Building Community to Support Your Season of Life
Submitted by Audra Dinell, Owner of The Thread: A Women's Leadership Collective
Congratulations on your big move!
No matter if you’re new to town, or just new to your neighborhood, the transitions that come with moving can be a challenge. The logistics of figuring out what is where in the grocery aisle of your new grocery store can be enough to make you sweat, let alone figuring out your new route to work, while dropping the kids off at school beforehand and trying to get everywhere on time. Add all of this to trying to keep up with your workload and perform at your highest level and woof! Life is a lot sometimes.
One thing that can reduce your stress levels?
Building your very own tribe of women who are in a similar season of life as you.
Are you a mama? As much as you love your single girls, you need friends that are with kids too so that you don’t feel like the crazy one all the time! Busy building a business? Surround yourself with other entrepreneurs who can tell you the best accounting software to go with, their content batching tricks or how they create boundaries to avoid burnout. If you’re climbing the corporate ladder, find some women who can swing the 45-minute lunch date because they know you’re not going to get a mani with them in the middle of the day.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re single or married, climbing the corporate ladder or building your own business, doing a nap-time freelance hustle or working remotely full time, we all need like-minded people in our daily life to keep us sane and help to normalize what we’re going through. We need women to celebrate with, to call when we want a quick second opinion or to commiserate with when the day has been rough. Sometimes, we also need them to bring wine, so bonus points if you find a friend with good taste in pinot noir.
Here are some tips to help you build your bench of like-minded ladies:
- Introduce yourself to your neighbors. You never know who you will find before the door. It might just be your (or your kids’) new bestie. Seriously, this happens!
- In fact, why don’t you just introduce yourself to everyone you meet? Let them know you just moved to the neighborhood, see what information pops up that you might be interested in. A neighborhood book club maybe?
- Explore your new neighborhood’s coffee shop, brunch spot or bookstore, and give someone a sincere compliment. Ain’t no shame in the tribe-building game. When sparks fly from it, you know it’s a friendship fit!
- Introduce yourself to the parents at your kids’ school or soccer team. This one is easy. You already know you have one thing in common – kids!
- See someone on social media who is doing something cool? Message them and grab coffee! This is one of the best ways to build your tribe and one of my all-time favorite ways to meet cool women in Wichita.
- Consider joining The Thread where you’ll meet a variety of career-focused women from all different backgrounds who are ambitious about hitting their goals and building their community. Find out more information visit thethreadwlc.com or find us on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn at @thethread.
Before you know it, you’ll settle into a new routine and the logistics of daily life will be on autopilot. Then you and your girlfriends will fall into a routine of happy hour at your favorite spot or a quick mid-day coffee break. You’ll have a tribe to lean on, to support, to laugh with and to let down the walls with. And, trust me, you’ll feel more at home than ever.