We are living in a world where we have never been more connected, yet I genuinely believe many women have never felt more alone.
It’s something I’ve been reflecting on a lot recently because I see it every single week. Whether it’s the women sitting in my clinic, the conversations I have at the Womenpreneur Collective, or the messages that quietly arrive in my inbox, there seems to be a growing epidemic that we don’t talk about enough.
On the outside, life looks busy, successful and full. Women are building businesses, managing careers, raising families and somehow keeping all the plates spinning. Yet underneath all of that, many are carrying something much quieter: loneliness.
I often joke that we’ve gone from the boardroom to becoming lonelypreneurs, but the more I think about it, the more I realise there is a lot of truth in that statement.
Years ago, many of us worked in offices surrounded by people. There was someone to make a coffee with, someone to chat to at lunch, someone to bounce ideas off or simply have a laugh with after a difficult meeting. Today, our world looks very different.
We have the freedom to work from anywhere with nothing more than a laptop and a phone. We can build businesses from our kitchen tables, work around our children, travel and create lives that fit around us rather than the other way round. There are so many positives to that, and I certainly wouldn’t want to lose them.
But there is another side that we don’t often acknowledge.
Working from home can be incredibly isolating.
Social media has become our office. AI is changing the way we work. Zoom meetings replace face-to-face conversations. We spend hours replying to messages, commenting on posts and watching everyone else’s lives unfold online, yet many women finish the day without having had one meaningful conversation with another person.
We are connected digitally, but many of us have never felt more disconnected emotionally.
As human beings, we were never designed to live like this.
We were designed for community, for belonging and for connection. Years ago, villages were built around those very things. People knew their neighbours. They shared childcare, celebrated together, supported one another through difficult times and simply had people around them. Today, many of us don’t even know who lives next door.
Alongside that, there is something else I see happening with women, particularly during midlife.
For years, we become everybody else’s rock. The children come first. Our partners come first. The business comes first. Family comes first. The school WhatsApp groups need answering. The washing needs doing. The emails need replying to. There is always someone or something that feels more important than us.
Slowly, almost without noticing, we stop choosing ourselves.
We stop making time for that coffee with a friend. We stop going for that Sunday morning swim. We stop joining clubs or trying new things because we’re too busy or simply too exhausted. We navigate towards convenience instead of connection, and over time our own world becomes smaller and smaller.
The interesting thing about loneliness is that it has very little to do with whether you’re physically alone.
Some of the loneliest women I meet are surrounded by people every day. They have families who love them, children who need them, colleagues who rely on them and friends on social media.
Yet they still feel isolated because they don’t feel they have someone they can truly talk to. Someone they can ring and say, “Fancy a coffee?” Someone who simply understands without judgement.
That kind of connection matters more than we often realise.
It’s one of the reasons I created the Womenpreneur Collective.
People often think it’s just another networking group, but for me it has never been about networking. It’s about creating a community where women genuinely support one another, whether they’ve come from the boardroom, are running a successful business or are just taking the first brave steps into self-employment.
It’s about creating a room where women don’t have to pretend they have everything together. A place where they can share ideas, celebrate wins, ask for help and realise they’re not the only one feeling the way they do.
Some of the most important conversations don’t actually happen during the networking. They happen afterwards, over a coffee, on a walk, during an early morning swim or over a glass of wine when someone quietly says, “I’ve been feeling exactly the same.” Those are the moments where real community begins, and where women remember they don’t have to carry everything on their own.
I truly believe loneliness is becoming one of the biggest wellbeing challenges facing women today.
Not because women are weak, but because we’ve become so incredibly good at carrying everything that nobody realises how heavy the load has become. We keep giving to everyone else until one day we look around and realise we’ve forgotten to build a life that nourishes us too.
So if you’ve been feeling isolated lately, please know you’re not alone. There are thousands of women quietly feeling exactly the same way. Perhaps today is the day you message the friend you’ve been meaning to catch up with.
Perhaps it’s the day you say yes to the coffee invitation you’ve been putting off, or walk into a room where you don’t know anyone yet.
Because those strangers could become your biggest cheerleaders, your closest friends or simply the people who remind you that you were never meant to do this journey alone.
Success isn’t just about building a business or climbing the career ladder. It’s about building a life where you feel connected, supported and surrounded by people who genuinely want to see you thrive.
Because at the end of the day, we were never meant to do life alone.
With love,
Zoë x
Women’s Transformation Architect
Creator of The HER Method™
