What Fresh Friendship Is This?
Once again, a more personal post, this time celebrating the women in my life.
When my marriage ended, I found myself standing in an empty social landscape. The friendships I had nurtured for years were "our" friendships, connected to the couple we had once been. Others I had quietly let slip away, complicit in my own isolation, withdrawing from the very women who might have sustained me during a difficult time. I didn't notice the loss then (do we ever in the moment?) but after the divorce, the silence was deafening. And telling, if I’m honest.
For the first time in years, I had to ask myself: who are my people now? The answer came slowly.
Divorce doesn't only change your address or your last name. It rearranges your belonging. I felt unsure where to go or who to trust. Out of that emptiness, something extraordinary began to grow. Over the past two years, I've discovered, or perhaps remembered, the gift of female friendship.
I might not have recognized its power if not for watching my mother. When my father died, she was without her partner of fifty-two years (longer if you count being high school sweethearts). What I witnessed in the aftermath wasn't only her grief, but her community: a circle of women she had known since childhood who stepped in to be present. They brought casseroles and stories. They sat with her, and me at times, in the awful quiet and remembered him with her. They laughed and cried, often within the same breath. Now, they play dominoes and cards, and they eat. They mostly eat.
Watching them, I realized my mother wasn't alone in the way I had been. She had tended her friendships like a garden her whole life, loving people with all her heart, and when the storm came, they sheltered her. I have never had my mother’s green thumb.
My own rediscovery of women has been quieter and more tentative. Part of it has unfolded through travel. In Florence, in Bangalore, in DC, I’ve been struck by the strength and generosity of women I met. Some were colleagues from around the world, others were strangers who became confidantes over shared meals, conversations, and sometimes tears. These women astonished me with their resilience, their humor, and their capacity for care that seemed bottomless. I have felt folded into their warmth, while we compare notes on work, handbags, dreams, heartbreak, and hope, and I’ve been reminded what female connection could be.
Back home, I began nurturing new friendships, with the careful hope of someone starting over. There's a particular vulnerability in meeting new people as an adult. Friends and I floated for hours in the pool this summer, High Noons in hand, learning who we were and who we are. I remember sitting at a favorite restaurant, rosé sparkling between us, telling them some small truth about myself that I hadn't said aloud before. They didn't flinch, offer advice, or judge. We toasted to being out, and alive, and happy.
The friendships that followed have been nothing short of life-giving. Some grew from shared work and travel. There's something about navigating a foreign city together searching for spices and mehendi, finding all the wine windows, debating where to eat dinner, kayaking the Bay of Naples, or surviving flight delays that transforms colleagues into something deeper. The women I've traveled with have become keepers of my stories.
Others bloomed closer to home, in both quiet and loud ways: evening walks, dinners, dancing to King Kobra, unplanned phone calls that carried us past midnight, tarot cards. These are friendships that don't demand performance. They let me be messy, uncertain, and unmoored. In that acceptance, I found myself again.
Female friendship is unlike anything else I've known. Each form of love has its own character. Family bonds often carry the weight of obligation, while romantic love brings its own complexities. The friendship of women, at its best, is chosen and chosen again. It's a love that says, “I see you completely. I delight in who you are, and I will carry part of your burden when you cannot.”
I think often about how women make space for each other. We forgive the silences that come with busy seasons. We know when to push and when to simply sit. We laugh until our mascara runs, then cry until the laughter sneaks back in. We send each other terrible memes and recipes, edit résumés and hold secrets, share wine and honesty in equal measure.
There's a particular intimacy in being truly seen by another woman when you're remaking yourself. After my divorce, I wasn't sure how to inhabit this new version of me. I was learning to be independent again, to own my choices, and to forgive myself. With my women friends, I could practice being that person. I could be brave enough to say, “This is who I am now,” and they didn't just accept it, they celebrated it.
If I could share one thing with my younger self, it would be this: never abandon your women. Don't sideline them for love or ambition. Don't believe that friendship is secondary to romance. The women who walk with you, whether for a season or a lifetime, are the ones who will remind you who you are when everything else falls away.
I am held by voices and laughter, care and solidarity that feel as essential as breath. It didn't happen overnight, and it wasn't always easy, but it is real, and it is mine.
This celebrates my female friendships while never diminishing the extraordinary people in my life who have been equally, and sometimes even more so, supportive and caring.
