“This friendship
is over .”
When Rachel read those words, she felt uprooted.
Why was her best friend, breaking up with her?
After 12 years. And by text?
Introducing The Best Friend Project—a groundbreaking national study and storytelling initiative exploring how women find, make, and keep the platonic loves of their lives: their friends. Founded by Rachel Joy Swardson, a former private investigator, journalist and healthcare entrepreneur, the project uncovers the patterns and practices that inspire friendships to begin, help them endure, and sometimes cause them to end. Rachel blends compassionate curiosity, instinctive storytelling, and hard-won life experience to turn women’s data into compelling stories of real friendships.
The idea was born from Rachel’s own loss. When her best friend of 12 years ended their bond with a single text, she realized something was missing. Romantic relationships have endless books, songs, poems, and therapy options to guide us through their cycles. But for friendship repair, almost nothing exists. Even worse, society assumes everyone already knows how to “be a friend.” Rachel knew she didn’t—and that she wasn’t alone. Because friendship isn’t about instinct. It’s about intention. Too many studies conclude simply that friendship is “good for us,” yet few ask the real questions: Where did you meet? How did you become friends? How do you handle conflict, change, and endings? Do you have a sister? Did you grow up trusting your mother?
The Best Friend Project asks what others have overlooked—collecting honest, human stories and data to help women become better friends to themselves and each other. It is not funded or influenced by any corporation and carries no agenda beyond truth, empathy, and understanding. The data comes directly from real women sharing their lived experiences in search of meaning, connection, and clarity.
In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, The Best Friend Project brings us back to HI—Human Intelligence, Human Interaction, Human Intuition—an unbiased exploration of how we form, keep, and sometimes outgrow the platonic loves of our lives.
Rachel brings natural humor, warmth, and sharp insight to her work. With The Best Friend Project book and podcast expanding the national conversation, she is quickly becoming a sought-after public speaker. Known for her candor and compassion, Rachel is unafraid to ask the hard questions that lead to accountability and healing—and to make audiences laugh while doing it.
Now an empty nester with three college-age kids, Rachel splits her time with her husband between Minneapolis and Dallas, where she writes, speaks, and continues her lifelong work exploring connection and belonging. Growing up alongside her brother, comedian Nick Swardson, taught her to find humor in chaos and to laugh even when life gets messy. She brings that same spirit to her work—witty, honest, and unafraid to find the funny in what hurts and heals us.
