The girls weekend is booked. And I have never needed it more.
First things first — this post is a few days late. And I want to own that with zero guilt.
My goal is to publish every Sunday. This week, life had other plans. A shift in priorities, a reordering of what needed my time and attention, and here we are — just a few days later, not a single thing worse for it.
This is exactly what I talk about when I talk about progress over perfection. The blog will always be here. The people and moments that pulled me away this week? Those were the right choice.
Speaking of people.
Mallory, Serena, Maya & Kimmy — Ann Arbor, MI — June 1, 2026
The dinner that reminded me.
Last week I had a birthday dinner with my friend Maya. A simple plan — just the two of us, catching up over food, the way you do when life has been moving too fast to slow down properly.
Except it wasn't just the two of us.
I walked in and Kimmy was already there, waiting, quickly joined by Mallory. A surprise — orchestrated perfectly by Maya, because of course it was. The kind of surprise that makes your whole chest fill up before you've even taken your seat.
We laughed. We talked over each other. We ordered too much food and didn't care. We covered everything — the big stuff and the completely inconsequential stuff — the way you only can with people who already know the full version of you.
And when I got in my car to drive home, I sat there for a moment and felt it: I hadn't realized how much I'd missed them until I was back in the room with them. And I hadn't realized how much I'd been craving that kind of company — the kind where you don't have to perform, don't have to manage impressions, don't have to be anything other than exactly who you are, feeling all of your feelings, fully and freely.
I drove home and immediately started planning a girls weekend.
It's locked in for September. Forty hours of quality time with my people. Calendars are hard and September felt far away when we booked it — but it is confirmed, it is happening, and I am already counting down.
Nicole, Momma B. & Serena — The Stacy Mansion — June 7, 2026
The weekend that felt like coming home.
And then this past weekend brought its own version of exactly the same feeling — just wrapped in a wedding and a whole lot of happy tears.
My childhood best friend Nicole and her family spent the entire weekend at The Stacy Mansion, using it as headquarters for the prep, the execution, and the exhale after the big event — her older brother's wedding to the wonderful Renee.
It has been a long time since Nicole and I have had more than a couple of hours together. Life does that. Distance does that. The years do that. And yet the moment we were in the same space, we molded right back into our old ways without missing a single beat.
That's the thing about the people who knew you when you were becoming yourself. There's no catching up required. You just pick up the thread like no time has passed at all.
Getting to be a small part of such a big memory — watching Nicole's family celebrate, welcoming Renee into the fold, seeing a household I grew up in as my second family come together under the roof of something Danielle, Kim, and I built — I left that weekend with renewed love and a full, full heart.
This is what The Mansion was always meant to be. Not just a beautiful space. A place where people come to mark the moments that matter.
The women who don’t require a performance.
There's a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from moving through the world performing a version of yourself.
Most of us do it without even realizing — at work, in social settings, sometimes even with family. We curate. We manage. We present the version that feels safest or most appropriate for the room.
And then there are the people who get you. The ones you've known long enough — or connected with deeply enough — that the performance just... falls away. You can be mid-thought, mid-feeling, mid-mess, and they just meet you there. No judgment. No recalibration required.
Those people are rare. And they are everything.
As my kids are quickly becoming adults and I'm stepping into this next phase of my own life, I'm realizing more clearly than ever: strengthening those relationships is not a luxury. It's a necessity. Women live longer because we have each other. Not figuratively — literally. The research on female friendship and longevity is real, and I feel it in my bones every time I leave a room full of my people.
Serena & Clare — Austin, TX — October 17, 2024
Women in CX and the community that helped me build my moxie.
I also want to talk about another kind of female friendship — the professional kind. The kind that finds you when you're searching for people who understand the specific terrain you're navigating.
Post-COVID, I found Women in CX. I was looking for a support community that understood the challenges of building and leading a CX function — a role that is so often seen as a supporting business function rather than the strategic advantage it actually is — while being a woman trying to break the glass ceiling in male-dominated industries and leadership spaces.
I found that. And I found so much more.
I want to say something about Clare Muscutt, because it deserves to be said out loud: she was a role model for me. Is a role model for me. Confident in her knowledge and talent, bold in her approach, tenacious in how she attacked her dream, and genuinely caring in how she showed up for her team, her members, and the broader community she was building. I learned from watching her. I grew from being in spaces she created. To say I've picked up a few things from her is a significant understatement.
My time as a co-founding member of Women in CX has come to an end — and I find myself holding that with a full heart rather than a heavy one. Because what I'm leaving with is a community of women I hope to know for the rest of my life. And I'd like to think the strength I found in that space helped build the moxie that led me to take on bigger things — the Mansion, EmpowerX, this blog — while also helping me establish better boundaries for myself and my peace.
That's what the right community does. It doesn't just support you where you are. It builds you toward where you're going.
My people are the point.
I used to think of time with friends as something I'd get to — eventually, when things slowed down, when the calendar cleared, when I had more bandwidth.
I don't think that anymore.
The girls weekend is booked. The friendships are getting tended. The community is being protected.
Because women need each other. Not as a nice-to-have at the edges of a busy life. As a central, non-negotiable, life-giving part of the whole architecture.
My people are the point. And I'm done waiting for a slower season to act like it. 🦚
“The people who don't require a performance. Those people are rare. And they are everything..” - Serena Riley
