We imagine friendship in a certain light when we are young.
It looks like sleepovers, inside jokes, matching bracelets, and long afternoons where time feels endless.
And while those memories are beautiful, I’ve learned that some of the deepest friendships of a woman’s life are built much later.
They are built in the middle.
In the years when calendars are full, children need rides, parents need care, careers demand attention, and life doesn’t slow down long enough for us to catch our breath.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized that health and wellness are about so much more than taking care of our bodies. They are also about taking care of our hearts. And one of the greatest gifts to my heart has been the women who have walked beside me through every season.
Womanhood at this age looks different than I once imagined.
It shows up in how fiercely you root for each other’s children. It looks like celebrating a friend’s promotion as though it were your own. It looks like showing up at a dance recital, a soccer game, a ribbon cutting, a graduation, or a fundraiser because someone you love is standing in the spotlight.
It looks like sending the text that says, “How did the interview go?” and genuinely waiting for the answer.
It looks like bringing dinner when life has become overwhelming.
It looks like sitting beside someone in a hospital waiting room.
It looks like helping carry grief that no one ever expected to carry.
The older I get, the more I realize that friendship isn’t about constantly being together. It is about being present in each other’s lives, even when life is pulling us in a hundred different directions.
The friendships that sustain us are rarely perfect.
We miss phone calls.
We forget to text back. Or text in our heads and never back on our phone—guilty!
We reschedule coffee more times than we’d like to admit.
And yet somehow, the women who matter understand.
There is no keeping score.
There is no pretending everything is easier than it is.
There is simply a quiet understanding that we are all doing our best.
To me, that is wellness.
Not perfection.
Not productivity.
Not an image carefully curated for others to see.
It is getting up and doing the next right thing.
It is laughing when life feels heavy.
It is crying when you need to.
It is accepting help when you’re used to being the one offering it.
It is extending grace to yourself and to others.
Most importantly, it is allowing yourself to be known.
I think that is what makes friendships in this season of life so meaningful. They are built on witnessing each other’s lives in real time.
The victories.
The disappointments.
The dreams.
The detours.
The celebrations.
The losses.
And through it all, choosing to stay.
As mothers, we often spend so much time pouring into everyone around us that we forget how much we need one another. We need the women who remind us who we are when we’re tired. The friends who celebrate our children as if they were family. The ones who call just to check in. The ones who show up.
The older I get, the less interested I am in having a large circle and the more grateful I am for a genuine one.
The women who cheer loudly.
The women who tell the truth kindly.
The women who sit in the hard moments and stay for the joyful ones too.
Those friendships have become some of the greatest blessings of my life.
And perhaps one of the healthiest things we can do as women is to stop chasing the idea of having it all together and instead simply hold one another up while we figure it out.
Together.
One conversation.
One encouragement.
One season at a time.
