Find Your Sophie

(my surprise midlife friendship)

Photo by Yan Ming on Unsplash

At this time last year, I had no idea who she was.

She had just moved to a new home in rural Canada where rogue cows sometimes wander down her street. Three time zones away, I was perched in my house in a hilly Seattle neighborhood with its peekaboo view of the Space Needle. We were both juggling raising kids (girls for her, boys for me) and chasing our own dreams to be published novelists, while getting dinner on the table each night (hers, strictly vegan, mine usually coated in cheese) and, if we’re lucky, squeezing in a bit of time with our husbands after the busyness (chaos? circus?) of each day subsided. Both of us had and still have other friends—good, dear ones—and didn’t know we had the need or the time for a brand new, out of left field, Oprah-Gayle type friendship situation.

By February, I had discovered and quickly started devouring the popular writing podcast, The Shit No One Tells You About Writing. I was connecting with more and more fellow writers through my Instagram account, which had slowly morphed from mostly photos of my family, dog, and travel adventures, to mostly posts about reading, writing, and the grueling, exhilarating quest to build a career out of this stuff I love so much.

Sophie was one of many new writer friends I connected with through the podcast community and broader Instagram reading/writing community. I’m honestly not sure what the exact impetus was, but around early April we stumbled upon each other online. We gradually began chatting a bit about writing stuff, but not a ton. By June I had heard about a national writing conference in Chicago that I was interested in attending in September. I floated the idea by a few of these new writer friends, including Sophie. She was as interested in the conference as I was and, though we hardly knew each other, had never done a Zoom call or even heard the other’s voice, we decided to share a hotel room (saving us each hundreds of dollars) at the conference.

(Sophie and me [both in black, closest to camera] at a TSNOTYAW podcast gathering in Chicago)

We then decided that we should probably get to know each other a bit more.

Enter: voice notes.

Have you ever used a voice note app to send short verbal messages back and forth with someone? It’s so much quicker than texting, and strangely addictive. It’s personal and expressive and fun. Somehow, over the summer, this became Sophie’s and my thing. Ours being an international friendship, time zones are tricky and phones calls can be very expensive (we’ve learned this the hard way). Mix in the loud, needy children often swarming us at home, it is hard to find the focused time for a long phone call. But voice notes one minute at a time for the other to listen to at their leisure, covering all manner of topics and life stuff? That we can do.

Since last spring, I couldn’t even attempt to guess how many hundreds of 60-seconds-or-less voice notes Sophie and I have exchanged. After committing to rooming together in Chicago, we soon discovered we connected easily and with depth on so many other facets of life. We can come to each other with utter vulnerability over the most brutal, soul-sucking of parenting days. We can laugh until we pee our pants (OK, *I* did this exactly once, thankfully while at my kids’ swim lessons where everyone already had random wet spots all over their clothing. Phew. Worth it. SO FUNNY.). We can trade thorny, dynamic views on religion, politics, marriage, our deepest, most awkward insecurities. Sophie is incredibly thoughtful and caring, wise and emotionally mature. She is someone who has done so much work on herself, and it shows. She knows who she is, what she values, how to set healthy boundaries in her life. And she’s also open-hearted and open-minded enough to constantly seek to grow, learn new things, and really get to know new people. Like me.

By the time we met for the first time in person, we had formed such a deep, natural friendship through what had unexpectedly become daily chats and check-ins about everything under the sun. There was a strangeness to familiarizing ourselves with the other in the flesh (heck, in the same country) for the first time, but also a deep-seated comfort in that we already knew each other. By then Sophie had become not just a dear friend, but a trusted critique partner with whom I regularly exchange new writing work. We are so well-matched in our writing abilities, in what we expect from ourselves, and how we approach reading and giving feedback. It is a rare gem of a thing to find such a likeminded CP —someone who is kind, generous, and incisive with their feedback, who “gets” me and my writing voice, and pushes me to be better. For that same person to double as a close, trusted friend beyond the realm of writing feels like the four-leaf clover of surprises.

(Sophie and me in Chicago, along with dear writing friends Nicole, Jessica, and Gina. It was such fun for us all to finally meet in person and have four wonderful days together!)

This morning I woke up on this first day of 2024 and I knew that I wanted to write about my friendship with Sophie. It has been the single biggest gift of my past year—more consequential than signing with an agent, more fulfilling than finishing another draft of a novel, more heartwarming than the kindest, most generous feedback from a revered publishing gatekeeper during the six months I spent in the novel query trenches.

Sophie, I love fixing my morning tea while listening to you talk about your backyard pond and how—though freezing outside—the sun is so bright it’s like a spotlight. I love one-upping each other with pictures of our kids’ messy rooms (I win), trading recipes and book recommendations, and completely geeking out over the most minute aspects of writing craft and query strategy, far past the point where most reasonable people’s eyes would glaze over.

We don’t have everything in common. You eat mostly plants, in a way that would make Michael Pollan proud. I may never give up bacon. I haven’t heard of most of the musicians you listen to. You would hate most of the creepy, gritty thrillers I read and love. I’ve never been to Eastern Canada. You’ve never been to the West Coast of the U.S. You speak fluent French and have the most beautiful classic handwriting while I can no longer remember how to properly form certain cursive letters.

I have had many people over the course of my four decades of life whom I have been lucky to count as friends and I trust there are more to come as life is full of beautiful surprises. Each friend, past and present, has marked me in unique ways and I am grateful for each of those connections. But you were the exact friend I needed this past year, and finding a friend like that when you least expect it, nurturing that friendship and watching it bloom—it’s as close to magic as anything I’ve ever experienced.

This morning I wished you a happy new year and asked if we can now say we’ve been friends for two years. Truthfully, it feels like so much more than that.

(This was my favorite night in Chicago. Sophie and I, along with two other writers we met at the conference, walked around the city for hours, stumbling into this cozy, dimly lit Italian restaurant where we indulged in foodie-level food and delicious cocktails and went around the table sharing what each of us was writing about and what inspired our stories. It was really special and this photo perfectly captures that feeling of finding the right people at the right time. People who make space for you and you for them, who make you feel seen and cherished and safe.)

Happy New Year, everyone. I hope your year is filled with wonder and joy and growth. I hope you find comfort in the hard times. And friendship. Real, vibrant, beautiful friendship. We need more stories about friendship. More room for it. More reverence.

I hope you find your people this year. And if you’ve already found them, buckle in together and hold on tight.