We've grown disconnected. Many of us live amidst strangers as we tally up Facebook friends - the new collectible you don't have to dust and settle for "soon"! It's often easier for an adult woman to find an online date than a real-life friend in her own neighborhood.

The Friendship Upgrade illuminates the growing issue of personal isolation and equips women to exchange clickable connection for real time, face-to-face friendships. Through the deeply personal stories of real women, it examines our varied routes to isolation - divorce, an emptied nest, increased mobility - as well as the impact of technology, over-efficient living, and the patterned choices that can root us in chronic loneliness. More importantly, this book provides both a road map to create anchoring connections and a model for building community with the disconnected "you go first" women around us who are silently hoping for the same outstretched hand. Women need friendship - not in an unhealthy, life-preserver sort of way but in the organically good capacity of illuminating growth lights.

In the right light, solid female friendships counterbalance the uneven weight of major life transitions and help us be our best selves, and often, better people than we dreamed we might be.