Connection is Medicine: The one thing women are starving for
There is a kind of tired that sleep doesn't fix.
You know the one. You wake up exhausted. You move through your day doing, giving, showing up and somewhere underneath all of it is a quiet ache you can't quite name.
For a long time, I thought that ache was burnout. Or hormones. Or just the cost of being a woman who cares deeply.
But I've come to believe something different now.
I think a lot of us are lonely. Not the kind of lonely that comes from being alone, many of us are surrounded by people. But the kind of lonely that comes from never truly being seen. From performing your life rather than living it. From laughing at the right moments and saying "I'm fine" so many times you've almost convinced yourself.
That kind of loneliness? It makes you sick. Literally.
Women Were Never Meant To Do This Alone
Science is finally catching up to what women have always known in their bones.
Genuine connection, the kind where you can exhale, drop the performance, and just be, is one of the most powerful medicines we have. It regulates our nervous system. It lowers cortisol. It helps us sleep. It reminds us who we are when we've forgotten.
Harvard's longest-running study on happiness found that the quality of our relationships is the single greatest predictor of how well… and how long we live.
Not our productivity. Not our achievements. Not how well we held it all together.
Our connections.
And yet. We live in an era where women are more overscheduled, more digitally connected, and more genuinely lonely than at any other time in history. We scroll through highlight reels and mistake that for community. We answer "how are you?" with "busy, so busy" and move on.
We are starving for something real.
An Invitation to Get Honest About Your People
Before I tell you about something I'd love to invite you into, I want to offer you something first.
A moment to pause. To actually think about the people in your life.
Grab a cup of tea. Find a quiet corner. And sit with these questions:
Who fills your cup?
Who are the people you walk away from feeling more like yourself? Lighter. Seen. Energised. Think of their faces. When did you last spend real time with them?
Who can you be completely authentic around?
Who knows the unedited version of you; the messy, uncertain, sometimes-struggling version, and loves you anyway? Where do you not have to manage how you come across?
Who drains you?
Who do you brace yourself before seeing? Who do you find yourself performing around, editing yourself for, or exhausted by afterwards? (And I say this with full compassion, sometimes the people who drain us most are the ones we love deeply.)
Who do you put your guard up around?
Where do you feel you can't afford to be real? Where do you shrink, manage, or disappear a little?
Just notice. No judgment. Just honesty.
Drains and Radiators
Reese Witherspoon once shared a piece of wisdom her grandmother gave her, one of those simple truths that lands like something you always knew but never had words for.
Her grandmother told her there are two kinds of people in this world: drains and radiators.
Drains pull energy from the room. From you. Every interaction leaves you a little emptier, a little more contracted, a little further from yourself.
Radiators give warmth.They light up a room simply by being in it. You leave their presence feeling expanded. More yourself. More alive.
Here's the invitation: look at your list.
Who are your radiators? And when did you last prioritise time with them?
Because here is what I see again and again in the women I work with: we pour ourselves into the drains, trying to fix, manage, please, and keep the peace and we let our radiators slip to the bottom of the priority list. We tell ourselves we'll catch up with them soon. When life settles down. When we're less busy.
And the loneliness quietly grows.
Come Home to Yourself ~ And to Women Who Get It
This is why I created Rosenda's Lounge.
It is a monthly women's circle held in Silverstream, Wellington and it is one of the most nourishing things I offer, because I have watched what happens when women finally give themselves permission to be real with each other.
The exhale that happens in that room is something I cannot put into words.
We sit together. We talk honestly. We laugh. We hold space for each other's struggles without trying to fix them. We leave feeling less alone and more like ourselves.
It happens on the first Wednesday of every month, from 6:45pm–8:45pm. There is herbal tea, nourishing kai, and a facilitated conversation that goes somewhere real.
$44 per session.
No commitment. Just come once and see what it feels like to be in a room full of your people.
Connection is not a luxury.
It is not something you earn after you've ticked everything else off the list.
It is medicine. And you deserve it now.
Join us at Rosenda's Lounge → BOOK HERE
Big Love
Rosenda
xo
Rosenda Upton is a Wellington-based life, health and mental health coach and the 2025 PreKure Mental Health Coach of the Year. She founded Cultivate You to help women stop abandoning themselves; in life, health and relationships.
