Rachel Krohn

Rachel Krohn is Poppy Wright’s first friend in New York City, a stylish social-media influencer whose practical attentiveness gives Poppy room to admit that the life she worked toward has not made her happy. Rachel’s importance lies less in solving that crisis than in helping Poppy recognize what it asks of her: first, to look back toward the last time she felt truly happy, and later, not to run from the uncomfortable work of understanding herself.

Identity and Public Life

Rachel is a style blogger, French bulldog enthusiast, Upper West Side native, and, in Poppy’s affectionate description, a “professional-grade best friend.” Her online presence is also her work: brands pay her to wear particular makeup in photographs taken at a beautiful marbled vanity. She arrived at the influencer career through a combination of being photogenic, having a photogenic life, and owning two photogenic dogs who frequently need medical attention.

Her routine reveals the labor behind that polished image. Rachel takes photographs for an entire week on Tuesdays, changing her outfits and hair between stops at parks and restaurants. The rest of the week goes to writing essays and running social media for dog rescues. She hand-washes her dishes despite having top-of-the-line appliances, finding the task soothing, and does so in four-inch heels. The details make her style more than a public pose: her carefully managed presentation coexists with private habits that are particular, physical, and deliberately her own.

Friendship with Poppy

Rachel and Poppy meet as fellow internet workers following different routes toward a similar destination. Poppy set out to build a following as a long-term means of making travel her full-time career; Rachel entered the work through her image and photogenic life. Their jobs make an unusual point of common ground: neither has to feel embarrassed about asking the other to wait while they stage photographs of their sandwiches. Though Rachel lives on the Upper West Side and Poppy on the Lower East Side, both are, in Poppy’s phrase, living advertisements.

Rachel is the first friend Poppy makes after moving to New York City. By their third hangout, at a wine bar in Dumbo, Rachel has explained her weekly photography routine and the less visible work that fills the rest of her week. The friendship is therefore not founded on identical lives so much as on mutual recognition: each understands the demands and small absurdities of turning a personal image into work. At their café meeting, Rachel’s platform even secures their rosé for free, a light, concrete instance of the professional world they share.

Rachel is also a friend who can offer a direct assessment without withdrawing affection. When Poppy reflects on having done everything right to reach her dream job, Rachel points out that Poppy dropped out of college. The correction is teasing rather than dismissive; it interrupts Poppy’s sweeping account without denying the larger disappointment underneath it.

Helping Poppy Name Her Unhappiness

Poppy’s admission comes against a life that appears to match what she once wanted: she works at a leading travel magazine, has a nice apartment, and can take cabs without worrying too much about the expense. Yet she tells Rachel that she is not happy. The travel experiences themselves still look as they should—parties, international-airport layovers, cocktails on a jet, beaches, boats, and vineyards—but no longer feel as she imagined. Poppy remembers once anticipating trips for weeks and reaching the airport with a sense of possibility; she cannot tell what has changed, except that perhaps she has.

Rachel’s response gives the conversation its direction. She tells Poppy about advice she has heard: happiness, when lost, may be sought as one would look for anything else. When Poppy jokes about tossing couch cushions, Rachel makes the idea more precise: “By retracing your steps.” She asks Poppy to consider when she was last truly happy. The question does not produce a long search: Poppy knows the answer immediately. Rachel does not supply that answer for her; she offers a way of looking that lets Poppy arrive at it herself.

Their friendship continues to make space for such check-ins in ordinary settings. At a spin class, Rachel asks whether Poppy has thought about what makes her happy while they pedal side by side at the back of the room, where they can talk without being scolded for distracting the other cyclists. Poppy is struggling over the handlebars, forcing her feet down, while Rachel pedals faster at the instructor’s command and appears to breathe easily. The difference in their exertion gives the exchange a casual, familiar rhythm: Rachel raises a serious question inside an ongoing friendship, not in a formal intervention.

Encouraging Help and Continued Change

Later, Poppy finds a business card for Dr. Sandra Krohn, a psychologist, and texts Rachel, “Is Dr. Mom accepting new patients?” Rachel replies, “Is the current Pope wildly transgressive?” Their joking exchange makes the introduction feel personal rather than clinical, while still leading Poppy toward a concrete source of support. Poppy goes to her first session seeking help to work out what comes next; the psychologist recommends beginning with the past instead.

Poppy says there is not much to tell, then speaks for fifty-six minutes about her parents, school, and her first trip home with Guillermo. She has shared this material only with the psychologist and Alex Nilsen. Rachel urges her to continue for at least a couple of months and warns, “Don’t run from this,” adding that avoidance will not help. Poppy accepts that she has to move through the discomfort rather than away from it, continuing in therapy, at R+R, and in her mostly empty apartment. Rachel’s role is not to resolve the crisis on Poppy’s behalf, but to press for the sustained attention that Poppy’s earlier habit of moving on might evade.

Narrative Role

Rachel links Poppy’s professional life to the private question underneath it. She understands the machinery of online self-presentation because she works within it, yet her friendship gives Poppy a space where apparent success can be distinguished from felt happiness. Her influence is practical and relational: a sharp correction, a question asked during exercise, a connection to a psychologist, and an insistence on staying with the difficult process. Across these moments, Rachel helps Poppy turn an inchoate sense of dissatisfaction into a willingness to retrace, speak, and remain.