As grown women, it’s easy to assume that everyone is super busy, that nobody has time for new friendships or connections.
But if you admire someone, chances are there’s some kind of real connection there.
I’ve found that when I follow these impulses, and have the courage to articulate them and follow up, it often leads to great friendships, alliances, or collaborations.
And when other women have reached out to me, putting themselves out there and being honest that something I’ve done or said has meant something to them, I always find myself moved, surprised, and inspired to make room for exploring that connection.
Open yourself up to intergenerational friendships and alliances.
Because it’s easiest to make friends when we’re just starting out in the world, many of us tend to get and stay close with women our own age. For a lot of us, our closest women friends are women we went to school with, or connected with when we were just starting out in life.
It’s great—and necessary!--to have close friendships with women in the same stage of life, so we have common ground and can go through similar phases and changes together.
But if we limit our connections with other women to our own age group, we miss out on the amazing opportunities for growth and learning that can come from intergenerational friendships.
One of my favorite female friendships is with a woman who’s technically old enough to be my mom.
She’s vibrant, creative, and a total inspiration to me—and has been through so many of the things I’m grappling with now and has an incredible perspective on it all.
I also have a group of female friends who are all about ten years younger than I am. Their lives look different from mine—only a few of them have partners, and none of them have mortgages or kids.
But the different phase of life they’re in reminds me to stay curious, experimental and open with my own life—and they tell me that it’s great for them to see someone who’s a little further along with all the life-structure stuff and shares their values.
As I’ve opened up to friendships and professional relationships with women of different generations, those relationships have opened me up to a rich variety of perspectives on what it is to be a woman—and to a real understanding of the old saw that “age is just a number”—and that any age can look and feel however we want it to.