The Space Between

Story Heather Shoning

I’ve never been especially good at prioritizing female friendship. I don’t build my life around standing plans or long weekly catch-ups. I move. I work. I disappear into projects. Relationships—romantic or otherwise—have often taken a back seat to whatever feels most urgent in the moment.

And yet, somehow, women keep showing up anyway.

I’m lucky to have a close circle of friends who fulfill me personally. These are the people who show up for birthdays and bad days, who know my history, my humor, and my softer edges. That part of my life feels solid and deeply sustaining. What’s been harder to find—especially in a lasting way—is a close circle of women who understand the entrepreneurial part of me.

And that part is not a side project. It’s central to who I am.

Being an entreprenuer—and a multi-passionate one, at that—changes how you move through the world. It shapes your relationship to time, risk, money, and rest. It’s not just what you do; it’s how you think. When the people closest to you don’t live inside that same reality, there can be a quiet disconnect—not because anyone is failing you, but because some experiences resist easy translation.

You can be deeply supported and still feel partially unseen.

That’s where the absence begins to register—not as a loss, but as a growing awareness. I’m not regularly in women-led professional spaces, and I haven’t fully built a circle of enterprising women who understand the daily mental load of working independently. As my work takes up more space in my life, that gap has become harder to ignore.

When you run your own business, there’s a constant internal negotiation happening—about momentum, sustainability, and when to push versus when to pause. What I’ve come to understand is that being supported and being understood are not the same thing.

I don’t need more encouragement in my life. I have that. What I’m craving is resonance—the kind that comes from sitting across from someone who doesn’t need context to understand why a quiet month feels loud, or why a small decision can carry more weight than it seems. The kind of recognition that doesn’t require justification or performance.

In a place like Boulder County—where women are building businesses, making art, and shaping communities in visible ways—it’s striking how easy it can still be to feel slightly alone inside that work. We celebrate women as founders and makers, but we don’t always make space for the unfinished, in-process reality of what that work actually requires.

This isn’t an essay about having found the answer. It’s about noticing the question.

About recognizing that a life can be rich and full, and still have room for something more specific. About understanding that wanting deeper connection in one area doesn’t diminish what already exists—it clarifies it.

Lately, I’ve been paying attention to that quiet pull. Not as a failure or a deficiency, but as information. A signal pointing toward the kind of community I want to grow into next—one that allows me to show up fully, without editing, in all the ways I move through the world.

Some relationships hold you personally. Others meet you in the work. And sometimes, the most honest thing you can do is admit there’s still a space between the two.