Networking asks: what can we do for each other? A room without an agenda just asks: how are you, really?
I spent most of my career excellent at the first kind of room. I could work a conference, a panel, a professional dinner, extracting and offering value with practiced ease. What I didn’t have, for a long time, was a room where nobody wanted anything from me at all.
Key takeaways
- Networking is transactional. Belonging means being known even when you’re not performing.
- Deep friendships tend to form when someone, often you, is honest first.
- Building a new circle in your 40s, 50s or beyond takes intention, and it usually starts small.
The Friendships That Only Became Possible Once I Stopped Performing
The friendships I have now didn’t form in rooms where I was impressive. They formed in the unglamorous middle of things: admitting I didn’t have it figured out, showing up without an agenda of my own, letting someone see the parts of the week that weren’t a highlight reel. Every meaningful connection I’ve built since started with someone being braver than “I’m fine” first, usually me.
Belonging Over Networking
Networking is transactional by design, and there’s nothing wrong with that in its place. But it can’t substitute for belonging, and a lot of us reach midlife with an impressive professional network and almost no one to call at 11pm when something actually falls apart. Those are different rooms, built for different reasons, and we need both. But only one of them will hold you when you’re not performing well.
Building Your Own Circle When the Old One Doesn’t Fit Anymore
Sometimes the friend group that made sense for one version of you doesn’t make sense for who you’re becoming. That’s an uncomfortable, quiet kind of grief nobody prepares you for. Building a new circle in your 40s, 50s, or beyond isn’t the same as making friends at twenty-two. It requires more intention, and it usually starts smaller than you’d like: one honest conversation, one shared vulnerable moment, one room you keep choosing to return to.
That’s part of why this collective exists: to be a room without an agenda, where growing wild doesn’t have to happen alone.
Circles and community events are coming soon. Join the list to be first in the room.
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