Shortlist announced for the IMAGE PwC Businesswoman of the Year Awards 2025
Shortlist announced for the IMAGE PwC Businesswoman of the Year Awards 2025

Leonie Corcoran

WIN a Life Design workshop package with DEFRÉIN
WIN a Life Design workshop package with DEFRÉIN

IMAGE

The events, groups and spaces that will help you find your tribe
The events, groups and spaces that will help you find your tribe

IMAGE

My Life in Culture: Irish director John Kelly
My Life in Culture: Irish director John Kelly

Sarah Finnan

The trouser trends coming to your wardrobe this spring
The trouser trends coming to your wardrobe this spring

Sinead Keenan

Madigan Cashmere: ‘We’d like to be remembered as the maker of garments that bore witness to lives well-lived’
Madigan Cashmere: ‘We’d like to be remembered as the maker of garments that bore witness...

Sarah Finnan

The best office bags, according to the IMAGE staffers
The best office bags, according to the IMAGE staffers

Sarah Gill

BIIRD: ‘Trad music has stood the test of time, it’s bigger than all of us and it never will die’
BIIRD: ‘Trad music has stood the test of time, it’s bigger than all of us...

Sarah Gill

The IMAGE Mother’s Day Gift Guide
The IMAGE Mother’s Day Gift Guide

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Søstrene Grene’s Easter collection is making us excited for spring
Søstrene Grene’s Easter collection is making us excited for spring

Megan Burns

Image / Relationships
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RELATIONSHIPS

The joy of besties showing up when you need them most


by Amanda Cassidy
16th Apr 2023

Friendships are unique relationships. Unlike family relationships, we choose to enter into them. And unlike other voluntary bonds, such as marriages and romantic relationships, they lack a formal structure. Yet research shows how important friendships are to our well-being. Amanda Cassidy hears five stories about how these essential buddy bonds saved us.

C.S. Lewis famously wrote in The Four Loves; “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” And for many, we can relate. Friendships are the bedrock of our earliest social interactions. Clap handies groups, soft play centres are about movement but they are also the first foundations for communication and relationship development. These early socialisations with peers – even...

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