Friendship is hard these days. What gives?

This is for you if you’re a woman who is always there for everyone else but quietly feels lonely.

You’re emotionally intelligent, self-aware, and responsible.

You take pride in caring for others, community, and of course, yourself.

You’re calling your congressmen, advocating for human rights, all while caring for your friends, family, and community.

You’re generous, compassionate, and the type of person who people look up to.

But beneath the surface, there’s a longing you don’t quite know what to do with.

👉 You are surrounded by and caring for so many people, but you can’t help but wonder – "Who is caring for me? And how did I get here?"

You didn’t get here overnight.

You’re outgrowing friendships, professional relationships, and even mentors that were once your ride or dies.

For some time now, you’ve been trying to create something more real, more reciprocating, more “meets you where you are and can hold you in your strung out, not-always-put-together” ways.

You want friends, colleagues, mentors, and a community that can hold the wilder version of you that you’ve become, not the old version of you that keeps them comfortable.

You’re re-envisioning who your people will be. You’re doing all you can to gather them.

Because as an informed, passionate woman in healthcare – you know how important this is.

You understand the science of community – you hear about it in podcasts, in books that say the loneliness epidemic is worse for you than smoking or heart disease.

And still — knowing the science doesn’t automatically make it feel easy to receive it.

You know about co-regulation, attachment styles, the benefit of oxytocin on calming the nervous system better than any breathwork protocol (done alone) can do.

And because you know this isn’t just going to fall out of the sky – you’re out creating it.

You are that co-regulator for everyone else:

• You’re the one sending the texts to check on friends when their kids or aging parents are sick

• You’re volunteering to get coffee when your friend with the BRCA gene goes for the mammogram she’s been nervous about

• You’re DoorDashing dinner and cases of water when a pipe bursts and floods your neighbor’s basements during an ice storm

• You’re the one initiating book club and planning Galentine’s brunch – syncing schedules, accommodating food preferences, making sure nobody feels left out

• You’re the emotional support animal for your kids’, dogs’ and husband’s meltdowns … which happen more frequently than you’d like. (But hey, that’s life, right?)

But when it comes to someone being there for you?

Well…you can’t ignore the truth:

• You have meltdowns in the quiet of your reading nook with your journal, hiding your tears so nobody in your family freaks out.

• You get the last minute texts from friends who say they can’t make girls night even though you chose the restaurant you know they love and made every effort to make it as low a lift as possible 

• You book an MRI and take an Uber instead of calling a friend to take you so that you can take the valium you need to calm your nerves during the test 

Your heart sinks as you see yourself in all of these scenarios.

There’s a churn in the pit of your stomach – you can see what’s happening so clearly.

👉You’re giving away the very medicine you so desperately need.

You know the science.

You know you need the people who matter to you to see and hold you.

But knowing this in your head and giving it to everyone else doesn’t mean they’re showing up and reciprocating it for you.

In fact, it seems like the same people you pour into — just don’t exactly get you.

It seems like your friends, family, colleagues, and community show up only when…

• You’re sick, injured, or suffering in some way – your healthcare colleagues intellectualize and offer advice, reducing you to a body to diagnose and treat, not a person with real feelings and struggles

  
  

• You’ve paid for it – a course, a networking group, a healing session, therapy – there always seems to be some power differential – someone’s trying to get something from you, heal you and it doesn’t feel like you’re on ground as peers or equals

• You have a special occasion – like your birthday. And you can’t help but notice the people who forget or don’t reach out at all, even though you’re always sending a card and making sure they feel special.

So you do what you’ve always done best – you just regulate and support yourself quietly.

Yet, a quiet, painful set of questions creep in as you cozy up with your hand on your heart – 

• Why am I the one always keeping everyone else afloat?

• Why isn’t anyone spontaneously texting me to tell me they’re thinking about me?

• Is there something wrong with me?

That final thought lands in your chest.

Your heart rate picks up. Your throat tightens.

You think, “Shit, I don’t just teach and speak about the importance of community in the loneliness epidemic. 

I am the person in the loneliness epidemic.”

And the sinking, guilty awareness washes over you that in all the caring you’ve done for everyone else so they don’t feel lonely – you’ve done this to yourself.

Oooooooof. Let’s just take a moment. Feel the air in your nostrils. See if you can stay with that.

If something just tightened or washed over you as you read through that last section, I want you to know it’s ok.

And I totally am totally here with you in this.

And if your body is going into shame right now for feeling seen, I want you to know: shame is not proof you’re doing something wrong. It’s a clue that you deserve something more.

I have been there, feeling these things, pouring into others, having these conversations inside of me, feeling the shame and worry that maybe I’m just not cut out for genuine relationships, justifying that “people are just busy” when I notice how they don’t reciprocate or show up for me the way I show up for them.

And I’ve heard it from thousands of women who whisper on client calls that they, too, feel this.

So I want you to know you’re not alone.  

And I also want to acknowledge how beautiful it is that no matter what, you still show up with so much loyalty for yourself – in the moments where…

You put your hand on your heart.

And remind yourself from behind tears and doubt: I am enough.

I love that you self-regulate, self-soothe, and set aside time to care for yourself and your heart.

I see you when you do these things, because I’m in my little reading nook doing them too.

I see that it brings relief. It fills your cup just a little bit more.

I also see those fleeting moments when you notice how much manual labor it takes to do this for yourself - and the brutal honesty that no else is holding you the way you hold them.

And I giggle a bit with you when you sheepishly, maybe even a little sarcastically, say to yourself, “Well, if nobody else is going to hold me, at least I have ME!🙃"

And here’s what I want you to know — gently and clearly:

It’s a beautiful and incredibly brave thing – how honest you are being with yourself about feeling lonely.

Our world tells you to “Just build community! It’s good for your health” as if it’s just a $49 commodity you can buy on Amazon and it will fix everything.

And it’s brazen to say out loud, “Actually, I’ve tried to do that. And I don’t feel like it’s working for me.”

It’s even braver to have the audacity to say “I don’t want it to be this way. I want more.”

It’s not “too much” or “dramatic” to expect that people give to you the same amount you give to them.

And I want you to know that the reason you feel this way is not your fault.

The world wants to tell you to just change how you think, try harder, do more to feel better.

But you didn’t choose this pattern consciously – where you tie yourself into a pretzel to pour into others but the same pouring doesn’t necessarily make its way back to you.

There’s a billion ways you, me, and many other kindhearted and generous women got here. But I’ll shed light on some of them. 

As you read these, I invite you to notice what lands in your body, what creates tightness, what creates recognition, or what brings an exhale of relief or knowing.

Here we go – 

🌸For some women, this pattern came early through the family — in families where it wasn’t safe to need, to be attuned to. Maybe your family was too attuned – too critical of your every move.Or maybe you had to basically be bleeding before anyone would pay attention.

🌸For some, it came through through religion — you absorbed the righteous role as the healer, the servant, the martyr – who puts everyone else first above herself in the name of goodness, righteousness, and the nobility of self sacrifice.

🌸For some, it came through culture — feminism that taught independence, strength in pulling yourself up from your bootstraps instead of relying on the patriarchy…but taught you that without interdependence on your own network.

🌸For some, this came through wiring — neurodivergence that just cannot do superficial, inauthentic, and passive aggressive interactions, eldest daughter energy, giftedness, intensity, and being a natural-born empath who feels and helps mend the pain of the world deeply, sensitively, and intuitively.

These are all intelligent adaptations and designs.

They are protective, wise, and necessary.

But they were all installed into your DNA, mind, heart, and nervous system without your consent.

Somewhere along the way, you inherited the program that it was safer and better to rely on yourself — and now you’ve become very good at that.

I mean, let’s admit. You are kind of a high achiever in most things. Of course you’d be great at this, too 😉

Meanwhile, your body and soul are also whispering something else.

🥺A pang of loneliness.

🥺A longing for deeper connection.

🥺A desire to be seen, known, supported — not just admired and relied upon.

Your body and soul say one thing.

Your driven problem-solver mind says many other things that keep you running – 

🏃🏻‍♀️Read more self-help books about how not to lose yourself in community

🏃🏻‍♀️Listen to more podcasts about feminine empowerment, serving others, leading groups

🏃🏻‍♀️Save and share posts about “village” and “oxytocin” and “genuine friendship”

🏃🏻‍♀️Diagnose your attachment style to explain why you (and everyone else you know) are the way you are

🏃🏻‍♀️Set boundaries and maintain your peace so you don’t have to deal with toxic people who suck the life out of you

🏃🏻‍♀️Analyze your one-sided friendships to explain what you can do better or differently to make it feel more equally yoked

🏃🏻‍♀️Look out for the quieter, soft spoken people so they don’t ever feel left out

I love the spirit of every single one of these things (and while we’re being honest – just know, I’ve done all these things too).

But if you’re brutally real with yourself — doing all of this alone feels overwhelming and tiring.

And it’s not like you haven’t tried to lessen your overwhelm and find a reciprocating community that is there to hold you.

👸🏻🐸But in trying to put yourself out there – you’ve kissed quite a few frogs.

And now you’re suspicious of who you let into your space…because what if…

❓What if the people you reach out to say they support you, but underneath it’s clear they just want to compete with you?

❓What if they say they’re here to be friends, but have a backdoor intentions to try to sell you something?

❓What if you invite people in to your inner world and they try and fix you or capitalize on your vulnerabilities?

❓What if you plan the book club or girls’ weekend and no one comes?

❓What if you need help — real help — and everyone is too busy?

So you keep doing what you know how to do best – trying to soothe the ache in your heart, heal the wounds that got you here, and pouring into and holding others in hopes that if you do it enough – maybe the right people will return the favor.

Ugh. I know this feeling all too well.

I learned all these lessons and did all these things too.

It came from the most caring place – that if I just gave enough of myself to everyone else, the energetics of the Universe would eventually return it to me.

It’s a beautiful, kind, compassionate intention.

But here’s where the impact of that beautiful intention backfires.

Generously giving to, propping up, and caring for others on the potentiality that they will eventually return the favor…

…might be recreating the very community and relationships that you keep trying to move away from.

If you feel seen, and something just landed in your gut-

I want you to know it’s not your fault.

Take a breath with me. You’re not in trouble for noticing the truth inside of you.

And now, here’s the truth of what got you here in the first place – 

We live inside capitalistic, patriarchal, colonialist systems that teach women like you and me this lie early and often:

It teaches that if you’re strong, healed, evolved, empathetic, and “doing the work,” your role is to give of yourself (for free, a lot of the time) to guide and support everyone else and give to the system, to do unto others –

And receiving that same care from others means you’re lesser than, lower in the hierarchy, and draining the resources of the system

Women have done the invisible emotional and logistical work and labor to keep capitalism and patriarchy running for centuries.

And by continuing to do so, it is actually continuing to feed the system. It’s internalized patriarchy.

And when women are surrounded by women who don’t reciprocate the very efforts they're making to build connection and step out of this internalized patriarchy?

It prolongs the problem.

So when I tell you that it’s not about you when other women don't reciprocate or you feel like they are showing up, but you're doing most of the mental and emotional labor to make it happen and keep everyone happy, this is why.

It's allowed to sting. You can even feel irritated, frustrated, or (dare I say) angry about it.

Your feelings are completely valid. Your nervous system is accurately picking up on unrequited attempts at connection and an unmet need for being accurately mirrored by peers and other women. It is supposed to hurt. 

But what happens next is where you get to keep your power. It's only natural - when something doesn't go the way your system expects it to go - for the brain to jump in and try to explain why.

And oftentimes, the brain is a faulty investigator. It can attribute non-reciprocating friends to you being bad at friendship (self blame) or your friends being bad at friendship (other blame).

And that's not to say you need to just have compassion for your friends and keep attempting to feed someone who won't feed you back.

The point is though, it's not personal. You may need to set boundaries with these friends out of honor and reverence for your heart, and look for friends who do reciprocate. But the ones who don't reciprocate aren’t the villains here, either.

Those very same women are too busy propping up their own versions of the capitalistic, patriarchal system.

There are indeed the women who compete with others - but it’s probably not that they don’t love and support you. It’s probably that they are pouring into everyone else in their own lives, and they don’t have much left to give to you, they feel insecure, and they, too are trying to find their way in a system that says women don't matter as much as men.

The real kicker is when women are holding up society - not only in the family unit and community, but also in jobs that feed and help people feel good about themselves, stay balanced and healthy (allied health, therapies, social work, education, etc).

The message is - give of yourself and do good unto others, but don't give too much, and don't get too powerful. And oh-by-the-way compete with each other, because there really isn't room for women to have a seat at the table.

These messages came to you and me and other women in all sorts of ways – dressed up as empowerment, as generous, as being the healing and kind one, being a "leader" –

But the underlying message was – keep everyone else put together and connected in a system that profits off of your disconnection from yourself and from each other.

And in the process, we were taught to give away the very medicine we need, because if we are resourced and supported in female community – our collective strength and collective vocies are dangerous to capitalism, patriarchy, and people in power (usually characterized in western culture as white, heteronormative, Christian, wealthy, able-bodied men).

Our job? What makes us worthy and valuable? 

✅ Prop up that system just enough to keep it running, but not quite enough to challenge its very existence.

And another kicker - when this job starts to weigh on you – that same system tells you it’s your fault has now manufactured a solution that they've created so you can fix yourself and carry even more of the burden that the system isn't willing to carry fo ryou.

You’re not doing enough. You need to regulate, conform, calm down harder.

You need to optimize your health and wellness more so you can keep giving, holding, caring for others, all in the name of "empowerment" and "feminism."

And the real kicker – "You need to care for yourself harder. Isolate yourself in the name of setting boundaries, being empowered, and “not needing anyone else.”

How does this look in real life?

👉When your workplace demands unpaid labor and constant availability in the name of “teamwork?”

The solution is a mandatory unpaid seminar on how you need to focus on your own solitary work–life balance.

👉When politicians (women included) are more loyal to party doctrine instead of the very people they were elected to serve?

They post bold statements on social media, but don’t actually take action. Then they share everywhere you should donate and support so they don’t have to take a stand and do their jobs.

👉When you’re in a healthcare system that excludes women’s bodies from research and training?

Here are courses, certifications, and protocols that teach all the ways you should empower yourself and your clients to care for yourselves, and oh by the way all the ways you should also educate your doctor and advocate for yourself when you’re being dismissed instead of demanding accountability and a minimum standard of care.

👉When you’re trying to stay connected with friends on social media designed to keep you addicted, outraged, and depleted?

Here are blue-light glasses, a Reel with cute puppies, and screen-time blockers so you can cope by continuing to stay on the platform.

👉When you’re both a part of and a client of a multibillion-dollar wellness industry training you to count, track, monitor—

Here’s an Oura ring or Garmin so you can track and monitor the problems you didn’t even know existed until we invented solutions to sell you, all while harvesting your data so we can keep coming up with marketing strategies that make you think we care about your well being

👉 When there’s a multibillion-dollar spiritual and self-help industry telling you to set boundaries, elevate your energy, self-regulate, set a good example, and access your Higher self —

Here’s a $50000 coaching program with guru grifters teaching you to isolate yourself from other “lower vibe” humans all while staying dependent on their uncredentialed “expertise” to help you rewire your beliefs to match theirs

Any of that feel familiar?

If your jaw tightened while reading that or you felt the saltiness wash over you with a sarcastic laugh, you’re not wrong.

To be very clear – it’s not inherently wrong to focus on balance, donating and advocating for what’s right, taking your health and wellness and spiritual growth into your own hands, or trying to connect with others online.

It’s not about the actual things you’re doing.

It’s why you’re doing them and what’s being sold to you without your consent.

If it’s drawing you closer to others and building the connection and community that doesn’t require so much manual labor on your part – keep it up!

If it’s drawing you not only away from others, but away from yourself and your true nature? 

Maybe take pause. But be careful when you pause not to draw yourself away from any and all people. 

Pause and notice which people you don’t self edit, strive, prove, or overfunction around. ANd which ones you can let go, show up relaxed, and just … be.

And I want you to know, it’s ok if you yet can’t think of people to fit the second half of that sentence)

Here’s what is harmful and important to start clocking in your system – 

When the system teaches you’re only empowered if you’re taking all matters into your own hands to manage, serve, and lead others – and it’s wrong or disempowered when you receive from others in a reciprocating manner that doesn’t require a power dynamic or investment that maxes out your credit card balance.

That’s what is causing you harm. That is what is driving the loneliness epidemic. THat is what is affecting you mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

That is what is raising your cortisol no matter how much you try and lower it.

Because the truth is this:

When a woman receives support from someone who actually gets her as an equal, who has been there, who has walked (and is still humbly walking) the path – her oxytocin increases and cortisol lowers. And the voices that try and squash her lose their power.

The experts who profit off her disconnection and self-imposed “empowerment” that covertly feeds their own power lose their grip.

Her serotonin and dopamine increases.

Her inner voice gets louder when it’s mirrored back from someone who genuinely wants her to hear it from herself.

Her gut microbiome starts functioning the way it is supposed to.

And when she can do this without pressure – the identity of being the “strong, independent, healed, able, generous one” begins to crack —

The trigger points in her neck and shoulders begin to diminish. She can take a deep breath without forcing it. Her smile no longer feels strained.

And the real expert steps forward: the voice of her own wild, feminine, inner wisdom.

A woman who listens to that voice when being held by someone else who is truly invested in amplifying her voice is dangerous.

And that is why – as you sit here reading this, wondering …

“Why do I feel so lonely? Why is friendship and community so hard these days? How did I get like this? What did I do wrong?”

I want you to hear nothing else except – you didn’t do this to yourself. Your loneliness and call for friendship is a call to come back home to your body's and Soul's original language.

You – as someone who is fiercely loyal to doing things the “right way” and taking charge – got caught up in a system that set you up to believe it’s all your fault, and it’s yours to fix so you can keep from holding the system accountable.

If you’re tired of doing everything right on paper and doing it all by yourself—for your mind, body, health, spirit, career, family —

…and there’s a whisper that it’s time for something wilder, more rebellious… more you —

Welcome.

This is the corner of the internet where I won’t tell you what you should be doing.

I won’t preach optimization or self-improvement as salvation.

I won’t applaud you for doing it all yourself (even though it is in fact an amazing thing – the weight you’ve been carrying all this time)

My work — grounded in decades of healthcare experience, scientific inquiry and research, and the deep intuitive soul work of guiding women home to themselves in mirrored, attuned community — is about helping you become the author of your own story and step into your next chapter as you – the version who is held in her wholeness while she continues to hold everyone else in theirs.

That’s what it means to Illuminate Freedom.

I’ve walked through this honest reckoning – of being surrounded by people I pour into but only receive care and attunement when I’m hurt, suffering, paying tens of thousands of dollars for it, or getting stuck in tit-for-tat, passive aggressive professional relationships that look like friendship but feel like war.

I’ve gone through the brutal awakening (and betrayal) from people I thought were my ride-or-dies were only there for me when it somehow benefited them, needing me to stay small, feeding them, and isolated from others so that they felt important and powerful. 

I’ve noticed – sometimes long after I poured into someone else on the hope that it would turn into a deeply attuned friendship – just how awful my body felt in those situations. 

I’ve stepped out of professional networks and identities I once pledged allegiance to when I recognized how challenging it felt to be myself in a system that wanted me to give up myself in order to keep it running.

I’ve turned away from people and isolated myself when it felt like I was the only person who actually had my best interest in mind.

And I’ve gotten the support to help me rewrite the narrative around what friendship and community not only look like – but feel like – and I’ve taken (and still continue to take) the brave, sometimes brutally challenging and humbling steps to rebuild that community piece by piece.

So believe me when I say that I get how vulnerable it can feel to get intimate with these honest thoughts, feelings, and reckonings about your lived reality.

But the good news is – the more you sink in and get intimate with the honest truth without trying to deny it or edit it within your own mind – the more you can see that those truths hold the doorway to what it is you truly want and desire.

And it’s impossible to step forward and receive what we desire unless we get cozy with the sometimes painful truths that got us to them in the first place.

So if you’re ready to move from

“Strong independent woman who gives to everyone else, but quietly feels alone”

to instead

“Wild woman who is seen, held, and celebrated in community without having to work so damn hard for it”

You’re in the right place.

This is the exact work I do with my Soul Story Mapping clients…

Like Carla - who went from being the woman who always went the extra mile to organize book club to meet everyone else’s needs and schedule only to receive a million last minute “oops, I’m just so busy, I can’t make it’s”  --

to instead...

...getting invited to a Galentine’s brunch she didn’t plan herself, and feeling like she could be fully honest with the women at the table instead of editing her words so she wouldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings, and being held in a small circle of local healthcare women who cross-referred patients with true collaboration, not competitiveness.

Carla is not a magical unicorn. She once sat right where you are. 

And so did I.

I won’t try and sell you the commodified “5-step process to creating community that gets you.”

It took a lifetime to get to this place and this narrative.

It’s a slow, steady process to rewrite it.

And while all good things take time – the good news is – it only takes a single first step to start the rewriting process.

And you can do that right now – 

If you’re curious to learn how – and with absolutely no pressure –  I invite you to choose the pathway that feels right for you today: 

• If you're craving deeper support around this and want to talk it out and map out your next steps with a woman who totally gets where you are (me!) -- treat yourself to a Soul Story Mapping Session

• If you’d like to receive more honest, deep writings like this without having to rely on an algorithm to insert it in the middle of your doom scroll – subscribe to my newsletter so it can be gently delivered to your inbox 

• If you want to literally hear the voices of other women who have gone from  “the woman who holds it together for everyone else” to “the woman is held by people who truly get her” – subscribe to the Sink and Swim podcast

• If you’re yearning to sit and reflect and maybe journal on this – bookmark this post for a day you’re wondering if you’re the only one who feels this way

And if none of those feel right - I just want to thank you for being here, for making it all the way down the page, for noticing what is going on as you read these words.

And if any parts of you feel doubt or loneliness -- just know you are beautiful, worthy, and so deserving of meaningful and genuine connections that can hold the whole of you. And being here reading this is one tiny step to affirming that truth.

Big hugs and wild love to you,