When and why did we that going to girls lunch was the measure of a life well lived.
Our culture rewards visibility and pathologizes quiet. I think we've had it backwards.
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The Quiet Life Nobody Asked About
I’m going to say something I’ve never said out loud before.
I don’t feel safe in real life connection anymore.
Not in a dramatic way. Not in a way that requires intervention or a wellness check or a concerned phone call from someone who read this and got worried. Just quietly, honestly, after a very long time of paying attention to what costs me and what restores me —
I don’t feel safe out there the way I used to.
And I’m not apologizing for it.
Let me start with the lighter version first, because there is one.
I have a friend - we will call her Donna - who occasionally asks me to lunch. I always find a reason not to go. Not because I’m busy. Because she is boring and self-centered and I genuinely cannot locate the point of sitting across a table from her for two hours pretending otherwise.
There’s another woman who I think has finally given up asking me anywhere. I feel mild relief about this.
I have never understood the gal pal lunch. Not really. Not even when I was younger and more willing to perform enthusiasm for things that drained me. I always found them to be an interruption. An obligation dressed up as connection. A social ritual that costs more than it returns and leaves me needing a nap and two quiet days to recover.
What I love about my online life is simple: if I don’t want to show up, I don’t. Nobody questions it. Nobody calls. Nobody asks what’s wrong. I just — don’t appear. And then I appear again when I’m ready. And the world keeps turning.
Try doing that in real life and watch what happens.
Why weren’t you at the meeting? Are you okay? We missed you. You really should come next time.
The assumption underneath all of it — that physical presence is evidence of a healthy, engaged, meaningful life — has always felt slightly off to me. Like a rule someone made up and forgot to question.
But here’s where it gets less light. Here’s the deeper layer.
If any part of this landed — if you’ve ever sat with that quiet question and felt vaguely guilty for not having a better answer — I want you to know there’s a room where we ask it out loud.
No performance. No obligation. No Donna.
Just women who are done pretending that every social ritual deserves their energy, and who are figuring out together what a genuinely nourishing life actually looks like at this age.
That’s what we do on Tuesday nights.
Daily essays. Weekly conversations. A community that honors your peace instead of pathologizing it.
Come as you are. Soup on the stove