This Week at The After Party: The Power of Female Friendship

 Opening 🥂 Toast

To the women building their own tables, choosing their own people, and loving louder — spoiler alert: this is what forever looks like.

To the ones who stayed.
To the ones who became family.
To the ones who showed up in sweatpants with snacks and the truth.
To the friends who didn’t flinch when things got weird, dark, or messy.
To the people who made us feel lovable when we forgot how to love ourselves.

Let’s be honest: friendship isn’t cute brunches and coordinated birthday texts.

It’s showing up when your friend’s life is falling apart, and still showing up when they start putting it back together. It’s witnessing each other’s growth and choosing not to be threatened by it.

Here’s the real tea:

• 1 in 5 women over 45 reports feeling lonely "often or always."

• According to a 2023 Harvard study, strong social relationships reduce mortality risk by 50%. That’s better than quitting smoking.

• And yet, female friendships peak in emotional intimacy and loyalty in midlife, especially among women who’ve gone through some sh*t and are done pretending.

This is your reminder: you’re not too late to find your people. And you’re not wrong for grieving the ones who couldn’t grow with you.

➡️ After Dana's divorce, her best friend of 15 years fell away. But the woman she met at a book club is now her emergency contact. Real talk.

➡️ When Carmen turned 52, she told her therapist she didn’t know who she’d call if she had a panic attack. Six months later, she started a monthly dinner club. It’s been running for 3 years.

(Stories above from anonymous submissions)

We don’t always get to keep the people we thought we’d grow old with.

But sometimes?
The best friendships start after the crisis. After the shedding. After the silence.

So here’s to the ones we’re still becoming.

Here’s to friendship that feels like home, and dares us to become more of ourselves.
Here’s to the found fam.
Here’s to the real ones. No timeline. No apologies. No shrinking.

Truth 💣 Bomb

Losing a friend can gut you more than a breakup, and no one throws you a party or brings you soup.

No awkward “we need to talk” text.
No closure dinner.
Just… silence.
Slow fades.
Ghosting.
A weird vibe that never resets.

It deserves grieving, but it also deserves reframing.

We’re not just talking about loss, we’re talking about capacity.

The power of female friendship is real medicine: it heals, it grows us, and, biologically speaking, it literally keeps us alive.

“Female friendships are emotional power plants. They light us up and keep us going.” – Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship

And yet, most of us are never taught how to process friendship breakups.
No rituals.
No community container for loss.

But the deeper wound is this: many women stop seeking new connection entirely. They accept loneliness as the new normal.

You don’t have to.

🔍 Ask Yourself

• Who would I call if I was spiraling at 2 AM?

• Which friendship have I outgrown but haven’t grieved?

• When was the last time I initiated connection, not out of obligation, but intention?What would I do differently if I truly believed my best years were still ahead?

✍️ Challenge of The Week

1. Make a “real ones” list, people who’ve shown up for you in real, consistent ways. Text one of them a memory you cherish.

2. Start a ‘friend date’ ritual, coffee, walk, FaceTime, whatever. Put it on the calendar, make it consistent.

3. Grieve it, if you lost someone you thought you'd have forever, write a letter you’ll never send. Then burn it, bury it, or screenshot and archive it. That closure is for you.

📚 Want To Go Deeper?

• 🔗 How to Make (and Keep) Friends According to Science — Marisa Franco. In this episode, Marisa explains the mental, physical, and social effects of friendship.

• 🔗 Friendship Breakups Suck More Than Romantic Ones — By Brina Patel for Wondermind. On why there’s no clear-cut framework for getting over a friendship.

• 🔗 Why Making Friends as an Adult Feels Impossible & What To Do About It — Mel Robbins on why friendship feels so much harder in adulthood, and more importantly, how to change that.

Mirror 🪞 Talk

“To the me who wondered if she’s:
Too much,
Too complicated,
Too late.

Nah. Your people are still out there. Go find them.”

👑 The Guest List

Tracee Ellis Ross — Actor. Advocate. Architect of Joy.

If female friendship had a spiritual leader, it might just be Tracee Ellis Ross.

At 52, she’s unapologetically single, child-free by choice, and deeply rooted in love, the kind that comes from within and the kind that shows up in the form of ride-or-die women.

We’ve watched her shine on screen, from her breakout role on Girlfriends to her Emmy-nominated run on Black-ish, and off screen, as the founder and CEO of Pattern Beauty, her game-changing brand made specifically for textured hair.

But Tracee’s real genius?

The way she lives her values in public. She’s built her life around joy, solitude, creativity, and intentional community, especially among women.

While the world often tells women to shrink, partner up, or disappear after 40, Tracee expanded:

She built a beauty brand in her late 40s.
She became the first Black woman to host the AMAs solo in 2018.
She made deep female friendship feel like something to aspire to, not just something you stumble into.

“My friends are the loves of my life. Our friendships are fierce, funny, and sacred.”

She’s proof that found family isn’t a backup plan, it’s the whole plan. And that we don’t need to wait for a wedding, a child, or a romantic partner to feel complete, celebrated, and held.

Tracee reminds us what’s possible when we prioritize the friendships that fill our cup, and release the ones that drain it.

That viral video of her dancing in a bathrobe with a glass of wine in her kitchen, no filter, no caption, just vibes.

That’s the Tracee effect: grounded, glowing, and completely in her own energy.

🎧 Listen: Tracee on The Michelle Obama Podcast, IMO talking about “Dating as a "Choiceful Woman" and What It Means to Live a Full Life.”

📖 Read: “Tracee Ellis Ross Is Being Praised For Her Latest Comments About Being Childfree And Single In Her 50s” — Buzzfeed

🎥 Watch: Her 2020 TED Talk, “A Woman’s Fury Holds Lifetimes of Wisdom” — a bold, funny, and raw reclamation of feminine rage, voice, and visibility.

Party 🎁 Favors

📚Read it! Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close by Aminatou Sow. An inspiring and entertainment testament to the power of society’s most underappreciated relationship.

 👚 Buy it! Pattern’s Moisture Milk — This award-winning lightweight cream provides long-lasting moisture to dry hair, reduces breakage & keeps unwanted frizz at bay.

🧘‍♀️ Enjoy It! Long Distance Friendship Gift Box Set — by Dear Ava. Show your appreciation for your friend and family with this delicate piece.

📣 Last Call…

Before we turn the lights up...

What if this next chapter isn’t your second act, but your real debut? Hit reply and share what your messy middle has taught you.

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Until next week,