In good company
Everyone needs identity, belonging, and purpose.
We spend a lot of time together talking about how to help meet our kids’ deepest needs and answer their deepest questions in a digital age: for identity (who am I?), belonging (where do I fit?), and purpose (what difference can I make?). This is so important. As Kara Powell describes it, these questions are at a “rolling boil” in those under 30, when change is constant; it is a gift to help orient the ones we love.
But we don’t stop asking, or needing to answer, these questions on our 30th birthdays. They may be at a low simmer, but to be the happy, healthy, whole parents we want to be, these questions need satisfying answers at every age.
We can find those answers in so many places: in our past, our present, our faith, our families, our roles, our passions. I was reminded this weekend that we can also find them in our friends.
On Sunday, I returned from two nights away with the twelve gals of Articles Club. Though Articles Club is a monthly gathering (going on eleven years!), it is also more than that: in between meetings, we celebrate each other’s wins, carry each other’s burdens, keep each other’s secrets. We encourage, challenge, hype up, comfort, and care for one another. We bring food, we sit and listen, we share clothes and pressure washers and slumber pods and books. We laugh, so much. We cry, so much. It is very precious to me.
Our weekend away arrived on the heels of my advanced copy of Ashlee Gadd’s newest Coffee + Crumbs book, and a better match couldn’t have been made in heaven.
“You’re In Good Company is a collection of essays and recipes that “humbly offer a full plate of our trials and triumphs, all the ways we’ve gotten friendship wrong and all the ways we’re trying to get it right. This is a book about gathering and making space, not just for bodies and plates and conversations, but also for vulnerability, belonging, empathy, communion, and love. This is a book about flinging open our doors as well as our hearts.”
I can’t wait to read it cover to cover. In honor of its launch (two days ago!), I thought it might be fun to share a bit about our girls’ weekend — what we did, and how we made it meaningful.
First, we started planning last year. A getaway in January, February, or March means we are collectively pulling out twelve calendars in August, often using a Doodle poll to find a weekend that works for everyone. We’ve also found that choosing a lake house just 1.5 hours away allows for late arrivals and early departures when needed.
Over the years we’ve planned more and less aggressively, but we do find it helpful for someone to keep an eye on food and drinks (spearheading the Sign-Up Genius to make sure every meal is covered); someone to work up a loose itinerary (and send a packing list); and someone to marshal the logistics (booking the rental, coordinating payment, assigning beds).
And then, on the big day, we gather!
On the docket for Friday: a trickle of arrivals, pistachio-boursin-fig dip and drinks on the deck, lasagna for dinner, Mahjong lessons for all, and chatting until we couldn’t keep our eyes open.
Saturday began with hash brown casserole, berries, and yogurt. We stayed in our pajamas for hours, some gals creating goal punch cards, some learning to embroider with beads, some painting their nails, and others just chatting and marveling at the lake view. At least one person napped on the sofa.
After lunch (zhushed Costco chicken salad on croissants) we roused ourselves for some movement: yoga on the dock and brisk walks out on the road, heads bent in conversational twos and threes. Then more crafting, more chatting, more snacking, more sitting and gazing at the view. Steph led us in trivia, and we cackled our way through categories like “acronyms,” “spouses, kids, and pets,” and “iconic memories.”
We gathered around the table again for dinner (chicken tortilla soup, cornbread in mini cast iron skillets, Caesar salad), and then it was time for two highlights of the weekend: a Favorite Things exchange and “signature” telestrations.
You’ve probably heard of a Favorite Things exchange before, but ours had a twist: each offering had to be inspired by Articles Club in some way. From a custom painting to a cookbook studded with post-it notes (“great potluck addition!”), a hosting starter kit, a brush marker set, and an L.L. Bean bag embroidered with one of our impenetrable acronyms, each gift pointed to a memory, a tradition, an idiosyncrasy, an inside joke.
And then to our final activity of the night, an invention all our own inspired by one of Jennifer Shoop’s thought exercises and the classic game Telestrations. Her “signatures” post came up in conversation a few months ago; we were all touched by the poignant, poetic portraits she drew of the people she loves. We decided to offer this gift of being seen and known and loved to each other, passing tiny cards around the table and jotting down nouns and phrases, attempting to capture each other’s essences.
Lest you think we’re all perfectly in tune 100% of the time — some gals were gung-ho about this at the outset, while others hemmed and hawed. I suspect some were worried about what their cards would say, whether they’d like the picture drawn by their friends. Others were simply mortified by the idea of anyone saying anything nice about them, or maybe found it hard to believe that anyone would say anything nice about them.
But proceed we did. And once the cards had returned to their owners, I strong-armed each gal into reading hers aloud, even if it had to be done through (happy) tears. There is something profound and healing about receiving the love others have for you, of being reminded who you are and what you have to offer the world. I’ll keep my card forever.
The next morning was a juxtaposition of slow, pajama-clad coffee sips and conversation and then a flurry of cleaning, hugs, and goodbyes. Til next month, and next year.
When I think about my own need for identity, purpose, and belonging, I think about these women. I think about this weekend, and how it answered questions I didn’t know I was asking, in both general and specific ways.
So who am I? According to these friends, I am eye contact and nodding while listening, the next best question, a loving mom, steady and true, casual cursive, a writer, a big sister to everyone, and string lights personified — cozy, bright, a guiding peace.
Where do I fit? Around an island, arranging snacks. Squeezed in on the couch, laughing until my cheeks hurt. Throwing out ideas, going first, waking up last. With these women, as my whole self, always.
And what difference can I make? I can slide a lasagna into the oven to feed my people. I can listen with tissues and tears. I can say the true thing, even if it’s prickly. I can bring people together, even if it’s scary. I can insist others receive love even when they don’t feel worthy of it. And I can bear witness to each one of these precious lives.
When asked what advice she has for someone who wants deep friendships but isn’t sure where to start, Ashlee offered up two sentiments:
“1) Good things take time, and 2) Every deposit matters. Most people don’t enter into friendships ready to go on a girls’ trip or get matching tattoos within 24 hours. Trust and vulnerability are sacred gifts earned over time. Having said that, every text matters. Every phone call matters. Every 7-minute conversation in the church parking lot matters. All of these acts drop small but significant deposits into the friendship bank. And while you may not even notice—over days and weeks and months and years—interest is accruing in the background. To sum it up another way: start small (I like your jeans! Can I get your number? Want to grab coffee sometime?) and then stay the course.”
And also this, from her essay (in the book!) about the magic of showing up monthly, over many years, for dinner with friends:
“It’s like a Polaroid developing slowly, gradually. You just have to wait, and wait, and keep showing up every month, over and over, until the picture gets a little clearer, a little more defined, until one day you can finally see all the colors and you realize, I can hardly remember my life without these women, without these dinners. The sum is better than the parts. And I mean that in terms of us, our actual selves, and also in the sheer hours we’ve logged together.”
Coffee + Crumbs was the first Substack I ever paid for. So many years later, I am still proud to support mother-storytellers. I’d love to give away one copy of You’re In Good Company to a paid subscriber — just leave a comment below! I’ll draw a winner next Wednesday, March 25. xo
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First Pressley and now you with the odes to articles club that make this pregnant gal cry. 🤪 love yall so much!
Grateful for that first email, for 11 years of vulnerability, for you always asking the next best question. IGTBK ❤️