When Your Best Friend Becomes an ‘Aunt’ to Your Kids
Each installment of “The Friendship Files” features a conversation between The Atlantic’s Julie Beck and two or more friends, exploring the history and significance of their relationship.
This week she talks with Judie, an introvert, and Kristi, an extrovert, about their opposites-attract friendship, and how Judie leaned on it when her daughter was diagnosed with cancer during the pandemic. They discuss their years as roommates, how “Auntie Kristi” is an important part of Judie’s daughters’ lives, and how Kristi showed up for Judie and her daughters when they desperately needed support in a time of social distance.
The Friends:
Kristi Dusek, 45, a project manager at a research nonprofit, who lives in Baltimore
Judie Hyun, 45, the chief of the division of infectious-disease surveillance for the Maryland Department of Health, who lives in Baltimore
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Julie Beck: Tell me how you met and became friends.
Kristi Dusek: Judie had just moved to Baltimore to start grad school, and she was looking for a church.
Judie Hyun: That was 1998.
She heard through a friend of a friend about our church and visited. We were pretty small then, and we would have lunch together after the We just hung out and chatted.
