The Grace of a Girls’ Getaway
There is a version of womanhood that says we should be able to do it all quietly, gracefully, and mostly alone — carry the household, the career, the marriage, the mothering, without ever needing to step away and simply be a woman among women. I want to tell you plainly: that version is not elegance. It is exhaustion wearing elegance’s clothes.
Last summer, I intentionally planned a weekend with activities that didn’t necessarily require my presence or include me. I invited a few of my friends who are also mothers and we got together with no agenda beyond good food, good wine, and conversation that didn’t have to be interrupted every four minutes. I remember feeling almost guilty packing my bag, as though I were doing something indulgent rather than something necessary. By the second morning, sitting on the dock in comfortable silence with women who have known me through my most recent seasons, I understood something I should have known all along: this was not indulgence. This was maintenance.
This, I also do with my sisters. At the moment, we are all in almost different parts of the world but we have our scheduled calls every week where we catch up on what’s happening with each of us. Videos have to be put on and we definitely understand if sometimes we are staring at the ceiling on one person’s phone because something else is happening at their end. What matters most is that we are able to meet, check in and catch up with each other.
Female friendships are, I think, one of the most under-tended gardens of our adult lives. We assume they’ll simply keep growing on their own, without water, without light, without any real investment of our time. But friendships — like marriages, like faith, like anything worth having — wither quietly when neglected and flourish visibly when nurtured.
You don’t need a lakeside cottage to do this, though I highly recommend one if the opportunity arises. A single afternoon will do. A picnic blanket in the park with two or three women who understand you without needing the whole backstory explained. A porch, a bottle of something cold, an evening with your phone left inside. What matters is the deliberate choosing of it — carving out time that belongs to nothing but the friendship itself.
There is a particular kind of strength that comes from being surrounded by women who see the real you, unpolished and unperformed, and love you still. It restores something in you that nothing else quite reaches — not your children’s love, as complete as it is, and not even your husband’s. It is its own category of nourishment, and this summer, I hope you’ll give yourself full permission to seek it out.
A gentle prompt for your journal this week: Which women in my life restore me? When did I last give them — and myself — real, undistracted time?
