The Girls' Trip for Women Who Are Tired of Planning Girls' Trips

Five years ago, Sara got a random text from an old college friend. There had been a time when the five of them were inseparable. They had been roommates, shared everyday life, and knew each other in the way you only know people when you're young and living in the same place.

But years had passed.

Some lived near each other. Some didn't. Some were better at staying in touch than others. Life had happened. Careers, marriages, kids, families, responsibilities. They didn't even have much of a group chat anymore. Then one friend sent a message:

"Do you guys want to do this? There's arts and crafts."

And somehow, everyone said yes.

Five years later, Sara is getting ready to return for her fifth Rise weekend. It will be her fourth time coming alone. And that, perhaps, is the part of the story she never expected. It started as a girls' trip. The more information that came out, though, the more she realized this was going to be something different.

She started looking through the workshops and thinking:

"I need this."

She remembers telling her friends, "I don't know what you guys are doing, but these are the classes I'm taking."

Even their husbands weren't entirely convinced. "Is this a cult?" Nobody really knew what they were getting into. And maybe that was part of the magic. Because Sara didn't realize how much she needed the weekend until she arrived. Sometimes your friends know you need to get away before you do

At the time, Sarah was going through a lot. She was grieving a relationship that just ended, but she hadn't yet recognized that what she was experiencing as grief. She had also nearly died giving birth to her son, leaving her with a complicated relationship with her own body and her ability to trust herself.

Then she took a grief yoga class and something clicked. She realized that what she had been experiencing had a name. Other women understood it. She wasn't the only person carrying something invisible. And then there was another workshop that helped her reconnect with her body and desire. She left that first Rise weekend feeling like something had woken back up.

Her husband noticed it immediately.

"You're a different person."

And then:

"You're going again next year." He was right. The friends were the reason she went. The community was the reason she kept coming back. That first year, Sara came with her college friends. But over the years, those friends didn't necessarily keep returning with her. She came back alone and realized she wasn't really alone anymore.

One of the women she met during that very first grief yoga class is still someone she looks forward to seeing every year. "Those are my people," she says. That's one of the unexpected things about getting away with old friends: sometimes the trip doesn't just reconnect you to the people you came with. It expands your circle.

You arrive remembering who you used to be together, and you leave with new relationships that belong to the people you are becoming now.

The point isn't to manufacture the perfect trip where everyone does the same things and nobody gets annoyed. It's to have enough space to actually be together and to have enough space to be yourself. 

Maybe what we're missing isn't more time with our friends. It's different time with our friends.

There's a reason it's so hard to maintain adult friendships.We're busy. We're raising children. We're working. We're managing households. We're caring for aging parents. We're trying to remember whether we've answered the text we received three days ago.

"I think most people are missing the feeling that they have a village."

That's how Sarah describes what she thinks is missing from everyday life. The feeling that you're not doing all of this alone. She's seen women at Rise make changes in their careers, relationships, routines, and personal lives. She's watched people discover activities they love and seek them out long after the weekend ends. And she's experienced that transformation herself.

You don't have to be the same person you were last year. Your old friends don't have to stay in the past. 

Five years ago, Sara went to Rise because a friend sent a text. Today, she goes because of the friendships she made there, the memories she has accumulated, and the version of herself she gets to reconnect with every time she returns. Maybe that's the real gift of getting away with old friends. You don't necessarily go back to who you were. You get the chance to meet each other again. As the people you've become. And sometimes, that's even better.