Introducing What Follows . . .
What Follows . . .
When I ask other women questions that edge just beyond the usual (offspring, deadlines, vacation plans) I find them hungry to connect. That's true even when they seem to choose each word carefully, like selecting strawberries at a farmer's market-avoiding the mushy ones and searching for those that are firm, substantial, still full of life.
They may see things differently than I do. Arrive at different conclusions. But usually-most of the time-their face brightens or their voice lifts. They pause, lean in, and answer with their whole body: Let's talk.
Our conversation often begins in the shallows, like why we try to convince ourselves that Jones Road beauty products contain some kind of magic. But with the slightest push, we go deeper. We feel the opening, a sliver of opportunity to select a seat closer to the front of the room, nearer the real action, and we take it.
We might talk about how our bodies are changing - after childbirth, in perimenopause, fully in menopause, after illness or surgery, through the slow accrual of time, or simply from one week to the next. We talk about what it's like to make a big decision or total U-turn in your life and then live inside the long aftermath, tending to the small, persistent work of making it hold. We name the parts of ourselves we never want to see again, and those we're still pining for.
There is loss, of course. But also, our tricky dances around success-how to hold it without hiding it, how to carry it without apology. The ways we've outgrown people. How we're searching for new ones. Second chances. The brave among us ask, sometimes quietly, sometimes not: Are we still interested in sex? More interested? Are women as far along as we thought we'd be by now? Are we?
I'll listen, for a while, as you recount your child's soccer game. Your plans for Hawaii. The brilliance of your grandchildren. But I'm riveted, hanging on every word, if you tell me how lonely you felt driving from Hampton Inn to La Quinta to the Fairfield to watch middle school volleyball, surrounded by women who seemed already claimed by their own circles, their friendship cards already punched. If you tell me how much you want that next promotion, and maybe even how conflicted you are about getting it. If you admit how difficult it is to be retired with a partner of forty years who now rarely leaves the house. I'm all ears for all of it.
Because when we speak about what animates us-depletes or numbs us-the energy shifts. Our desire to keep becoming surfaces. The stubborn, unshakable instinct to keep reinventing ourselves reappears, insisting there is still more to do, to feel, to care about. And in community, we are more likely to find the courage to lean into that metamorphosis. That's when I'm all in. That's when every word matters.
This is what What Follows is for. A place to meet in the middle space-midstream-where we are learning and unlearning, arriving and leaving, holding steady and veering wildly off course. A place to sit with and consider the consequences of what we've chosen, and what we haven't. Perhaps a place to learn from another woman's journey.
It's thinking out loud. Not to instruct, but to notice. To offer something up and leave room for you to decide what it means in your life. There are no firm answers here. And if there are, they may not be the right ones for you.
Maybe it's a space you've been looking for, even if you couldn't quite describe it. Maybe it existed only as a quiet yearning for connection.
A place to pause, briefly, and consider who you are in the process of becoming.
What Follows next week . . . In The Long Work of Belonging, we'll consider how we find the people and places in our lives that help us feel like we fit in, especially in new surroundings or in new chapters of our lives.