This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Healing Relationships: The 4 Essential Pillars for Lasting Love with Dr. Rachel Glik | 283

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

In this episode, we explore how to transform all of our relationships—romantic, platonic, and everything in between. Our guest, Dr. Rachel Glik, is a licensed professional counselor with over 30 years of experience assisting couples and individuals in building stronger, healthier, and more fulfilling relationships. She is the author of A Soulful Marriage: Healing Your Relationship With Responsibility, Growth, Priority, and Purpose, which outlines four foundational pillars for lasting love: Responsibility: Being personally accountable for one's own happiness and well-being. Growth: Utilizing relationship challenges as opportunities for individual and mutual development. Priority: Placing your partner as the most significant person in your life. Purpose: Using the relationship as a force for sharing and contributing positively to the world. Dr. Glik has contributed to MindBodyGreen, an online magazine with over 10 million readers monthly, and is a regular contributor on the Fox Morning Show in St. Louis. In our discussion, Dr. Glik elaborates on these four pillars, providing practical advice on how to implement them to heal and strengthen various types of relationships. She emphasizes that connection is not just part of the solution; it is the solution. Connect with Our Guest: Dr. Rachel Glik Website: https://www.drrachelglik.com/   Book: https://www.drrachelglik.com/a-soulful-marriage  IG: https://www.instagram.com/drrachelglik/  FB: http://www.facebook.com/10156474190839727  Related Podcast Episodes: 163 / Do You Believe in Love? with Arielle Ford Two Can Win (Helping Two-Career Families Move From Chaos To Connection) with Tiffany Sauder | 243 098 / Connecting To Your Inner Love Coach with Nicole Moore Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

I am Nicole Kalil and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast where together we're redefining what it means, what it looks and what it feels like to be doing woman's work in the world today. And we can't even begin to do that without having a conversation about our relationships. It's easy to see how far we've come in our careers, more women in the workforce leading in business and making decisions that were not so long ago completely off limits.

But here's the thing, much of that progress has been additive. Women aren't just breaking barriers, we're carrying the weight of them too. We're leading companies and managing households. We're chasing dreams and chasing kids. Which brings me back to my original point. Redefining woman's work is going to require us

to redefine our relationships, our marriages, partnerships, parenting, and our friendships, because the way we've been doing it isn't working for most of us. And I don't think we're meant to feel this lonely, burnt out, exhausted, and somehow simultaneously feel both over and underwhelmed all the time. Do I want women to chase their dreams and celebrate their ambition? You bet your ass I do.

But I also believe that we shouldn't have to burn ourselves and our relationships into the ground to get there. I definitely don't want the answer to be for women to have to sacrifice more. So I've brought in a leading relationship and mental health expert to help us rethink what fulfilling and lasting relationships need to thrive. Not just romantic partnerships, but possibly also friendships and within your community. Because friend, one of the biggest lessons I've learned is this. While Jay is my favorite human on the planet, he cannot be my only human. I need my friends now more than ever. And when my life becomes so small or when it feels so small that there's only space for work,

being a wife and being a mom, it has never really worked out well for me. So yes, this is about our marriages, but also about our friendships and the relationships that we build within our lives, because the new definition of woman's work is not meant to include us going it alone. So I'm thrilled to introduce our guest Dr. Rachel Glick, a licensed professional counselor with over 30 years of experience helping couples and individuals build stronger, healthier, and more fulfilling relationships. She's the author of A Soulful Marriage, Healing Your Relationship with Responsibility, Growth, Priority, and Purpose, and has

written for Mind Body Body, Green, an online magazine with over 10 million readers each month, and is a regular contributor to the Fox Morning Show in St. Louis. So, Rachel, Dr. Glick, thank you for being our guest. And I wanna start by acknowledging, correct me if this stat is incorrect, but according to the American Psychological Association,

it estimates the probability of first marriages ending in divorce is 41% in 2024. So all of that leads to you being here today and me asking, what does it take to build lasting and fulfilling relationships? Thank you. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. So what I have found through my own experience in being married for 36 years, and also seeing clients with couples in particular for almost the same, and studying spiritual wisdom of Kabbalah,

that it comes together that there are these four core ideas or consciousnesses that can guide creating, really taking control over your relationship and creating it. And I love what you're talking about for the empowerment component, because the first pillar, I call them four pillars, and the first pillar is responsibility, where we're each responsible

for our own happiness and wellbeing. And I think, I know for me, getting married in the 80s, being born in the 60s, there was still a lot of focus on a man fulfilling you and that being your source of happiness. And that was really where my husband and I ran into our first huge bump. But that became the breakthrough that we're really each, he's not responsible for my happiness, I'm responsible for my own and vice versa. So that includes self-care, that includes self-love, it means

working on yourself and knowing yourself and really feeling like you're the one to hold your own North Star. And so that's the first pillar. And oftentimes I'm working with couples is we have to back up and go to pillar one because they're not grounded in themselves. And it's not all or nothing, but it's important to be mindful of that. I can see how having to go back to that first pillar would be probably pretty commonplace and incredibly important because it's counter to what I think we have been taught, whether it's consciously or subconsciously, a lot of our lives, which is to find a partner is to find happiness. As opposed to we can be in a relationship and not be happy

and we can not be in a relationship and not be happy. Now, being loved does help me feel happy, but what I misunderstood, I think, before I met my husband was that there were so many ways to be loved and there are so many ways to be loved and there are so many ways to feel loved and I could give myself that feeling. So all of that to ask the question, given that most of our listeners are women, where do you see women's biggest opportunity in this being responsible for our own happiness? What is popping up a lot? I think it's really the not feeling guilt

for prioritizing oneself. There's a healthy way to prioritize ourself and it's actually the most responsible thing to do. And I think it's part of also finding our power, our empowerment is not feeling, this is for both partners, but I think especially for women, is to really not wait for your partner to be something

or do something for you or be something to you for you to become the best version of who you wanna be. It's an important first step to take that ownership over. I wanna become, my own relationship with myself is the foundation for everything I wanna build with my partner. And that doesn't mean you don't address issues. Absolutely, that gets to pillar two. But the first thing is to look at where is it that perhaps something that's going on

in my relationship, not be in the mindset which is common, which is I'll change when they change. Or, you know, they're not giving me what I want so I'm going to, you know, kind of back up or and it's just it's counterintuitive. A lot of what I have found through studying spiritual wisdom, especially wisdom of Kabbalah, is it's, and life itself is, it's counterintuitive to really make headway. So that's where I would encourage to back up and see first, where is it that this is showing me something that I know I need to work on in myself anyway? Maybe it's to believe in yourself,

overcome your doubts, work on your own self-love as the first step and then approach your partner with how you might be able to improve the connection or whatever's going on. Everything you're saying makes sense to my brain. I just, I sometimes do better with examples and I'm sure some people listening in might feel that too. Can you give us an example or like a how-to step

that we could take in the spirit of being responsible for our happiness and for our needs? If we find ourselves saying, oh, if only my spouse would do this, or if only this person in my life would give me this, then I would feel happy. How could we go about approaching that differently? Well, first is to change the mindset.

That's why we need the consciousness of the pillar, that I'm responsible for my own happiness and wellbeing. That's pillar one. Then from there, we're taking a look at how is that, if you feel like your partner isn't as supportive in the domestic side of things, let's just say, or, and you feel overloaded, or then the first step to take would be

to take responsibility is like, where's my own self-care? Where am I looking outside for somebody to do something for me that I'm not doing for myself? And it's not to do that in a way that you then beat yourself up about it, or it's not a shaming approach, it's an empowering approach. And so that would be one example or, you know, because that's often the case if someone feels overloaded or their needs aren't being met, we don't, we're not wired to think first, how am I not treating

myself the way that I'm wishing my partner were treating me? Yeah, turning it inward, like you said earlier, kind of counterintuitive. Yes, exactly. Great. It's kind of quantum in that way. Okay, so then what is the second pillar? The second pillar is growth. And this is where I'll say to clients, and this is usually when people reach out for therapy, is because they're having problems with the growth. But what that means is, is they're fighting like cats and dogs, or they're disconnected, or it's the friction part of the relationship. It's, and this is what I say, it relieves a lot of couples right away, is your friction is not a bad sign.

In fact, if used properly, it's a gift. So the principle here is that the kind of byline to the growth pillar is that we use our friction to help us grow individually and closer together. And so inherently we are here to grow. That's kind of the paradigm that I present from my own experience of what I've studied and it works. It's an effective approach. It's an empowering approach. So you want to like lean into the friction. We tend to avoid it or think it's really a problem. I picked the wrong person or we reject what avoid it or think it's really a problem, I picked the wrong

person or we reject what's happening in the present moment. And when we are present with, okay, I'm going to lean into this friction and see how this is showing me where I can grow. That's the first step. And then I'm going to see how we can use this friction for us to grow closer together. And so this is where this has more chapters in my book than any other other pillar because there's a lot of work to do in this section. I often think one of the challenges outside looking in in long-term relationships is this idea that both of you will evolve and change

in similar directions at similar times. And so that leads to my question, what if one of you feels more committed to growth than the other or any wisdom there? Absolutely. It's common. We're not, we tend to be drawn to people who are about at the same level of emotional spiritual maturity.

It may show up in different ways, but we tend to be drawn, but we don't always grow at the same pace. We don't always have the same desire for personal growth or the same capacity for it. And that's very common. It really is. First, don't panic if you aren't completely matched. And you kind of go back to pillar one, what does this mean for me in my life and what can I do to keep being the best version of myself? But you want to find a way to find the common ground where you can each, the more you not get as reactive with your partner, you might be the one who is more of the manager of the relationship and that's okay.

It's hard to accept sometimes. We might feel resentful. Why is my partner not noticing that something needs work and why aren't they wanting to grow as much as I? But if you can accept that and embrace with radical acceptance that this is where he or she is and this is where I am, and then from there you just do your best to learn as much as you can about how to use your friction in a way that doesn't create defensiveness and name calling or blaming and where you can find skillful ways

to make it a win-win for both of you. That takes a lot of responsibility and intention. And it's training, like in Pillar Two, I try to give kind of a micro training in listening skills because it's a huge component of what breaks down is communication skills, which often people think communicating is just saying what's on my mind,

but communication skills means mostly being a really good listener that really lets the walls come down and you can get to the heart of what each of you are needing or dreaming or desiring or afraid of. I feel like if any of us improved even just a little bit in the skill of listening without defensiveness, all of our relationships would transform

as would the world. I mean, what a difficult skill, because I think you're right, we do spend a lot of energy trying to figure out how to communicate with words, our thoughts or requests or feelings or whatever. We're thinking about how to say totally different perspective to come in with how to listen. Yes. Talk about counterintuitive. It's counter ego. Like we are wired for self-preservation.

So it's irrational on some level, but we need to learn how to be irrational in the right way. And that's why I offer in the book, I combine three different kind of structured listening tools that allows you to have a little bit of fences around the inclination to be afraid you're not going to be heard or to feel like you're're gonna lose something if you really take the time to understand your partner better. Yeah. So clearly we need to read the book, but any quick tip on listening

and kind of leaving defensiveness out of it when having these friction oriented conversations? Yes. The first is the power of pause. That's the first thing I always like to introduce. And I like to do PBR, which is pause, like that's funny because it's the beer PBR, but it's pause, breathe, relax, but not to think you have to address the, which on your mind right then to make sure that you work on regulating your own nervous system first. And because we have

different kinds of thinking systems, you know, we have different parts of the brain and we want to get to the part of the brain that can think long range and not just reactively trying to get relief. For me, listening is always the hardest part because I'm constantly thinking in my head how to respond or how to make my point understood or how to feel heard really. I actually think my husband is better at the listening and the pause part than I am. So it definitely takes practice and I think the first two pillars are challenging enough but what is the third pillar

once we're working through responsibility and growth and what comes next? Yes. So I want to briefly mention that it's normal that it's very difficult to listen, but it is a trainable skill. And that's why I offer structured exercises because we need the structure to do it and you can practice and get better. And the pausing and stepping aside to help you switch to a different system within yourself is a good first step. And then if you're looking for one simple thing, it's just to try to reflect back what you heard your partner say and take what I call the love seat listening method, which is where you take turns being speaker and listener.

So, the third pillar is it starts to lighten up, but it's not less important, and that is priority. And this is where we wanna explore to what extent do you feel like you make each other the most important other person in your life, and in a way that they know it so that they that yes you're your relationship with yourself must come first but do you feel cherished are you what are you doing to make sure your partner feels cherished and their love language and their way of operating in the world and where do you on the lookout for the things that can

become like a third entity that get in between you and your partner, being, feeling like you're cherished, feeling like you're a priority? So where does understanding how the other person feels that way come into play? So what I'm thinking of is, I can think of relationships where I've heard people say, well, I'm working

so hard because I prioritize the family and I want to provide or I'm doing all of the household tasks and making sure that house is put together and clean because that's my way of showing love and care for the family. Well, if the other person doesn't experience it as that, or doesn't feel like that's how I want to be prioritized, how do we kind of find the way of doing it where it also is experienced as that? That's such a good question.

So I have something that I call the marriage wheel, or it could be a relationship wheel, which has these eight different types of intimacies, eight facets of, or I call them friendships. And those include like the different ways we might connect or might share a life together. And around that wheel, and I can share what those are if we have time for that, but what's around that wheel is communication. So this brings us back to establishing in pillar two a good method for

navigating our differences. And so if you aren't aware that that is your partner's love language, you might interpret it wrong and not feel loved by that. But then you also want to learn from your beloved what is it that makes them feel really loved. And so then you work on that. And that's, again, back to growth. Like, if it's difficult in some way to love your partner the way they feel loved, you should celebrate that because then you're stretching yourself as a human being

to go out of your nature and becoming more proactive love than reactive love. And that's where you start to elevate yourself as a person. And you start, you're growing and you feel the energy comes from that connection of growth together. So I think it's important you talk about your differences and you become more compassionate for how the other makes you feel loved. And I did this questionnaire to my friends and people that I see that really prioritize each other and their relationship and and and they loved the question itself, which is,

you know, in what way does your partner, the little things they do or the bigger things that they do make you know that you're number one? And that would be a good question you can ask your partner is what are the ways of things you're already doing that make me feel number one and what could we do going forward that will help me feel even more cherished and even more of a priority to you? Great questions. I would imagine that most of the responses are personal, individual, and intimate, meaning that my answer might be different than the next person than is different than the next person. But given your experience, have you seen any universal truths? Like, experience, have you seen any universal truths? Like most people really appreciate this or this typically doesn't work when it comes

to the priority pillar. That's so interesting because we are all so different. But I was going to say most people want to be appreciated, I would say as an overall. And sometimes people want to hear it in words. And sometimes people want to hear it, see, and sometimes people want to hear it, see it, experience it in actions, or both. But even when you share grievances,

that can be communicated as not appreciating all the other things that they're doing. So if somebody isn't a words person, that they want to hear you talk about how much you love them and thank you for making the broccoli so good or whatever it is, you can also work on showing appreciation by managing how many complaints you share and being happy and fulfilled and satisfied. But I think we all want to feel appreciation. And when we lose appreciation, that's when we also lose so much of the love actually in the relationship.

It speaks to my experience for sure. Appreciation is at the top of my list. All right, I can't let you go without talking about the fourth pillar and I wanna talk about the eight friendships. Yeah, so let's talk about pillar four. Okay, so pillar four is the least talked about, the best kept secret, which we learned my

husband and I through the wisdom of Kabbalah especially, all of these really informed our relationship to go to the next level, along with my own experience in the psychotherapy world. But the sense of purpose that you're here for bigger than just yourself and not that we aren't important and we shouldn't, it's very valuable to be happy and also take care of your family. That has purpose too. But this is the kind of purpose that you might go outside your collective.

And it doesn't have to be all the time, but to start seeing yourselves as an entity is a gift that you've been given in your togetherness and how can you use what you have collectively to make the world better. And that's kind of gloss over some of the friction points and it can add a new dimension. And you see like the key is to awaken generosity of spirit. And once you're in that mode, it's like you're in a frequency that is contagious for your relationship.

It's funny, I never thought about it this way until you said it. I was trying to think like, what is J&I's purpose? I don't know that we've talked about it, but I do know modeling partnership as something different than I've experienced it up to this point. Modeling more equity in a relationship. And that doesn't mean each of us do the exact same things in equal amounts or anything like that,

but having a more equitable partnership where we both win, we both feel appreciated, we both feel supported and valued and celebrated in our ambition and our careers. I don't know that again, we've had the conversation or defined that as our purpose, but it is a purpose that drives me that feels bigger than just the two of us

or even with our child too. You're modeling that for JJ is really important to me. But yes, so how do we have this conversation about our purpose? Is that like, sit down, let's talk about it? Are there some questions to ask? Well, first of all, I'm so inspired by what you just shared that I think that we, you know, there is many levels of purpose and it's all about intention and consciousness. If you're aware

that our, my partnership is healing my lineage, is forwarding our society, is creating examples of more human dignity and respect and possibilities and then that is that's purpose and that's purpose inside the relationship. Then the purpose outside your relationship is where you take it and you may be with people you'll never meet but that really expands us into the all the interconnectedness of all of us. And that has a spiritual nature to it. So how to start is first to, you know, you could share with each other and ask, like, does it matter to you to some sense of where

do you see we have purpose? Is purpose in our relationship important to you and in what ways? And how about we talk about how we might be able to pull our TTTs, our time, talent, treasure, our gifts, our energy, our love, our kindnesses, and see how we might be able to use a portion of that to then share outside. And you can make it, you know, this what this whole book is, is my husband and I coming together talking about that

on a regular basis. And so it's like, why don't I write, Why don't we? But I ended up writing it, but he's in it throughout. And what we learned was kind of the laboratory for how we can use what we've gained and the gifts we've been given to pay it forward. So I think just talking about it, it's a fun topic, actually. It totally is. And I've never heard it. I've not heard anybody bring that to the table. Jay and I do this thing we call family forecasting. We do deeply a couple of times a year and then in between that as well. And we ask a bunch of questions and get on the same page with our finances and our date nights. But this is not on our agenda.

And it will be the next time around, this conversation about our purpose. I love it so much. Yes. And I want to also reiterate that while we are talking about marriages here, that all four of these pillars can be leveraged in all sorts of relationships, from friendships

to partnerships to all sorts of things. I've been kind of keeping an eye out for it. I don't think there's a thing that you said that wouldn't be transferable to any meaningful relationship. Exactly. Any relationship that you want to have keep growing and that you want to have it be closer in connection and more productive, more successful, like even a work relationship that you can see how you can go through the pillars. And of course, your long-term committed partner is going to be a unique sense of the most prioritized, but absolutely scaled to the appropriate way, it absolutely can be for any relationship.

Okay, great. So let's talk about these eight friendships. Yes. So this is a way of understanding both how to see where your conflict shows up. It's going to be kind of a roadmap for where are we strong and where are we having not so strong in our wheel. And then from there, how you can invest energy to make it stronger. And so I'll say what the eight are. The first one is emotional connection, your emotional friendship. Now you get like your confidant, can you trust them, each other? Do you share things? Can you be vulnerable together? Do you know that you're going to get a decent response from each other if you're connecting?

The second is your sexual or your physical slash sexual, like touch and your sexual friendship. And then the third is your, if you have children or animals, it's your parenting friendship. How do you do? Are you on the same page? Do you support each other? Do you divide the tasks in a way you feel good about? Then the fourth is your domestic friendship. How do you handle things that go in the just the business side of being married the house? And do you feel good about how you're sharing things? And then the next is your financial friendship. Do you trust each other? Are you

open about it? Do you have a sense that this is our money, not just mine? And then there's your recreational friendship. Do you have fun? Do you laugh? Is this like a best friend buddy that you just like and really enjoy time together and not just about work, not just about tasks in the house? Do you make sure that you're nourishing your fun?

And then the next is your spiritual friendship and that is either sharing something spiritual together or at the very least supporting each other's spiritualities. This is where purpose comes in. Do we feel a sense of that we have something bigger than us as part of our connection? Okay, so then what I missed... Oh, this one is interesting that I missed it because it came to me last and it's community. And that is this one is this one is interesting that I missed it because it was came to me last and it's community and that is that we're part of a larger community together and this came to me because this is when some couples don't

want to end the relationship because they're so part of a community. They have a family, their own nuclear family, their own extended family, their own you know like spiritual organizations or neighborhoods or organizations if they work together. So that and that can be a real enhancement that they really enjoy that part of their relationship or that could be a source of problems that there's, it's not balanced, there's too much focus on the in-laws or your parents and it's, I don't feel good about the way we connect with our larger community. So, okay. So I might take us down a rabbit hole,

but this idea that any one person can be everything to us can be really challenging. And even as you went through that, and I feel very proud of my marriage, but I don't know that we're checking every single one of those boxes all the time. And so back to that first pillar of responsibility, if we can't or aren't getting, these needs are all, are needs that we have to live a fulfilling and happy life. Yes. If we're not getting it from one person is,

does that change anything about our responsibility of still getting it, right? Like, so I might get more of the emotional connection I crave from some of my girlfriends than I do from my husband who I tease is dead inside. He's not, but he's not the best. With the most emotional things. I guess my thought was one person may not make us happy,

but getting these needs met probably will. Yes. And back to that first pillar of responsibility, if it's not gonna be them, it's still our responsibility to get those needs met. Thoughts, reactions? I love it. I love the nuance that you're,

these are the subtleties that it's so, it's such a creative process to be in a person, a human being and in a relationship because it's not just like black and white. So yes, so the idea there's always something that isn't just right for us or very right for us, it's importantly right for us in our most important relationships because we're here to grow and we're here to like use those gaps to as a kind of elevators for how we can work on developing as a person and heal things, correct things. And so we wanna go back to pillar one, like you just did and see where is it that I am putting more,

I have to accept my partner as they are. And it causes so much grief if we aren't able to squarely embrace where there is some gaps or lack where you feel every marriage has lack, there's something missing. And so then you use that. So and that I say you need to go through a grieving process. And I don't mean that in a heavy way, but it is disappointing. It would be so nice if they were all just, but that's not the game. That's not the growth process.

And that's not what makes it long lasting and fulfilling. So first to grieve and acknowledge, yeah, they are not as connecting emotionally as I would like. And, but the key is you wanna see how you can work on it. Not become where you need them to be, but is there what small step can happen that's approachable for your partner

that makes it feel a little closer emotionally? Be creative about it and also not think it has to be the way you think it needs to be. And then really go back to appreciation and be radical about it and keep listing all the other qualities that if you didn't have would be so hard that you have in this relationship. And then do workarounds, make sure you get your needs met,

but don't ignore where it's missing completely in your relationship because that's where the growth is, but you just might wanna take it slow and keep it relative to what you know is gonna be, is how they're wired. We're all wired so differently. Yeah, yeah. The idea that we are growing and working on this

together and also leveraging, whether it be within ourselves or other people to get our needs met. Also note too, that you don't need to be married to want all of these things or to deserve or receive all of these things, right? You know, so if you are not in a committed long-term romantic relationship, you still get to be happy and you still get to get these needs met. It just might be in a different way.

Exactly. Yeah, there may be a really close relationship in your life that's more platonic or that you might find that you have to go through your wheel and see how are we doing and how can we grow. Or you have some friends or people in your life or family or colleagues or that serve different parts of the wheel. But it's, you know, in our society today we really expect a lot out of a long term relationship. It didn't used to be that way. So this is the modern relationship. It has all these components, but it definitely doesn't

need to all come. The fulfillment doesn't need to come from only being in a long-term relationship. Absolutely. I wish I would have had this wheel in my 20s and when I met Jay and all along. So Rachel, thank you. This conversation has been eye-opening and I wish we had more time, but I know people are going to want to learn more. So let me remind our listeners that the book is called A Soulful Marriage. And if you go to drrachaelglick.com, she has all the ways you can find and follow her plus several ways you can buy the book. Rachel, thank you so much again for your incredible work and a really important conversation.

Thank you so much, Nicole. This has been such a delight. My pleasure. All right, let me close us out with a loving reminder that redefining woman's work is not about doing more, sacrificing more, or carrying more weight on your shoulders. And since it's not about that, we must shift how we approach our relationships, our marriages, partnerships, friendships,

and even the relationships with ourselves. Because we aren't meant to go it alone or together, but feeling lonely. We aren't meant to burn ourselves out in the pursuit of having it all. The new definition of women's work is about creating meaningful connections, supporting each other, and finding fulfillment not just in what we do, but in who we do it with. So whether it's your partner, your friends, or your chosen community, let this be your reminder to nurture those relationships and to let them nurture you back. And if you're feeling overwhelmed, lonely, or burnt out,

start with just one step, maybe one of those eight friendships. Reach out to someone, because connection isn't just part of the solution, it is the solution. And it also happens to be the new definition of what it means to be doing, woman's work.