Free shipping on all orders over $75🎄

I hate traveling, but I love learning about other cultures, and I LOVE friends from other continents and countries. I am drawn to their courage and grit for moving so far from home, and I love hearing their perspectives on how we live. So many say how very lonely it is in the US. How isolated. How we all live walled up and closed off. And you know what? I see it, too.

Instead of actually being in one another’s lives, we just try to produce short plays, such as “The Morning Playdate”—a lovely one-act where bagels are served and everyone’s kids are well behaved and we talk about house renovations. Or “The Dinner With Husbands”—in which a forced and awkward evening is spent over pasta and garlic bread and everyone’s kids eat nicely and don’t throw noodles with red sauce under the table.

And so, if you’re a regular kind of person who gets exhausted by the thought of producing a perfect event, you just don’t really have anyone over. It’s just too much work.

There are some incredible writers who talk so beautifully about hospitality—that beautiful, homey word that means “having people over”. They write about crunchy farmer’s market vegetables and creamy soups and lovely linen tablecloths and they post pictures of people seated at a farmhouse table in a dreamy backyard lit with twinkle lights. They publish recipes that feature homegrown peaches and fresh-picked blackberries and invite readers to gather, and love, and live together.

But you know what we need to read more about? Gritty hospitality. “Just come over” hospitality.

This kind has paper plates and snotty kids and half-eaten bags of baby carrots.

It has too small living rooms and cramped kitchens and bagged salads from Aldi.

It has dust in the corners and toothpaste spots on the sink. “Just come over” hospitality sometimes means an amazing meal, but never expectations.

It means being honest—“I have cheese and tortillas in the house but that’s about it, what can you bring?”

Here are a few quick ways to start practicing “just come over” hospitality—to start actually living life with other women and not just staging events.

Let the silence fall.

The quickest way to make things weird is to make people feel like they have to be talking all the time. Let a moment be quiet. Have everyone help with dinner, with the clean-up, and with entertaining the kids – and don’t feel like you have to be talking constantly. Doing life with people is a marathon, not a sprint. You’ll have plenty of time.

Parent your children in front of other women.

If you discipline your kid in front of another woman – you’re for real. No games here. If we’re going to do our lives together, we’re going to have to see each other parent. Just do it. Do what you usually do, and what you think is right. You’re busting down all the walls and letting her see that you want her to do the same.

Let everyone help. A lot.

I used to try to just let friends sit on the couch while I did all the dinner work, cleaning, and kid wrangling. Now, I say, “Yes, you can help; will you make this guacamole? Also, here are the plates; will you give all the kids some carrots and grapes?” It immediately makes everyone relax. We’re serious here about actually being friends, not just getting through the meal. Also, everyone is eating, so everyone should be helping.

Carry on with your daily chores.

If you have people over and you need to throw in a load of laundry, DO IT. If people are hanging out at your house and you forgot to pay the cable bill and you need to call, just say, “Hey, I gotta call Comcast before I forget, back in a second.” If everything else has to freeze every time you’re hanging out with friends, then you’ll never have time for friends.

We think of community, of seeing and talking and living with other people, as this sort of add-on. It’s an extra, if we have time.

But it’s the stuff that literally keeps us alive. We need to talk, to eat, to BE with other human beings every day. Start now. Be the first to say, “Just come over.”

This article was originally published on the author’s blog

You may also like:

Life is Too Short for Fake Cheese and Fake Friends

I’m So Grateful For My “Always” Friends

Find Yourself a Friend Who is in it For the Long Haul

So God Made a Mother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our new book, SO GOD MADE A MOTHER available now!

Order Now

Kate Guerrero

Kate is a wife, mom, friend, and sometimes artist who is passionate about connecting women. She loves making crafty messes and letting her kids cover themselves in paint.

Your Husband Needs Friendship Too

In: Faith, Friendship, Marriage
3 men smiling outside

As the clock inches closer to 7:00 on a Monday evening, I pull out whatever dessert I had prepared that week and set it out on the kitchen counter. This particular week it’s a trifle, but other weeks it may be brownies, pound cake, or cookies of some kind. My eyes do one last sweep to make sure there isn’t a tripping hazard disguised as a dog toy on the floor and that the leftover dinner is put away. Then, my kids and I make ourselves scarce. Sometimes that involves library runs or gym visits, but it mostly looks like...

Keep Reading

When You Need a Friend, Be a Friend

In: Friendship, Living
Two friends having coffee

We have all seen them—the posts about the door always open, the coffee always on, telling us someone is always there when we need support. I have lived with depression my entire life. From being a nervous child with a couple of ticks to a middle-aged woman with recurrent major depressive and generalized Anxiety disorder diagnoses. Antidepressants, therapy, writing, and friends are my treatments. The first three are easy, my doctor prescribes antidepressants, I make appointments with a therapist, and I write when I feel the need. RELATED: Happy People Can Be Depressed, Too The fourth is hard. As I...

Keep Reading

Give Me Friends to Do Everyday Life With

In: Friendship
Two women at a sporting stadium, color photo

She sees me coming. A small wave from her house window and a silent invitation to come on over for our morning coffee. An unsaid invitation to connect with someone who gets the joys and challenges of being a mother. A quick, small, and valued break from life and stress and my house messes has become the perfect way to start the morning. A neighbor who has become a dear friend. Prior to this encounter, alarm clocks were ringing, breakfast was made, backpacks were packed, and shoes were missing. School mornings are rough. Motherhood is rough. The world around us...

Keep Reading

Sometimes Friendship Is Tested

In: Friendship
Two women friends hugging

Sometimes our own experiences can be hard on our friends, especially when those experiences have to do with fertility and pregnancy. My friend and I met when our children were six months old at a mom’s group Christmas party. She was the only other mom there without a partner, her husband having refused to attend in favor of playing video games in the silence of an empty home just like mine. Her son was a day younger than my daughter. Although she was almost 10 years older than me, we became fast friends, bonding over the loneliness that is staying...

Keep Reading

Give Me Friends Who Aren’t Keeping Up with the Joneses

In: Friendship, Living
Woman standing outside, color photo

Following trends is nothing new. Long before Kitsch curls and Lululemon belt bags, there were perms and, well, the original fanny packs. There’s been a constant, circulating rotation of must-buys for us to feel cool or relevant. And we women have been especially pressured to think we need these things to be accepted and part of the elusive village. Keeping up with the Joneses (or Kardashians for that matter) has just never been my thing. There are plenty of reasons why I’ll never be called a trendy girl: I can’t afford to be one. I lack the stylish eye required....

Keep Reading

Lifelong Friends Are Golden

In: Friendship, Living
Smiling group of women friends

They know all your secrets. They can name your old elementary and high school crushes, your most embarrassing moments, your biggest regrets. They know the one you love and the ones that got away. They celebrate your greatest achievements and empathize with your wish-you-could-do-overs. You don’t have to be wordy in texts, phone calls, or conversations—you get one another. Weeks, months, and sometimes even years may pass, and you pick up right where you left off. Laughter with your crew is like none other—unrefined, unrestrained, childhood bliss relived. RELATED: Good, Long Distance Friendship is Hard But So Worth it You’ve...

Keep Reading

Thank You for Being a Friend Who Grieves Beside Me

In: Friendship, Grief, Loss
Friends with arms around each other photographed from behind

My loss has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to endure, and I honestly don’t know if I would be here without you and your love and support. To cry with you and to you. To sit with you in silence or filled with so many words. To feel you holding me literally and emotionally with your gentle and loving arms. RELATED: I’m the Friend With the Dead Mom To understand and witness that my loss is a loss to you too, and to feel that importance of my friendship and life to you. To randomly break...

Keep Reading

As Our Children Get Older, Friends with Young Kids Are Such a Beautiful Gift

In: Friendship, Motherhood
Woman with two young girls, color photo

When I walk into our neighborhood pool these days, I’m often greeted by a small, usually wet, 4-year-old. Her face lights up and she runs toward me, wrapping her arms around my legs, and looking up at me from behind turquoise goggles. We bonded a few months ago when I decorated her wrist with an assortment of rainbow-colored, rubber bracelets and filled her a plate of marshmallows and strawberries. Now she draws pictures for me, jumps to me in the shallow end, and runs toward me if she spots me somewhere.   Sometimes her mom, who is a dear friend...

Keep Reading

Friend, It’s Okay to Say No

In: Friendship, Motherhood
Woman holding coffee cup sitting by window and relaxing

Last week I hosted a sleepover birthday party for six girls. Six 5-year-olds descended on our house, invited by me in a weak moment of expansiveness and generosity to my 5-year-old’s birthday wishes. I fed them pizza and ice cream cake. They demanded candy. They staged a disco party. They stayed awake past midnight. Almost everyone cried at some point. The next morning—after serving six waffles with whipped cream, not with butter, why don’t you have strawberries?—I felt exhausted and annoyed at myself for taking this on. It was unequivocally a terrible idea. I should’ve known it was too much....

Keep Reading

“Wear It Anyway, You Never Know When You’ll Get Another Chance.”

In: Cancer, Friendship, Living
Two women holding up dresses, color photo

“It’s way too fancy,” I told my husband. “I’d be overdressed.” My new outfit was a beauty—white and lacy, perfect for a summer cocktail party, but too much for a school function on a Tuesday evening. In the back of my head, though, I heard my friend’s voice. Wear it anyway. You never know when you’ll get another chance. The last time I saw Shalean, I was bloated from chemo drugs, and both of us wondered if it would be the last time we’d see each other. My prognosis was bad: triple negative breast cancer, already spread to my lymph...

Keep Reading