This week I sat down with our new best friend and community-building-sherpa, Dominica Ruta for one of my favorite episodes to date. Dominica is a fellow cyclebraker, Mama, and writer of the recent novel "All the Mothers," where she explores blending families based on shared motherhood, co-carrying the load, de-shaming our shiitake and love transcending the forms we were told it comes in.

We gushed about the invisible oxygen that keeps so many of us alive: connection, female friendship, being witnessed, and low-lift hangs that transform us from the inside out.

I share more than I ever have about my journey from nuclear family into intimacy with other women, and we address how mothers can have both, deep intimate nourishing connection with other women without leaving their marriages.

We explored how relational needs drive so much of our behavior (yes, even the things we judge ourselves for), why safe community is not a luxury but a survival strategy, and how healing often happens not in a therapist’s office, but sitting cross-legged on a friend’s rug watching "Real Housewives."

Domenica and I also wandered into the land of men—how they too need spaces that allow emotional safety, and why building emotionally intelligent communities shouldn’t be a female-only burden. We talked about how Gen Z is calling BS on emotional repression (bless them), how motherhood can become a portal to deeper self-love, and why storytelling is the medicine our publishing world still doesn’t always know how to package.

We celebrated the kind of joy that happens when women drop the performance and find each other again in the dark. We honored the ache of needing village, the courage of saying “I can’t do this alone,” and the quiet radicalism of showing up vulnerable—on purpose.

If you’re craving community, tired of pretending you’re fine, curious about how motherhood changes not just your schedule but your soul, or longing to feel less alone in your need for others—this conversation is a hand extended.

And go buy this book! It'll entertain and change you. https://bookshop.org/p/books/all-the-mothers-a-novel-domenica-ruta/aba4844fa4b548f1?utm_source=google&utm_medium=pmax&utm_campaign=16243454879&utm_content=&utm_term={searchterm}&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=16243514117&gbraid=0AAAAACfld43lNpqlWjLTp-Kvy2yTgbV_g&gclid=CjwKCAjwgeLHBhBuEiwAL5gNEbfo1wIhBLXfewCQVz3vX5tW0npvV0hr4sLzZWHb3nTMmCgIO00cZxoCqCMQAvD_BwE