Reader, In May I said something that more of you replied to than almost anything else I've published. ๐๐ฝ
"The people around you while you are brewing will either protect the momentum or drain it."
๐ง Listen on Spotify / Apple โ you get to hear the intention behind each word plus a reflection at the end. โ
โ
I've been reading through your responses for the last two months because I realized I left something out.
And the part I left out is the part that actually hurts. ๐ฎโ๐จ
Reading your replies is the only honest way to know what's happening to women right now instead of what I assume is happening. (I'm witchy but what you tell me, says a lot.)
And the same thing keeps arriving in my inbox, different versions saying the same thing, from women who have never met each other.
She is doing better than she has ever done. And she is lonelier than she has been in years.
She has friends, so it's not that she's alone. But it's because the people who are there don't fit anymore, and she can't figure out how to say that out loud without sounding like an asshole.
So I'll say it for her.
This is what happens when a woman starts choosing herself.โ
โ
๐๐ฝ She gets quieter. She answers slower. She is suddenly unavailable at the exact moment somebody needs something, because for the first time in her life she is in the middle of something of her own.
And the people who had unlimited access to her notice immediately.
They will not say they miss her attention. That is never what comes out. What comes out is that she's changed. That she thinks she's better than everyone now. That she's gotten cold, distant, hard to reach. That the success went to her head.
Listen to what is actually being said underneath that.
She is telling you that something she used to be able to count on is gone, and she is calling that a character flaw in you.
โ
The friendship ran on your availability.
Nobody ever said that out loud, including you.
But you were the one who picked up. Replied to all the voice notes. You remembered the birthday, smoothed the thing over, held the group together, jumped in to help fix things that had nothing to do with you, and answered at 10pm when it wasn't an emergency. It worked beautifully for years.
For her.
And now you're building something, and you can't be that anymore, and the friendship has to answer a question it has never once had to answer before.
Is there anything here besides what she gets from me?โ
โ
Sometimes the answer is yes, and the friendship survives it, renegotiated and honest, and it becomes the best thing you own.
And sometimes the answer is no.
You will grieve, and you'll assume the grief is about losing her. Sit in it a little longer and you'll find it's about something else. It's the finding out. It's having to admit that you knew, and that you knew for a long time.
Now here's the part nobody says, so I'll say it, and you're not going to love it.
You were getting something out of that arrangement too.
Being needed is a hell of a drug.
Being the one who holds everything means you never have to be the one who asks. You get to be indispensable, which feels like love and functions like insurance.
โ
So when it changes, you lose two things. You lose her, and you lose a job you were extremely good at. That's why it takes so long to get over. It was never only about her.
she's mad she lost access to you, and she's going to call it something else.
โ
I've done this twice.โ๐ฝ
โ
Once when I exited a business I loved. And once when I rebuilt at 42, with a very small circle and a great deal of noise about who I'd supposedly become.
โ
Both times I lost people. Both times I was certain I had done something wrong.
โ
I didn't do anything wrong. I just stopped being convenient.โ
โ
And I don't think this is only happening to me, or only to you.
I'm watching women leave jobs they were supposed to be grateful for.
Raise their prices without a preamble.
Get divorced at 48 and look better than they did at 30.
Start businesses their families think is just a phase.
Build their own money instead of waiting to be handed some.
โ
I'm watching the rooms around them get very, very uncomfortable about it.
When a woman stops being available on demand, the people who organize their lives around her availability experience it as a loss.
They're not wrong. It is a loss. It just isn't a crime.
โ
So here's what I want you to hold this week.
โ
๐ฃ You are going to lose people. Not for anything you did to them. For everything you stopped doing for them.
โ
โSome of those friendships will come back, renegotiated, better, once she works out that you're still here, just no longer on at her disposal.
and some are not coming back. And one day you'll feel relieved about it, and the relief will make you feel guilty, and the guilt will pass.
In the middle of all of it, you will feel lonely for a while.
That's the in-between. That's what these letters are named after.
It's the stretch where you have left who you were and haven't yet arrived at who you're becoming, and that room is very quiet, and there's nothing to do but stay in it.
So stay in it.
โ