The Most Underrated Investment You Can Make
You know what nobody writes about? Not the matching-robes-at-brunch friendship where everyone looks well-rested and the mimosas are bottomless. The other kind. The one where someone looks you dead in the eye at 10pm and says: okay, but are you actually okay, or are you doing the thing where you say fine and then spiral alone for three weeks?
That friendship. Built on truth and bad wine and zero interest in performing. It is the most valuable asset most women own, and almost nobody is tending to it properly.
What Real Looks Like
The conversations I treasure most from twenty years of female friendship are not the pretty ones. They are the ones where someone finally said the thing she had been carrying for months.
The woman who admitted she had fantasized about getting in her car and just driving. Nowhere specific. Just away. For a week. With her phone off. The nods around the table were immediate and total. No one asked where she would go. Everyone completely understood.
The perimenopause conversations, because at some point your body stages what can only be described as a hostile corporate takeover, complete with surprise board meetings at 3am called hot flashes. If you do not have women who will laugh about sweating through silk in January, you will lose your mind.
And the parenting admission nobody says publicly: I love my children more than anything and I am so tired of them. The collective exhale when someone finally says it out loud is the sound of eight women discovering they are not, in fact, terrible people.
Two Circles, One Problem
Your personal circle is the inner ring: women who know your full story and show up anyway. These need maintenance. A standing dinner. The decision to not let six months go by again, followed by the guilt text, followed by another six months.
Your professional circle is the one most women ignore until they desperately need it. Peers who tell you the truth, mentors who have been where you are going. Your reputation is partly built by women speaking up for you in rooms you are not in.
How to Actually Do This
Show up as the real you every time. The polished version gets you acquaintances. The real version gets you the kitchen table at midnight and someone who will talk you out of the email you should not send.
Ask what someone is not talking about enough right now. Most women are starving to be asked something real. Be that person.
The friendship you want already exists. Stop waiting for it to find you and go find it instead.
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