Training camp is about improving skills, getting into season-ready condition, and building bonds and relationships among the team. A team with poor chemistry that can’t work together or have a good working relationship will soon implode. Championship teams have been dismantled because two superstars couldn’t get along or the team was too busy fighting one another.

Training Camp is a time for teams to bond, and it’s also a time for coaches to start making final cuts to who makes the final roster and the starting lineup.

This month, I’m assembling my team in training camp. It’s a month for reconnection and for assembling my first string and the starters for my inner circle. As I have gone through these first few reconnections this month, it’s clear I haven’t been working with my first-string team.

I have been part of several groups in the last ten years, and none have ever felt quite right. I don’t think it was the fault of these groups. It was my fault because I was never showing up as my true self. I was showing up as who I thought I should be, so there weren’t authentic connections like there are among my first-stringers. I have no pressure to be a high achiever, goody-goody, or uber spiritual. I can just be myself.

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that as I shed these false identities, my first-string all started appearing. Part of the wilderness is being isolated and learning to dig deep within. Wilderness seasons can be tremendously isolating and lonely, but I believe it is so that you can reconnect with your authentic self and not what others think you should be.

A Season of Reconnection

My season of reconnection started with reaching out to my old colleagues for professional advice, and that turned everything on its head. Receiving professional advice from people whom I deeply respect and admire hit differently. Their words opened new worlds of possibility

This past weekend, I reconnected with one of my favorite yoga teachers as she led a workshop about Tending the Inner Flame. It was a wonderful workshop, and the mutual joy we had in reconnecting and practicing yoga together after five years only stoked the flicker inside me.

The biggest joy that made my heart sing was reconnecting with my college roommates over Zoom. Everyone looked so wonderful, and we aged so well! The biggest thing was sharing some goals and dreams with each other, and that kept stoking the flame. My heart was singing after the call.

One of my biggest complaints has been the lack of peers, both professionally and personally, but that is all changing. I understand that part of being world-class is being a world-class friend, family member, and teammate..

Friendship in your (almost) fifties

These women remind me that friendship in your fifties isn’t about having people who make you feel comfortable —it’s about having people who make you feel powerful!. Shonda Rhimes, The Year of Yes

Truth! This is what has been missing. As I begin to reconnect with my friends, I realize the change in environment is not limited to the physical space. When Big Jay said, “You need to change your environment and get around a better crowd,” it hit me: the people were missing. It’s obvious professionally, but they’re certainly missing from my personal life, too. I think I have underestimated the role that genuine female friendship plays in life satisfaction.

Rhimes goes on to say,  Female friendship is not only about emotional support —it’s about a strategic alliance. It’s about showing up for each other in spaces where we might otherwise feel isolated. But what makes it sustainable is having other women beside you who have made the same decision.

What makes it joyful is sharing the journey with friends who understand both the struggle and the triumph of claiming your place in spaces that weren’t designed for you.

That’s the real power: we don’t compete against each other. We compete together against the limitations imposed on us. We lift each other so that we can all reach higher.

THIS IS WHAT HAS BEEN MISSING. I have missed being around those who help me to believe that what I want is possible. Just listening to what my friends have accomplished and what they want to accomplish in the future stoked the flame even more. I haven’t been around that type of energy in SO long.

There are even more powerful female friendships to form! I am going back to the ones I have and not letting them go this time.