In my mid-thirties, I took the risk of making a new friendship. There was a point in time where I started losing female friends due to distance or being in different life stages (no kids for me). I was constantly lamenting to my husband that I didn’t have any female friends.
My new friend I are both extroverts. So one day, we started chatting before a group fitness class. I have no idea what we initially talked about, but there were many similarities – fitness enthusiasts, Hispanic, working women, lovers of bread and Girl Scout cookies. As our friendship grew, something that also brought us together was our desire to set goals in different aspects of our lives and create a plan for the upcoming year. We agreed to work on our goals individually and then meet up over dinner to talk about how we’d go about achieving them.
The Meeting of the Minds
We jokingly called it “The Meeting of the Minds.” It was just two women talking honestly about what we wanted more of in our lives — including more female friendship.
That conversation has stayed with me for several years. Not because it was dramatic or groundbreaking, but because it was intentional. Adult friendships don’t just happen. They aren’t built into our lives the way they once were. There’s no shared classroom, no shared dorm room, no built-in rhythm like sports or clubs that guarantees connection. Instead, adult friendships require something far more deliberate: choice.
Choosing Friends
Somewhere along the way, many of us begin to treat friendship as optional — something we get to if there’s time, energy, or space left over. Work expands. Responsibilities grow. Schedules tighten. And without realizing it, connection becomes something we miss instead of something we maintain.
That meeting reminded me that friendship in adulthood is an active decision. It’s choosing to reach out even when calendars are full, sending a text or DM just to say “hi.” It’s being willing to say, “I miss you and my cup is a little empty,” and asking for a 15-minute phone call, Google Meet, or dinner. Friendship is carving out space not because it’s convenient, but because it matters.
Sisterhood
There’s a particular kind of nourishment that comes from female friendship. It’s different from many other relationships in our lives. It doesn’t demand productivity or performance. It doesn’t require us to be polished or resolved (hello, messy pony and stretchy pants). Instead, it offers room to be unfinished – to speak freely, to be both ambitious and uncertain in the same breath.
Sisterhood isn’t about sameness — it’s about safety. It’s the quiet relief of not having to explain yourself – of being seen in your complexity and still being accepted. It’s having someone who shares in your excitement, but also understands your hesitation about a new challenge.
At the “meeting of the minds,” I loved that I shared “making female friendships a priority” with someone else. It made me feel less crazy knowing someone else thought female friendship was something worthy of intention and protection — just like any other meaningful relationship.
Take the Risk
As women, we often say we want deeper connection, but building it requires us to take emotional risks: to send the text, to suggest the coffee, to initiate the conversation that might feel vulnerable or unnecessary on the surface. It requires us to show up consistently, not just when life slows down — because it rarely does.
That meeting wasn’t monumental in the way we usually measure milestones. There were no declarations or dramatic turning points. But it mattered because it was rooted in honesty and mutual care. It was a reminder that some of the most important moments in our lives happen quietly — over conversation, laughter, reflection, and shared intention. They happen when you get up the courage to ask another woman in your workout class if she wants to hang out.
Choose Connection
In a season where so much of life feels fast, demanding, and outward facing, choosing connection feels quietly radical. It’s a decision to slow down, to invest in relationships that fill our “cups.”
Friendship isn’t accidental. It’s created. And sometimes, all it takes is a meeting of the minds — a moment of presence and intention — to remind us that we don’t have to do life alone.
By the way, my goal-setting friend is the one who introduced me to the women of Plaid and that has changed my circle for the better.
Read more by Alexis here.
