The Power of Female Friendships
Written in March 2026 I celebrated turning thirty last month and while taking in the people across the dinner table (and later, the dancefloor), I was struck by a feeling that’s hit me repeatedly the past few years: a quiet sense of awe toward the women in my life and how much their love and friendship mean to me.
Whenever I think about pivotal phases of my life, major moments, and perspective shifts, they are always linked to one or more of my close female friendships. My best friend in the world, the one who has been by my side for the entirety of my adult life, is one such woman.
We met in college - our dorm rooms were next door to each other. What started out as tentative waves in the hallway turned into invites to room parties, an expanding friend group, hours-long dinner conversations that turned into even more hours chatting in the stairwell near our rooms. It led to disagreements as we both went through the sensitive phases of figuring out who the fuck we were and repairing them with a deeper understanding of each other and ourselves. It’s involved moves across the country and across the world, and emotional and practical support through personal tragedies. Now, it is an unbreakable bond maintained by bi-weekly video calls between the U.S. and U.K. where we chat for ages (the last call was genuinely just shy of 8 hours) and dissect our interpersonal relationships, our perfectionist, people-pleasing, over-achieving, co-dependent patterns and attachment styles, laughing about the most ridiculous things, and sharing our dreams with each other, giving them form simply through speaking them aloud.
After over a decade of friendship as deep as ours, it would be impossible to sum up the impact she has had on me in this short essay, but what I will say is that I am grateful for her love, support, insight, and friendship daily. She’s one of the few people in the world who truly sees me, who I truly see, and who I trust to be a foundational support and guide through the twists and turns of life. The depth of love between the two of us is a miraculous thing.
While that love and attunement was built over years and years, I am extremely lucky to say that in the year and a half since moving to Edinburgh, I’ve also built a few remarkable female friendships. My best friend has been with me through every phase of my adult life - she has seen the ups and downs, the attempts to adopt a multitude of identities to see what sticks before deciding to embrace my multifaceted nature and be my whole, authentic self. The friends I’ve made since moving have been pivotal in helping that authentic self come to life, even if they weren’t a part of the journey to get here.
When I studied abroad in London in 2017, what made me fall in love with the U.K. so much was how easy it felt to access those seemingly disparate parts of myself. Growing up in a small town in Southern California, access to resources, activities, and culture was limited by finances and the time and ability to drive long distances to reach them. In London, everything was on my doorstep. I could go to a show at Shakespeare’s Globe one night, an 80’s power ballad night at a club the next, and spend the day in between sipping coffee and reading in a park or visiting a world-class museum for free. On long weekends, I could take a short trip to Barcelona or Edinburgh (my favorite, of course). There were friends during that period of my life who were my partners in expansion. Our shared interests, enthusiasm, humor, and willingness to explore were essential in making my time in London as evolutionary as it was. Though we are no longer friends, I still hold fondness for them in my heart and am grateful for the time we had together. I wouldn’t be who I am without that time abroad with them, or the few years of deep friendship after.
The access to my potential and authentic self I felt during that semester in London was nothing compared to what I’ve felt here in Edinburgh, and the women in my life now are essential to that. Maybe it’s being in a city like Edinburgh that draws creative, thoughtful, tenacious people. Maybe it’s the experience of being in your late 20s and early 30s. Maybe it’s just being in the right place at the right time. But the women in my life here are deep wells of kindness, warmth, spirit, determination, creativity, intelligence, strength, and vivacity. Whether I need a drunken night out dancing and being carefree, feedback and a person to bounce ideas off of for my next creative work, deep chats in the dark corner of a bar, someone to accompany me on a trip to the Highlands or the Lake District, or someone to help make my 30th birthday truly magical despite being so far from home, the women are there.
An unreal dinner made for me by one of my precious friends, to celebrate my 30th. We spent the night sitting around this table and talking about everything under the sun for hours. It was magical.
On my thirtieth, in particular, the realization hit that fierce female friendships, new and old, are the lifeblood of my existence. It felt like a period of personal transformation simply through aging, but more than that, as a direct result of cultivating such intentional female friendships. The women in my life inspire me not only through their kindness and support but also through the lives they lead.
Some of the incredible things the women in my life have done or are doing:
Rebuilt a life from scratch after tragedy pulled the rug out from under her
Wrote a truly phenomenal feature-length screenplay about women and power
Created a thriving mentorship program at her corporate job
Traveling the world, collecting experiences and growing along the way
Confronting painful family dynamics head-on, in an attempt to preserve those relationships
Become a professor at a world-leading university and recently bought a flat of her own
Become a successful, traditionally published romance novelist
Actively building one of the deepest, healthiest romantic relationships I’ve ever witnessed, facing lifelong trauma and learned coping mechanisms in the process
Actively disengaging from a (very) long-term romantic relationship that she’s realized is no longer right for her
Building a career as a theatre director and academic
Working in immigration law to protect immigrants from the absolutely heinous cruelty happening in the U.S. right now
And truly, the list could go on. Simply witnessing their brilliance is inspiring. But being able to call them friends and lean on their support and wisdom in my own life is transformative.
As a teen, I assumed adult female friendships primarily consisted of wild nights out on the town, at home self-care and movie nights, brunching, and maybe the occasional girls’ trip. What I’ve discovered is that they often do include those things, and those things are wonderful, but they can run so much deeper.
Female friendships can be the soft place to land when life gets too hard to bear alone. They can be an incredibly generative space where your wildest dreams or most creative ideas are born. They can be where you vent your daily frustrations. They can be where you face your deepest interpersonal patterns and work on becoming a better, more secure, kinder, stronger human being. They can be the place where you find yourself. They can be the first place you share your biggest successes and deepest fears. They can be the springboard that launches you into your happiest, most authentic, most fulfilled life.
I think we’re often told that a romantic relationship is where we’re meant to find this type of support. And because of that, we, especially as women, are told to prioritize finding a partner if we want someone to fulfill those roles in our lives. I do believe some romantic relationships can contain all of this and more. But I also believe that most don’t and that the pursuit of romance at the expense of deep friendship leaves women without the kinds of connections that can sustain them, ultimately leaving them endlessly unsatisfied, even stunted. And even if you do find a romantic partner who can give you these things, expecting them to fulfill all of those needs all the time, completely alone is not stable or sustainable. Whether you’re in a profoundly wonderful romantic relationship or not, cultivating deep female friendships can only make your life better.
If you’ve yet to experience this kind of friendship, I encourage you to take the leap and welcome it into your life. Broach a deeper, more vulnerable topic with a trusted, but more surface-level friend and see how it goes. Invite an acquaintance to lunch or coffee and have a chat. Skip a night spent swiping on dating apps or trying to meet people in bars in favor of inviting some friends over and talking over drinks. Ask them about their career goals, how their relationship is with their family, what their favorite movie was as a child and why, what they would do with their lives if money were not a concern. You might be surprised by the insights and commonalities you discover.
And if you’ve read this and any women in particular come to mind, take a moment today to tell them how much they mean to you. It can never be said too much.
