Our story

I spent my whole life reading rooms for other people. At networking events my dad would lean down and tell me to look past the loud ones, find the quiet people on the edges, notice who was being left out. So I did. For YEARS. As a store manager. As a pastor running women's events for thousands. As the person who always knew who needed an introduction.

What I never had was a room of my own.

The feeling you've been carrying

You wake up every morning and the calendar is full. You're good at this. You get the promotion. You drop off the kids. You send the check. But under all of it there's a weight you can't name.

Maybe it feels like standing in a room where everyone else knows each other. Maybe it feels like looking around your own life and thinking, This is it? (No wonder we scroll.) You have a full life and still find yourself craving a room where you don't have to explain why you're tired.

I know exactly what that feels like.

Mikosa's mess

Here's the part I don't usually lead with. My first job out of college, I got fired over a little St. Patrick's Day pin. The next place promoted me three times in almost no time, so I knew the problem was never me. But the lesson stuck anyway. You can be the best person in the room at seeing people, and a room can still decide you do not matter.

Years later my whole life came down to the studs. I rebuilt it from nothing, one friend's spare room to the next. A family opened their home to me for six weeks while I saved, and they loved me exactly where I was. I didn't have to earn it. (I'm still not over that.) Then I found a home of my own in Summit Hill, in my own name.

The revelation

The first night in my own bed, in my own neighborhood, was the beginning of the friendships that are still my closest today. That's when I understood it. I had spent my entire life reading rooms for everyone else and had never once had one of my own.

So I started building them.

Plant nights. A bus full of independent bookstores. Rooms where the woman halfway to the door, the one on her phone, the one nobody thought to introduce, gets met before she leaves. The activity is the invitation. Belonging is the product.

What I want for you

I want you to feel the relief I felt when I finally let someone in. I want your shoulders to drop when you walk into a room that was built for you. I want you to know that you don't need a bigger house, a better job, or a different life to deserve a place at the table.

I want you to sit down next to me and let your voice crack. I want you to leave with something growing.

If you're ready, there's a seat.