The quiet loneliness of becoming a woman with no village.
There are moments in life when you don't need advice. You don't need someone to solve anything, send you a motivational quote, tell you to pray about it, or remind you to look on the bright side. You just need somebody you can call and say, “Girl, I need to talk.”
I've been thinking about that lately.
Who do we call?
I don't mean the person we would call if the car broke down or we needed someone to pick up the kids. I'm talking about the person we call when something happens that shakes us a little. The person who can hear something in our voice before we've even explained what happened. The woman who knows enough of our history that we don't have to start the story from 1997 just so she'll understand why what happened today matters.
As women, many of us spend our lives surrounded by people. We have husbands or partners, children, grandchildren, coworkers, neighbors, church acquaintances, women we've met through our children's schools, old friends from previous seasons and hundreds of people connected to us online. Our phones are filled with names. There are people who know our birthdays, people who like our pictures and people who would probably describe us as their friend.
Yet being surrounded by people and having someone you can truly call are two very different things.
There can come a moment when you're sitting at the kitchen table with your phone in your hand, scrolling through name after name, and you realize something you weren't prepared to admit: I don't know who I can talk to about this.
That kind of loneliness is difficult to explain because, technically, you aren't alone.
Your life may actually be very full.
But somewhere along the way, the village became smaller.
When Did Making Friends Get So Complicated?
Friendship was easier when we were younger.
You could meet another girl in school, discover that you both liked the same music, sit beside each other at lunch for three days and suddenly you were best friends. You knew her mother's name, she knew which boy you liked, and somehow she had acquired a permanent position in your life before either of you had even discussed it.
Adult friendship is another situation entirely.
Now we meet a woman we genuinely like and say, “We should get together sometime.”
She says, “Yes! We absolutely should.”
And everybody means it.
Then six months go by.
It isn't necessarily that we don't want friendship. Life became complicated. There are work schedules and marriages, aging parents, children, grandchildren, businesses, appointments, households and a thousand small responsibilities competing for the same twenty-four hours. By the time we finally have an evening to ourselves, getting dressed and driving somewhere to socialize can feel less like friendship and more like another appointment.
And still, something in us misses it.
Not networking. Not being in a room full of people. Not collecting acquaintances.
Friendship.
The kind where someone knows the unpolished version of you.
The woman who has seen your kitchen when you didn't clean before she came over. The friend who knows your marriage can be good and still occasionally make you want to sit in the driveway for ten extra minutes before going inside. The woman who understands that you can love your children deeply and still need a break from everybody calling your name.
The friend who doesn't require the edited version.
As I've gotten older, I've realized how rare that kind of relationship can become.
Somewhere Along the Way, We Became Busy Being Needed
I think part of what happens is that women's friendships are often squeezed into whatever space remains after everyone else has been taken care of.
When we're younger, friendship can occupy the center of our lives. We spend hours talking about nothing and everything. Then adulthood arrives and our relationships begin competing with responsibilities. Careers grow. People get married. Babies are born. Families move. Someone gets divorced. Someone becomes a caregiver. Someone starts working nights. Someone moves three states away.
Nobody necessarily decides to stop being friends.
Life simply begins happening between the phone calls.
You tell yourself you'll call her this weekend. She tells herself the same thing. Then you look up and realize you haven't had a real conversation in months.
And sometimes years.
Social media makes this particularly deceptive because we still know what's happening in each other's lives. I saw your vacation. You saw my anniversary. I know your daughter graduated. You know my grandbaby was born. We congratulate one another in the comments, send a heart, maybe exchange a quick message and somehow feel as though we've stayed connected.
But information isn't intimacy.
Knowing what happened in someone's life isn't the same as knowing how she is doing inside of it.
I think a lot of women are discovering that difference.
And Then We Started Protecting Our Peace
There's another part of this conversation that we don't talk about enough.
Some of us became more isolated because we got tired.
Tired of friendships where we were always the one calling.
Tired of being everybody's emergency contact but having no one available for ours.
Tired of gossip disguised as concern.
Tired of relationships where vulnerability later became ammunition.
Tired of leaving conversations feeling heavier than when we arrived.
At some point, peace started feeling better than company.
And I understand that.
There is something wonderful about reaching an age where you genuinely enjoy your own company. You can go to lunch alone. Travel alone. Sit quietly in your home without needing noise around you. You stop interpreting solitude as evidence that something is wrong.
That's growth.
But I've also started wondering whether sometimes, in protecting our peace, we can become so good at keeping difficult people out that we forget to leave a door open for good people to come in.
That's a much harder question.
Because boundaries can protect us, but walls can isolate us, and from the inside they can look remarkably similar.
Maybe that's why conversations about friendship among grown women feel so complicated.
We don't necessarily want twenty new friends.
Most of us don't have the energy for that anyway.
We want a few real ones.
Women who can celebrate without competing.
Listen without immediately comparing.
Tell the truth without cruelty.
Correct us without humiliating us.
Sit beside us without needing to fix us.
Women who can disappear into their own lives for a little while and return without making the friendship pay a penalty.
Women who understand that adulthood gets busy but still make room for one another.
And perhaps most importantly, women with whom we don't have to perform.
I don't think the desire for that ever disappears.
Maybe we simply stop admitting how much we want it.
Because saying, “I wish I had a friend,” feels strangely vulnerable at this age.
It sounds like something we're supposed to have figured out already.
But what if we haven't?
What if you're fifty years old, surrounded by people who love you, and still wishing you had a girlfriend you could call at 10:30 at night?
What if you're sixty and realizing some of the friendships you thought would last forever didn't?
What if you're forty and discovering that the women you once knew no longer know the woman you've become?
Or what if you have wonderful friends, but you've been so busy surviving your own life that you've stopped tending those relationships?
None of those things make us failures at friendship.
They make us human.
And maybe before we talk about how to find our village, we need to be brave enough to admit something first:
Some of us miss having one.
Sisterhood Is Beautiful. It Can Also Be Complicated.
I love the idea of sisterhood.
Women showing up for women. Women encouraging one another, sharing wisdom, celebrating each other's victories and sitting together through the things that hurt.
It's beautiful.
But if we're going to have a real conversation at this table, we also have to admit that many women have complicated histories with other women.
Sometimes the person who hurt you most was a woman.
Maybe she was your closest friend.
Maybe you trusted her with something you hadn't told anyone else and later discovered that your private story had become public conversation.
Maybe a friendship ended and you still aren't entirely sure why.
Maybe jealousy entered quietly. Competition. Misunderstanding. A man. Money. Success. Religion. Parenting. Politics. Life choices. Sometimes two women simply changed and neither one knew how to talk about it.
Female friendship heartbreak is strange because we don't always give ourselves permission to grieve it.
When a romantic relationship ends, everyone understands heartbreak. There are songs for it. Movies about it. Friends show up with food and tell you you're going to be okay.
But when a twenty-year friendship ends, you're expected to keep moving.
And yet that woman may have known you before your husband did.
She may have known your children when they were babies. She may have sat beside you in an emergency room, known your mother's voice, remembered the house you grew up in and understood your family stories without explanation.
When that relationship disappears, you aren't only losing a friend.
You're losing a witness to part of your life.
That's worth grieving.
And maybe that's part of why making friends later in life can become harder.
We've learned what people are capable of.
At twenty, we might have handed someone the keys to our emotional house after knowing her three weeks.
At fifty?
Girl, you're going to need references.
We've lived enough life to understand that access matters.
Everybody doesn't need to know everything.
Everybody who calls you friend isn't necessarily equipped to hold your story.
And everybody who enjoys your company isn't automatically safe enough for your vulnerability.
That's wisdom.
But wisdom can quietly become suspicion if we're not careful.
One disappointment becomes women can't be trusted.
One betrayal becomes this is why I don't have female friends.
One difficult friendship becomes I'm better off by myself.
I understand how we get there. Once you've fought hard to create peace in your life, you become protective of anything that threatens it.
Still, I don't want the people who hurt me to have so much influence over my future that they determine who gets access to me forever.
That would mean they're still taking something.
When Friendship Becomes Competition
There is another uncomfortable thing that happens between women sometimes, and I think we should be able to talk about it without pretending it doesn't exist.
Competition.
Not always obvious competition. Sometimes it's subtle.
You share good news and immediately feel the temperature of the room change.
You mention something you're proud of and someone finds a way to minimize it.
You buy a house and suddenly you're discussing everything wrong with the neighborhood.
You fall in love and somebody begins pointing out problems you haven't even experienced.
Your business grows, your body changes, your confidence returns, you go back to school, you travel somewhere you've always dreamed of going—and instead of feeling celebrated, you feel as though you've violated some unspoken agreement about how much you're allowed to become.
That's not sisterhood.
But I also think we have to be brave enough to turn the question around.
Have I ever been that woman?
Have I ever struggled to celebrate someone because her success reminded me of something I hadn't done?
Have I ever judged a woman because she had the courage to make a choice I was afraid to make?
Have I ever called something arrogance simply because another woman stopped shrinking?
Those questions aren't nearly as comfortable.
But this table isn't only about identifying what everyone else has done to us. Sometimes returning to ourselves means examining what we've carried into the room too.
I wish women understood earlier that another woman's beauty doesn't diminish ours.
Her intelligence doesn't take anything from us.
Her marriage doesn't mean we've failed.
Her business succeeding doesn't make ours less valuable.
Her body isn't commentary on ours.
Her confidence isn't an accusation.
Her gifts do not cancel ours.
A garden would be terribly boring if every flower were trying to become the rose.
Maybe sisterhood becomes possible when we stop entering relationships asking, consciously or unconsciously, Where do I rank here?
Who's prettier?
Who's more successful?
Whose children are doing better?
Who has more money?
Who has the happier marriage?
Who looks younger?
Who gets more attention?
That is exhausting.
And you can't build intimacy while keeping score.
I don't want women around me who need me to become smaller so they can feel bigger. But just as importantly, I don't want to become a woman who requires someone else to shrink for me.
I want to be able to look across the table at another woman in full bloom and say, “Girl, look at you.”
And mean it.
Maybe We Need Different Kinds of Friends
As I've gotten older, I've also stopped believing one woman has to be everything.
That's a lot of pressure to put on a friendship.
You might have a friend who makes you laugh until you can't breathe but isn't necessarily the person you call for spiritual advice.
Another woman might understand your business brain in a way your childhood friend never will.
There may be someone you love traveling with, someone you pray with, someone who shares your love of books, someone who understands motherhood, and someone you can call when you need the truth without decoration.
That doesn't make any of those friendships less meaningful.
Maybe that's what a village actually is.
Not one person standing in every role.
A collection of people bringing different things to the table.
I think sometimes women become disappointed because we're searching for the best friend when what we really need is community.
And community takes time.
It also requires participation.
That's the part nobody likes.
We can't keep saying we want deeper friendships while declining every invitation, never initiating anything and hoping our future best friend somehow appears at the front door carrying wine, snacks and an excellent personality.
At some point, somebody has to say:
"Do you want to get tea?"
Somebody has to send the text.
Somebody has to invite women over before the house is perfect.
Somebody has to risk being the first one to say, “I've been having a hard time lately.”
Intimacy doesn't arrive fully formed. It grows.
Maybe the Village Has to Be Built
I think that's the part I've been sitting with.
We talk about finding our village as though it's hidden somewhere and we're supposed to stumble across it.
Maybe sometimes it is.
But maybe sometimes the village has to be built.
One invitation at a time, One awkward first conversation, One cup of tea.
One woman deciding to trust another woman with something slightly more real than what she posted online.
One person remembering to check back after somebody says, “I've been struggling.”
One woman choosing to celebrate another without immediately talking about herself.
One apology when we get it wrong.
One act of showing up when it would have been easier to stay home.
None of that is glamorous.
But neither is friendship.
Real friendship is remembering the appointment.
It's asking how the test went.
It's sending the ridiculous meme because you know exactly who will understand it.
It's knowing when somebody needs advice and when she just needs you to say, “Girl, that was a mess.”
It's making room for another woman's life to be different from yours without trying to correct it.
And sometimes it's allowing a friendship to go quiet for a season without immediately deciding the love disappeared.
Maybe that's what sisterhood looks like when we're grown.
Less possession, Less performance, and more grace.
And maybe the question isn't simply, Who do you call when you need a friend?
Maybe there's another question sitting right beside it.
Who knows they can call you?
That one makes me think.
Because it's easy to talk about the village we wish we had.
It's harder to ask whether we're helping build one.
Maybe someone in your phone has been wondering whether she can call you too.
Maybe she's sitting at her own kitchen table scrolling through names.
Maybe she also thinks everyone is busy.
Maybe she's also afraid of being a burden.
Maybe both of you have been waiting for the other person to reach out.
And perhaps sisterhood begins when one woman decides she doesn't want to wait anymore.
Sometimes the village starts with two chairs, a kettle, and a simple invitation:
"Come over. We need to talk."
Maybe the reason I've been thinking so much about friendship is that the older I get, the more I understand that we were never meant to do all of this alone.
We can become wonderfully independent women. We can learn how to take ourselves to dinner, travel alone, solve our own problems, pay our own bills and enjoy the peace of our own company. There is something beautiful about becoming comfortable enough with yourself that silence no longer frightens you.
But independence and isolation aren't the same thing.
Being capable of carrying something alone doesn't necessarily mean we should have to.
There are seasons when life is simply better because somebody else is sitting at the table.
And speaking of the table, I think we should make some tea.
Tea at Today's Table
Today, I don't think the particular tea matters nearly as much as how much we make.
Brew enough for two.
That's it.
We spend so much time turning self-care into something we do alone. Take the bath. Light the candle. Read the book. Make the tea. Close the door. Protect your peace.
And listen, sometimes that is exactly what we need.
But maybe there are other days when caring for ourselves looks like opening the door instead.
Put another cup on the table.
Call somebody.
Invite her over.
And don't clean the whole house first.
I'm serious about that part.
Somewhere along the way, we started believing hospitality required preparation worthy of a magazine spread. The house needs to be clean, the food needs to be planned, the bathroom towels need to match and apparently we need a centerpiece.
No, ma'am.
She came to see you.
There can be laundry on the couch.
There can be dishes in the sink.
We can drink tea from two completely different mugs and eat something out of the package it came in.
Perhaps one of the ways we rebuild friendship as grown women is by making access to one another easier.
Come over as you are.
I'll do the same.
Friendship Needs Somewhere to Live
I think this is something our grandmothers understood differently.
Connection was often built into everyday life. Women sat on porches. They talked over fences. They visited one another's kitchens. They borrowed sugar, watched each other's children, exchanged recipes, carried food when somebody was sick and sometimes stopped by without an appointment.
Now we can communicate with almost anyone at any time, yet somehow we've made actually seeing one another incredibly complicated.
We text instead of calling because we don't want to disturb anyone.
We don't drop by because that would feel intrusive.
We say we should get together, then pull out calendars and discover the first available Saturday is sometime after Thanksgiving.
Technology has made us wonderfully reachable while allowing us to remain strangely unavailable.
And I don't think the answer is abandoning technology or romanticizing the past. Women in previous generations had plenty of loneliness and complicated relationships too.
But I do think we need to create places for friendship to happen.
Friendship needs time.
It needs repetition.
It needs ordinary moments.
Not every gathering needs to be an event. In fact, some of the deepest friendships are built during moments nobody would think to photograph.
Sitting in the car after lunch because the conversation isn't finished.
Standing in the kitchen while somebody chops vegetables.
Walking around the neighborhood.
Calling while folding laundry.
Sharing a cup of tea on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon.
Maybe we don't need more impressive social lives.
Maybe we need more ordinary access to one another.
The Friendship I Want Now
The friendships I want at this stage of life don't have to look the way friendship looked when I was twenty.
I don't need to talk to someone everyday to know she loves me.
I don't need to know everything happening in her life the moment it happens.
I don't need constant access.
I don't need possession.
What I want is sincerity.
I want women who can tell me the truth and still be kind.
Women who can disagree with me without deciding we can no longer sit at the same table.
Women who aren't frightened by growth.
Women who don't disappear when life gets uncomfortable.
Women who can say, “I was wrong.”
Women who can hear, “That hurt me,” without immediately preparing a defense.
And I want to be that kind of friend too.
That's important.
Because it's easy to create a beautiful list describing the women we want in our lives without asking whether we possess the qualities we're requesting.
If I want women who check on me, I need to check on people.
If I want friends who celebrate me, I need to celebrate loudly when something beautiful happens for another woman.
If I want people to remember the difficult seasons of my life, I need to remember theirs.
If I want honesty, I need to become safe enough for someone to tell me the truth.
Friendship is reciprocal.
Not perfectly equal at every moment. Life doesn't work that way. Sometimes one woman will carry more because the other one simply can't.
But over time, there should be movement in both directions.
Otherwise one person is building a friendship while the other is simply benefiting from one.
The Return Practice
This week, I don't want you to analyze your entire friendship history.
We're not making a spreadsheet ranking everybody in your phone.
I want you to think of one woman.
Maybe she's someone you love but haven't spoken to in too long.
Maybe she's a newer acquaintance and you've thought more than once, I really like her. I would like to know her better.
Maybe she's the friend who always reaches out first and you're suddenly realizing you haven't done much reaching back.
Maybe she's going through something.
Or perhaps, if you're being completely truthful, you're the one who needs somebody right now.
Send the text.
Make the call.
Ask her to tea.
Take a walk.
Sit on the porch.
Don't wait until you have three free hours and a perfectly clean house.
And don't begin with, “We really need to get together sometime.”
Try something real.
"Are you free Thursday afternoon? Come have tea with me."
Sometimes community begins with someone being specific enough to make it possible.
A Few Questions for Your Journal
As you sit with this week's conversation, don't only think about the friendships that disappointed you. Think about what you want friendship to become from here.
Who in my life truly knows me beyond my roles and responsibilities?
When something happens and I need to talk, who do I instinctively want to call? Why?
Have I become peacefully independent, or have I quietly become isolated?
What past experience with another woman may still be influencing how easily I trust women today?
What qualities matter most to me in friendship at this stage of my life?
Do I offer those same qualities to other women?
Is there a friendship I've neglected that deserves some attention?
Who is one woman I could invite a little closer?
And perhaps the hardest question:
If another woman were sitting at her kitchen table tonight needing a friend, would she know she could call me?
Take your time with that one.
Take Today's Conversation With You
I've created a printable journal page to accompany this week's conversation. Use it to think about the friendships you have, the ones you've lost, the kind of sisterhood you want now and the kind of friend you want to become.
You don't have to fill it out all at once.
Maybe you answer one question over tea today and another next week.
Maybe one of the questions makes you pick up your phone instead of your pen.
That counts too.
Before You Leave the Table
At the beginning of this conversation, there was a phone sitting on the kitchen table.
Maybe you recognized that moment, the strange experience of having dozens or hundreds of names available to you and still wondering who you could actually call.
I don't think every woman needs a huge circle.
I don't think friendship has to look like matching pajamas, annual girls' trips and twelve women in a group chat that never sleeps.
Sometimes a village is much smaller.
Maybe it's three women.
Maybe it's two.
There may even be a season when you're beginning again with one.
What matters is having relationships where you can arrive as yourself.
And becoming someone who allows another woman to do the same.
Because after all the boundaries we've learned to set, all the independence we've fought to build and all the peace we've worked so hard to protect, I don't want us to accidentally create lives where nobody can reach us.
We need each other.
Not because we're incapable of standing alone.
Because some parts of life were always meant to be witnessed.
Someone should know what made you laugh this week.
Someone should know you're worried about your child.
Someone should know the dream you're almost afraid to say out loud.
Someone should notice when you've gone quiet.
And somebody should be able to call you and say, “Girl, I need to talk,” without first wondering whether she's bothering you.
So maybe this week, instead of waiting to see who calls...
pick up the phone.
There might be another woman sitting at another kitchen table hoping somebody does exactly the same thing.
And if she answers?
Put the kettle on.
Make enough for two.
With love,
Mayah
The Table Journal • Conversation No. 11
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