Why Female Friendship Deserves to Be Taken Seriously — And Why I’m Now a Certified Women’s Relational Health Coach
We talk about friendship like it’s light or easy — something that just happens, something casual. And sometimes it is. Friendship should be a reprieve. A place to feel known and at ease. But more often than not, it’s more layered than we’re taught to expect.
Because friendship isn’t just fun.
It’s relationship.
And relationship — the ability to be in one, to build and maintain one — sits inside the larger web of being a healthy, connected human.
The Feedback Loop of Disconnection
When we’re not well, we struggle to access healthy relationships.
When we can’t access healthy relationships, we’re not well.
It’s a self-reinforcing cycle that can lead to chronic loneliness, disconnection, and stuckness — not to mention mental and physical health challenges.
Relationship is at the center of our most basic human needs. And friendship, in particular, plays a uniquely important role — especially for women.
It’s Not Just You — Friendship Is Complex (and Underappreciated)
Every day in my work — both in therapy and coaching — I talk to people who are struggling with friendship in some way. Maybe they’re lonely, or burned out from being the one who always initiates. Maybe they’re stuck in superficial conversations and don’t know how to go deeper. Maybe they’re grieving a friend breakup they never saw coming.
And almost always, at some point, I hear a version of this:
“Why is this so hard for me?”
If you’ve ever thought that — you're not broken. You're not failing.
You're living in a culture that undervalues and under-resources relational health.
This isn’t an individual issue. It’s a societal one. So much so that former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy named loneliness an epidemic and made it a centerpiece of his work — identifying disconnection as a root cause of many downstream challenges.
And friendship is one major piece of that puzzle.
Female Friendship Is Powerful — And Often Fragile
One thing we know from the research is this:
Women’s friendships are deeper, more emotionally intimate, and more complex than men’s — and that complexity can make them more fragile.
They hold our stories.
They shape our nervous systems.
They buffer us against stress and deepen our sense of meaning.
They matter.
But most of us weren’t taught how to navigate friendship well.
We weren’t taught how to manage conflict, how to repair after a rupture, or how to sustain closeness over time — especially as we move through the disorienting years of adulthood, where making and keeping friends gets trickier.
Even as a longtime therapist, I’ve had to reckon with that in my own life.
A New Chapter
Which brings me to this:
🎉 I’m officially a Certified Women’s Relational Health Coach!
Over the last few months, I’ve been training with Danielle Bayard Jackson, a trailblazer in this space who’s been coaching women on friendship since 2018 — back when people laughed and she had to start every conversation by saying: “Yes, friendship coaching is a real thing.”
I'm so grateful she paved the way and made it her mission to take this topic seriously. Because it is serious.
Our well-being is intricately tied to it.
More and more people are waking up to the importance of friendship and community — and I’m proud to be one of them.
The Work Ahead
If you’re struggling with friendship, I hope you’ll let this land:
You’re not alone, and you’re not the problem.
And also: there are things we can do — individually and collectively — to shift the tide.
This certification is one more way I’m committing to that work.
To helping people build the relationships they want and deserve.
To bringing more nuance, compassion, and clarity to the way we approach connection.
To offering real tools for a real issue that touches all of us.
Because female friendship isn’t fluff.
It’s foundational.
And it’s time we started treating it that way.
Tell me in the comments — how has friendship shaped your life? In what ways has it supported and challenged you?