The Circle of Women Edit

Why I think we need each other more than ever

I've been thinking quite a lot lately about what I want The Polished Reset to become.

When I started it, I knew I wanted a place to talk about this stage of life—the things I'm trying, changing, questioning and enjoying. Style. Travel. Wellness. Work. What I'm buying and, increasingly, what I'm choosing not to buy.

But the more I've written, the more I've realized I don't want to build another corner of the internet devoted primarily to consuming things.

There is certainly a place here for beautiful things. I like them. I like discovering something genuinely good and telling a friend about it. And I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting our homes, wardrobes or everyday lives to feel a little more beautiful.

But I've begun thinking about The Polished Reset as something closer to an online magazine for women like me.

And perhaps, in a small way, a circle of women.

The idea isn't new at all

Women gathering together is about as old as human society.

Long before we had social media—or even the idea of a "women's network"—women relied on other women.

Mothers. Sisters. Grandmothers. Aunts. Neighbors. Friends.

They helped raise children. They brought food when somebody was sick. They shared what they knew. They helped each other through births and deaths, marriages and disappointments, ordinary Tuesdays and genuine crises.

And knowledge moved through those relationships too.

How to make something. How to care for someone. How to navigate a difficult season. What worked. What didn't. What someone wished she'd known ten years earlier.

I don't mean that nostalgically, as though women's lives were somehow easier in the past. They certainly weren't.

And I'm not talking about anything mystical or woo-woo when I use the phrase circle of women.

I mean community.

Women helping other women make their way through life.

I've been fortunate to have one

I probably value this more now because I know what it feels like to have it.

I'm fortunate to have women in my life whom I've known since high school, college and my twenties at work.

We've been together through an awful lot.

The good things, certainly. But also the things you don't necessarily put on social media.

There is something extraordinary about having people in your life who remember earlier versions of you.

They knew you before the job title. Before the house. Before the carefully constructed adult life. Sometimes before you had any idea who you were going to become.

I have my younger sister too, who has told me I've been a little like a mother to her.

And then there is another circle that has become increasingly meaningful to me: the professional women I've met throughout my career.

Some are close friends. Others are women I may speak with only occasionally. But there is a generosity among the best of these relationships that I treasure.

An introduction. A piece of advice. A warning. A recommendation. Someone saying, Have you thought about this? Or simply reminding you of what you're capable of at exactly the moment you've temporarily forgotten.

I've benefited from that generosity many times.

And much of what I think about and eventually write about here has been shaped, directly or indirectly, by women I've known.

Work isn't the same thing

This is something I've come to understand more clearly with age.

For years, many of us were encouraged to think of work as a kind of family.

I don't anymore.

I can care enormously about the people I work with. I can have friendships that begin at work and continue long after one of us leaves. I can be loyal to colleagues and genuinely invested in their success.

But an organization isn't a family.

Jobs change. Leaders change. Priorities change. People leave. Sometimes decisions are made that remind you very quickly that employment is, ultimately, an arrangement.

That isn't necessarily cynical. It's just different from community.

The relationships that sustain us need roots somewhere else too.

I think I understood that intellectually when I was younger.

I understand it differently now.

Maybe we've lost some of the wider circle

Modern life has given women freedoms and opportunities that previous generations couldn't have imagined.

But I sometimes wonder what we've traded along the way.

Families live farther apart. Neighborhoods can be surprisingly anonymous. We work long hours. Friends scatter across the country. Children grow up and build lives elsewhere.

We can be connected to hundreds—or thousands—of people online and still have remarkably few people we could call when something actually goes wrong.

And then there is social media itself.

I'm not against it. Obviously. The Polished Reset wouldn't exist in quite the same way without the digital world.

I've discovered women online whose work has taught me something, made me think, introduced me to a place I eventually wanted to visit, or occasionally convinced me that something really was worth buying.

The best of it can expand our circles.

But so much of the internet has become transactional.

Look at this.

Buy this.

You need this.

Here are seven more things you didn't know you needed until thirty seconds ago.

After a while, it can all begin to feel strangely empty.

I want something different here

I don't want The Polished Reset to be another endless feed of things women over 50 are supposedly meant to purchase in order to become a better version of themselves.

I want it to feel more like sitting next to an interesting woman and having her say, I found this useful. You might too.

Sometimes "this" will be a dress.

Sometimes it will be a book, a place, an idea, something I've learned about sleep, a way of thinking about work, or something another woman has taught me.

And sometimes there won't be anything to buy at all.

That's important to me.

I want recommendations here to feel the way they do between friends or sisters. You mention something because it genuinely made your life better, solved a problem, delighted you or was worth knowing about.

And when something isn't worth it, you say that too.

That's a very different relationship from constantly being sold to.

The women we choose to listen to matter

I've also become much more particular about whose voices I allow into my life.

There is an enormous amount of advice available to us now. Much of it comes from people we know almost nothing about.

I've learned to pay attention to the difference between someone who makes me want to live more thoughtfully and someone who simply makes me want more things.

I notice the women who are generous with what they know.

The ones who don't need every conversation to be about themselves.

The ones who will open a door for another woman rather than guarding it.

The ones whose lives aren't presented as flawless.

The ones who have enough experience to say, I got this wrong.

Those are the women I trust.

They exist in my real life and in the digital world.

And increasingly, they're the kind of women I want around this publication.

Perhaps we build the circle ourselves

I don't think we can manufacture genuine community.

A corporate initiative can't create it. An algorithm certainly can't.

It grows slowly.

One friendship. One introduction. One neighbor. One conversation. One woman helping another without keeping score.

If you already have women like that in your life, you're fortunate.

I am.

And I've realized that being fortunate isn't a reason to take those relationships for granted. It's a reason to nurture them.

Call the friend.

Make the dinner reservation.

Introduce two women who ought to know each other.

Help the younger woman coming behind you.

Ask the older woman ahead of you what she knows.

Tell someone about the thing that worked.

Show up when life isn't particularly Instagrammable.

And keep widening the circle when you can.

Maybe the digital world can help us do that too, if we're careful about what we build here and whom we choose to listen to.

That's what I'd like The Polished Reset to become.

Not a substitute for the women in our real lives.

A way of adding to the conversation.

A place where one woman can pass along something worth knowing to another.

Because women have been doing that for each other for a very long time.

I'd like us to keep doing it.

Ashley
Founder, The Polished Reset

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Thoughtful ideas on style, wellness, travel and creating a life that feels better after 50.