The blizzard pushed our now biweekly ritual onto Zoom. We joked about meeting for hot chocolates and something sweet, as if that pairing belonged to a younger version of us who could afford to be careless about small things.

One of the quiet gifts of Meraki has been finding my way to extraordinary ordinary women –in this case back to my Wellesley College sisters and the wisdom they were accumulating while I was busy building my own life. It is heartening how easily the years collapse, how quickly we remember how to know each other.

Nami has always been a quick study. I am grateful for her clarity and her refusal to circle the point. When we first reconnected, I was newly divorced and searching for solid ground. She held up a mirror and asked, plainly, tilting her head slightly before she spoke, a gesture I now recognize as the moment to pay attention because something sharp is about to be conveyed. It was the moment I understood I was already pivoting, even if I could not yet name it.

Now our conversations unfold in the familiar anonymity of coffee shops, lingering over our warm drinks gone cold while the room hums around us. We lean in across the tiny table, speaking in the shorthand of people who can skip preamble. When we finally come up for air, the scene has reset. Parents with strollers replaced by dog owners, then by clusters of high schoolers. Time moving for everyone else, briefly paused for us.

We move easily across the terrain of our lives. Caregiving for stubborn, tender mothers. Nami’s ongoing, half-serious anthropological study of how men and women seem to understand the purpose of marriage differently. Her quiet devotion to K-pop. Aging parents, aging selves, and the fatigue that comes from continuing to show up for work we still believe in.

There is comfort in being witnessed by someone who knew you before and knows you now, and who treats both versions as continuous. Perhaps that is another form of Meraki too. Staying in the work, staying in the friendship, long enough to see what it becomes.

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by Stephanie Georges
Founder and CEO
The Meraki Dignity Project

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