“”

Women's Health, Your Way

April 03, 2026

Ask & Search With Clara

Welcome to a new standard for women’s health answers.

GIRLHOOD / Friendship Is a Rising Tide

Friendship Is a Rising Tide

Friendship Is a Rising Tide

"A rising tide lifts all boats."

Someone said that to me in the early days of Rescripted, and it stuck.

Something to know about me: I’m a girl’s girl to my core. Maybe once, in middle school, I claimed, “I just get along better with guys” (didn’t we all?). But by high school, my girlfriends were my lifelines. Cheerleading, softball, musical theatre — it was never just about winning or performing; it was about the inside jokes, the post-practice hangouts, and that feeling of belonging.

The thing about girlhood is that it teaches you early on what really matters: showing up for each other. Every day, it becomes clearer to me that we should be celebrating our friends not just for the big, ‘expected’ milestones like marriage or babies, but for the quieter, courageous moments: leaving a bad relationship, running a marathon, starting a new business, or taking a leap they’ve been scared to take.

Cheering for each other in those moments is the heart of friendship, the kind that carries you through messy breakups, toddler meltdowns, job changes, and all the unexpected twists and turns of your 30s. 

That’s why I love the idea of a “rising tide.” When one of us wins, we all win. When someone takes a step forward, it makes the path a little bit wider for everyone else. Life is bigger than any single rivalry, and there’s (quite literally) room for all of us. Because life, like friendship, like girlhood, isn’t a zero-sum game.

Ask Clara: How often is women's pain ignored?

More from GIRLHOOD

Somewhere between my postpartum scalp freakout and my third Google search about whether I should be exfoliating or not, I had a realization: women's wellness doesn't have an information problem... Read more
Something else you should know: I am, despite my better judgment, a hopeless romantic. I have watched almost every season of The Bachelor. I have cried at the finale. I am... Read more
If you know me IRL, you know I have the kind of health anxiety that comes from knowing too much. Not spiraling-at-2am anxiety, but the specific, well-researched kind that accumulates... Read more
Confession: I always need to be reading a book. Not want, need. If I have a story in my head, I can't hear my own anxiety. It doesn't have room.... Read more
There's a video circulating that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. It's a critique of the "soft girl" era — the aesthetic of candles, nervous system regulation, protecting... Read more
As someone with an autoimmune condition (hi, Hashimoto's, the gift that keeps on giving), I'm obsessed with the research connecting what happens to us emotionally — especially early in life... Read more
Every day, without fail, a version of the same search lands in Rescripted's data: why are my period cramps so bad, is this amount of pain normal, can't get out of... Read more
Every year around my birthday, I do this thing where I take stock — not in a vision-board way, more like a slightly uncomfortable look at whether I actually am... Read more
This week I did something I'd been meaning to do for months: I sat down, opened my calendar, and scheduled everything — the annual GYN visit, thyroid bloodwork, the follow-up... Read more
Someone asked me recently what I thought about the "trimester zero" trend: the growing movement of women spending months, sometimes years, optimizing their bodies before they even try to conceive.... Read more