hear about them.

✦ POSTCARDS — Kathleen, Georgia

Where we lived. Where we laughed. Where she showed up with chocolate hummus. Some places stay with you because of what happened in them — Kathleen is one of mine.