What Eighteen Women Left At The Door

It was a gray Sunday morning, and Waze was taking me somewhere I had never been.

That turned out to be more literal than I expected. Before delivering me to the right house, it brought me to the wrong one. I sat in front of a stranger's driveway for a moment, then noticed another car idling at the curb, its driver looking just as confused as I felt. Apparently, I wasn't the only one.

The invitation had been warm but light on detail. Some women were getting together for a conversation, and I was welcome to join. I had pictured four or five of us. I had almost talked myself out of the outfit I was wearing.

When I finally found the right door, I was greeted by the friend who had invited me, and another one of the hosts looked at me with that particular kind of instant recognition that sometimes happens with strangers. "I'm sure we know each other from somewhere," she said, and just like that, I was inside.

There were eighteen women in that beautiful home.

What I hadn't anticipated was what I would feel the moment I settled in. These women had arrived from different directions, different eras, different stories. But something had already begun to happen before I got there. You could feel it, a kind of collective exhale, the particular relief of women who had quietly set their armor down at the door. No titles, no roles, no careful management of what they were willing to show. Just women, sitting together, deciding to be honest.

The conversation moved around three ideas: community, connection, and conversations about what it actually means to let another woman in. The hosts had held the space with intention, and what grew inside it surprised even them, I think. Women spoke with their guards down. Egos checked at the door. Women lingered long after they were expected to leave.

I drove home thinking about that.

I've been in my own version of a gray Sunday morning for a while now. My belongings are in storage. My next chapter is still being written. I've had plenty of days this year when I've followed directions without quite knowing where I was headed, and the not-knowing has been both unsettling and, in its own way, clarifying.

What those eighteen women revealed without meaning to is something I see in my work constantly.

So many women I work with are living inside an invisible isolation. Their calendars are full. Their phones are always buzzing. They are managing households, careers, other people's emotions, the appearance of a life held together. And underneath all of that, they are profoundly, privately alone. Not because the people around them don't love them. But because at some point, their entire social world came to exist inside roles: wife, mother, colleague, the one who handles things. When those roles shift, as they always do in midlife, the scaffolding shifts with them.

What I notice, again and again, is that women rarely name this as the problem. They come to me talking about their marriage, or their divorce, or what comes next. And underneath that, almost always, is this: they haven't had a real conversation with anyone in a very long time. The kind where you don't decide in advance what you're willing to say.

Those women on Sunday weren't just having brunch. They were practicing something most of us quietly unlearned somewhere in our forties and fifties. The ability to let other women in.

It's part of what I'm building this spring. The VIVID Collective is a group experience for women who are ready to stop navigating this season alone. Whether you're in a transition, on the other side of one, or simply at the point where you're tired of carrying everything by yourself, this is being built with you in mind.

And for what it's worth, the right address is always worth finding. Even when Waze gets it wrong the first time.

If something in this landed, just reply with a word, a thought, or a simple "tell me more." That's all it takes to start.