The Female Ecosystem
Last week I met up with a girl I hadn’t seen since I was fifteen. Thirty-three years ago.
It’s an incredible thing to look into someone’s face you last saw when you both had braces and rolled up your school skirts. Scary and exciting and strangely life-affirming. We met for a quick coffee that spiralled into nearly three hours, and left with a firm plan to do it again — with wine next time. We had so much in common, marriage, children, some disappointment and heartbreak, and some celebrations and success. There was also plenty that was different. But even though we’d walked separate paths, there was a deep sense of recognition. The way we’d been shaped by the same generational tides, the same boomer-parent dynamics, the same late-nineties teenage chaos. And even though we thought we sat on opposite sides of the political fence, we still looked at the world through a very similar lens.
It got me thinking about female friendship, and this living, breathing ecosystem that we as women weave through our lives. Deep roots, passing seasons, things that bloom for a while and fade away, yet somehow nourish the whole.
As we get older, I think we can curate too tightly. You hear people say, I’m not looking for new friends. I understand it. Life is busy, and deep friendship takes care and time. But when we close the circle too much, we stop letting the magic in. Because there are extraordinary women everywhere, shaping our days in quiet, powerful ways.
Some friendships are like fireworks. They appear out of nowhere, light up the sky for a moment, and remind you of some part of yourself you’ve forgotten or have let go of. There’s a young yoga teacher whose class I go to in London. She’s twenty years my junior, carving out her space in the city with grit and humour, hustling from studio to studio and still managing to hold space with grace. Watching her is like watching possibility in motion. I’m inspired by her craft and her energy, by how she’s finding her voice in a world that’s faster and louder than the one I began teaching in.
Recently I sat opposite a beautiful woman, on a communal table at a wine tasting dinner. We made small talk initially, about the where and what of our lives, before moving on to motherhood, our experiences of the pandemic, and our favourite parts of London. But from the start was this instant warmth, that easy, generous energy that women so often have for each other. Later, I discovered she’s a writer, a book published, another one on the way, and again, I felt that spark of female pride in her accomplishments.
These moments, brief and bright, are what I think of as mettā in motion: the friendliness of spirit, the kindness that connects us when we simply meet each other with an open heart.
Sometimes it’s even smaller than that. The woman you smile at in the street with the newborn strapped to her chest. The one in the restaurant bathroom whose shoes you quietly admire. The lady in the coffee queue with a fabulous new blowout. Those tiny flashes of recognition, woman to woman — I see you, you’re doing great, you look beautiful, hang in there — they’re part of it too. The soft web of connection that keeps the feminine ecosystem humming.
Yoga has also brought many women into my life for short, intense periods. Retreats, trainings, deep practice containers where you share space, stories, sometimes silence. Years ago in Maui, I met a woman during a time of deep meditation and fasting. I lost my voice, not medically, just profoundly, for two days, and she quietly guided me through it, caring for me without needing words. We haven’t kept in touch, and I think she’s even fallen off my social media, but she left a remembering with me.
Then there are those that do loop back around, come back for a season 2. This summer, I went to the wedding of a woman I’d worked with in my first TV production job. Back then, she was my fearless boss — independent, fiery, unstoppable. We were close for a few years, then life and oceans took us in different directions. A decade later, I found myself watching her walk down the aisle in a full-on Cinderella dress, completely and utterly in love, and beginning a new stage of her life.
There are the ones who stay steady even from afar. The returning friendships. Like the group of women I’ve just been with in France. A small, intentional retreat, where yoga was the thread that wove us together. What began as students and travellers has become something far deeper — a circle of women who quietly support one another. We don’t talk every day, but we are a constant presence in each other’s lives, an unspoken net of care. That, too, is friendship. The slow, nourishing kind that keeps the whole ecosystem alive.
My personal ecosystem has some of its strongest roots in Barbados. The women who’ve grown with me over the last twenty years. The ones who did the toddler years, the school runs, the heartbreaks, and the healing. My wise ones, my wild ones, my last gal standing, and first call in a pinch. There’s more about them in my post on Barbados, but they’re the ones who built the everyday fabric of my adult life.
And beneath it all are the gnarly roots.
The friends (one really) who’ve known me all the way through since I was eighteen. Who’ve seen the best and worst and still show up, exactly as they always have. The girls who met in a pub at eighteen aren’t the same women at forty-eight, but if you can keep showing up for each other through all those intervening years, something rare grows between you. Thick roots with the rings of decades running through them to steady and hold fast when your world shakes.
Female friendship isn’t one thing. It’s an ecosystem. Interwoven circles that grow, intersect, fade, and return. Some burst brightly and move on. Some drift quietly beneath the surface. Others dig deep, holding everything in place. Together, they replenish, die back, and bloom again — keeping the landscape alive.