The passing of Gloria Steinem recently made me think about women.
Not feminism exactly. Not politics.
Women.
The ones who stand beside us. Who celebrate our wins without measuring them against their own. Who sit with us when things are hard. Who tell us the truth, even when it isn't necessarily the truth we were hoping to hear.
The women who make us laugh.
The women who remind us who we are.
And inevitably, I thought about Nikki.
Nikki and I met in 2024 in a coaching class. We were part of a small cohort working toward the same goal—completing our Level 1 coaching requirements so we could take our certification exam.
We hit it off pretty quickly.
There was something about her warm smile, sunny personality and confidence that I gravitated toward. Something a little different from me, but familiar at the same time.
For weeks, we practiced together. We coached one another, refined our skills, gave feedback and eventually crossed the finish line together.
When the program ended, Nikki, another coach from our cohort and I decided to keep meeting every couple of weeks. The idea was to check in on our practices, talk about clients and continue learning from one another.
At least that's how it started.
Soon the conversations stretched beyond coaching.
We talked about our kids. Our families. Our careers. Our relationships. The things we were struggling with and the things we were dreaming about.
Biweekly conversations became weekly. Weekly became more often.
And somewhere along the way, Nikki and I stopped being two coaches who stayed in touch after class.
We became friends.
And then, somehow, family.
Today, we talk just about every day.
There is always something to talk about.
And plenty of it isn't particularly profound.
We talk about men. We dissect the latest drama. We share fashion finds and opinions. We send each other things that require immediate discussion and occasionally devote a ridiculous amount of analysis to situations that probably deserve about thirty seconds.
There are moments when two accomplished, grown women—with careers, children, responsibilities and decades of life experience—sound remarkably like teenage girls on the phone.
I love that about us.
Because somewhere in all the seriousness of adulthood, friendship can return us to parts of ourselves we may have forgotten.
The playful parts.
The ridiculous parts.
The girl who existed before all the titles and responsibilities accumulated.
Maybe the people who know us best don't only witness who we're becoming.
Sometimes they remind us of who we've always been.
What strikes me most about my friendship with Nikki is when it happened.
She didn't know me as a child. She wasn't my college roommate. We didn't stand beside each other at our weddings or raise our babies together.
She entered my life when I was already a fully formed adult woman.
And somehow, she became one of my people.
There is something extraordinary about the friendships that carry decades of history. The people who knew us before marriages and careers and children. The ones who remember versions of ourselves we barely recognize anymore.
But I've discovered there is something extraordinary about being found later, too.
Because Nikki didn't meet the twenty-year-old version of me.
She met me as I am.
With the history. The accomplishments. The scars. The confidence I've earned and the insecurities I still carry. The lessons I've learned and the ones I apparently need to learn a few more times.
And I met her the same way.
We came from different backgrounds and had lived very different lives. But the more we talked, the more we discovered that so many of the themes underneath our experiences were remarkably similar.
So naturally, we decided to write a book together.
Because apparently becoming close friends wasn't enough of a commitment.
The book is still under construction.
We'll get back to it one of these days.
But somewhere in the process of trying to write about our experiences and how they might help other women, something far more important emerged.
Sisterhood.
For me, Nikki is one of the few people with whom I feel completely and wholly safe.
There is no performance required.
I don't have to make the good things smaller. I don't have to make the hard things more palatable. I don't have to arrive with the polished version of the story.
I can celebrate loudly with her.
I can fall apart with her.
I can be uncertain.
I can be ridiculous.
I can simply show up as I am.
And there is something noticeably absent from our friendship:
Competition.
Her success doesn't diminish mine.
When something wonderful happens for Nikki, I genuinely celebrate it. I want her to win. I want her to take up space. I want her to become everything she's working toward.
And I know she wants the same for me.
When one of us is struggling, the other sits there too.
But sitting beside someone doesn't always mean agreeing with her.
Nikki will absolutely and undeniably call me out on my bullshit.
Constructively. With love. But she will call it.
And I value that enormously.
Because safety isn't having someone agree with everything you say.
Sometimes safety is knowing someone loves you enough to challenge the story you're telling yourself—and knowing that challenge poses absolutely no threat to the relationship.
Which brings me back to coaching.
One of the fundamentals of coaching is the belief that the person sitting across from us already has the answers within them.
Our job isn't to tell someone what to do.
It's to listen. Ask the questions. Challenge assumptions. Create enough space for someone to hear what she already knows.
I know this.
I practice it with my clients.
I believe it deeply.
And then, apparently, when it comes to my own life, I occasionally forget all of it.
That's where Nikki comes in.
I can bring her a situation and turn it over seventeen different ways.
I can explain every nuance, explore every possible interpretation and occasionally build a remarkably compelling case for the answer I would prefer to be true.
She listens.
She asks questions.
And eventually, in one way or another, she hands it right back to me.
You already know.
Damn it.
I usually do.
I may not like the answer. I may not be ready to face it. I may need to circle it seventeen more times. I may even check again tomorrow to see if perhaps the answer has changed overnight.
But I know.
Nikki didn't teach me that.
She makes me practice it.
She makes the coach practice what she preaches.
And that's the gift.
She doesn't make me more dependent on her wisdom.
She reminds me to trust my own.
The older I get, the more I understand how rare—and how important—it is to find people like that.
Your tribe.
Your sisters. Your brothers. Your supporters.
The people who celebrate without competing. Who listen without judging. Who challenge without diminishing. Who give as freely as they receive. Who somehow leave you feeling more like yourself after you've spent time with them.
Some of those people will have known us almost our entire lives.
They'll remember who we were at twenty. They'll know the stories before we have to tell them. They'll carry pieces of our history simply because they were there for it.
And then there are people like Nikki.
People who arrive later.
They didn't know the girl you were. They weren't there for the choices you made, the mistakes, the heartbreaks, the reinventions or the thousand tiny moments that shaped you into the person you are now.
They meet you here.
And maybe there's something particularly beautiful about that.
Nikki wasn't around to help me heal my old wounds.
But she's here to see me with my scars.
She doesn't need to have witnessed how each one got there to understand that they're part of me.
She doesn't treat them as damage to be repaired or history to be overcome.
They're simply part of the woman she knows.
Just as her history is part of the woman I know.
Maybe that's one of the gifts of being found later.
We don't have to have witnessed everything that shaped another person to see them fully now.
Nikki didn't inherit some earlier version of me.
She met the woman standing in front of her.
And somehow, as I've shared the pieces of myself that came before her, she's helped me understand some of them differently.
Not by telling me who I am.
But by giving me a place where I don't have to perform who I think I'm supposed to be.
I can be ambitious and uncertain.
Strong and scared.
Wise and completely full of shit.
I can be the coach who knows better and the woman who still needs to call her best friend and turn the same problem over seventeen different ways.
I can be serious.
I can be ridiculous.
I can be all of it.
And so can she.
Maybe that's what sisterhood has come to mean to me.
Not someone who completes you.
Not someone who has all your answers.
But someone who creates enough safety for you to hear your own.
Someone who sees the woman you've become while making room for every woman you've been along the way.
Someone who doesn't ask you to shrink, polish, explain or perform.
Someone with whom you can simply show up.
As we change.
As we grow.
As we are.
