You have people. You just don’t have YOUR people.

Hi friend.

Can I tell you something I don’t say out loud very often?

My first year in the Twin Cities, I was the loneliest I have ever been. And on paper, that made no sense.

Because I had people. I had a full calendar and coworkers who liked me and a phone full of numbers. What I did not have was the other thing. The 9pm text. The person who saves you a seat without being asked. The one who notices when you go quiet for a week.

It was not the loneliness of an empty room. It was the other kind. The kind where your calendar is full and your group chats are still. Where you know a lot of people and not one of them really knows you.

You have people. You just don’t have YOUR people.

(If your chest did a little thing reading that, stay with me. This one is for you.)

Here is the part I am not too proud to admit. I spent more than a decade in rooms where I looked like I had it all together, succeeding by every measure somebody hands you, and still drove home some nights feeling like nobody in that building actually knew me. Then I moved here, and I found out something nobody warns you about.

It is not just me. And it is not just you.

Close to THREE IN FOUR people in a Twin Cities friendship survey said it is hard to make friends here. Not awkward. Hard. And almost half of the people born in this state said most of their friends are still the ones they have had since forever. Minnesota Nice is real….. and so is the part nobody puts on the mug. We are lovely to your face and slow to open the door.

So if you moved here as an adult and you have felt like you are standing on the sidewalk watching everyone else’s dinner party through the window, you are not imagining it. You are not too much. You are not doing it wrong. The room is genuinely hard to get into.

And it is not only the transplants. Almost half of Minnesotans say they feel lonely at least some of the time, and for women my age and younger that number climbs. Surrounded and starving at the same time. That is the quiet epidemic nobody is putting on a billboard.

Here is what I finally understood, and it changed everything about what I build.

1. Adult friendship does not happen by accident anymore. In your twenties it was proximity. Dorms, first jobs, roommates, the person who happened to sit next to you. Nobody tells you that the machine that used to make friends for you just….. stops. After that, connection only happens where somebody builds a room for it on purpose.

2. You cannot white-knuckle your way in the front door. You need a side door. A reason to be in the same place as your people that does not require you to walk up to a stranger cold and perform. A houseplant. A bus full of bookstores. A bingo card. The activity was never the point. It was always the side door.

3. Everyone in that room came for the exact same reason you did. That is the part that undoes me every single time. The woman across the aisle who looks like she has it all figured out? She drove there with the same knot in her stomach you did. She is not there to size you up. She is there because she is starving for the same thing you are.

So here is what I want for you. Not more followers. Not a busier calendar. I want you to have the 9pm friend. The one who saves you a seat. The one who notices when you go quiet.

I want you to walk into a room alone and walk out with people.

That is the whole reason Citrus & Co. exists. I don’t build events. I build ROOMS. The kind where you come as you are and leave with your people.

We have a few of those doors open right now. Plant Bingo by Citrus & Co. The Book Bus. A table with your name already on it. You do not have to bring anyone. That is the entire point.

So come find us. And before you go, reply and tell me the last time you made a real friend as a grown woman in this city….. I read every single one.

The table is always better lit.

🍊🌿 Mikosa