celebrate
delicious cocktails provided by Laneway Distillers and juices by Greenhouse
Christine, here. Hello. We opened our doors to welcome in new women in December— to CELEBRATE together as women.
The energy in the room was magical—the perfect combination of fun, compassion, laughter, meaningful conversation and juicy connection. It’s our perfect recipe for On Friday magic.
On Friday is for “women who empower women” and we bring this in all that we do. We are here to uplift each other and connect in the way we are meant to as women. When we do, there’s a palpable feeling and it feels just so good (if we do say so ourselves!).
Thank you to the extraordinary women who brought the beautiful energy.
We were lucky to have an intimate chat on a cozy couch with Ashley Audrain. Ashley is a New York Times, Sunday Times (London), and number-one international bestseller, and a Good Morning America Book Club pick.
She is also a lovely human which we like to point out because ‘labels’ aren’t the whole story for women. This is an important distinction to us at On Friday—we bring the humanity to our sessions, and don’t define ourselves simply by our labels and titles. They’re part of us, but they’re never the whole picture.
Specifically, Ashley extended a tiny but profound act of kindness towards me this year during a very tough & private moment in my life, and it illuminated to me the kind of human she is: compassionate, thoughtful, genuine. I want to highlight this because we’re so often introduced by our “titles” and our “accomplishments” and somehow some of our most important work and our greatest impact is done behind the scenes in quiet, or hard moments.
I got to lead the chat with Ashley and we dove deep into some juicy topics (if you’ve read her books you know what we’re talking about).
About our live conversation…
Ashley’s first novel, The Push immediately topped all book charts with its plot depth and twists. Her second novel soon followed The Whispers taking equally unexpected turns, revealing the truths of women all neighbours living adjacent to each other.
She shared her interesting journey from her career beginning in PR, to Publisher with Penguin to Mother to NYT Best Selling Author for her first book ever. Within that was also a crisis with one of her children, and a release of the life as she had known. We will keep her story private. It was beautiful and very real as she shared her struggles which ultimately led her to drop the career path she was on and begin writing. “Motherhood & crisis shifted it all for me; it cracked me open” Ashley shared.
“It was hard to find ‘her’—the writer in me. This burning ‘thing’ was always there, but I was not embracing it. I confronted myself and asked—“who am I really?” What “should” I be turned into “who do I want to be.”
Ashley never really “decided” to write psychological thrillers, but rather her life informed this. The place she was in became the ground from which she wrote and wrote in coffee shops in Toronto while her child slept.
We went into friendship between women. This is a topic we are exploring within On Friday—female friendships. “The Whispers” goes deep into the friendship of four women, all neighbours. In the book she explores so many facets of friendship—envy, rage, power imbalances, and of the human experience of a woman: sex & intimacy, affairs, motherhood, mid-life, hunger & desire.
When asked what surprises her that she never gets asked in book interviews, she shared it’s the miscarriages that Blair has in The Whispers. Ashley shared that her editorial team looked at this from many angles and that she wanted to write it as she did—very graphic and painful. She said “I didn’t hold back.” She had 3 miscarriages (I had 2 myself), and she didn’t have a personal context for understanding what a miscarriage was. She’d never “seen” a miscarriage on film before she had her own so had no understanding. I hadn’t either so when it happened for me it was unfamiliar and terrifying. Her desire was to create this for women. For me it was very healing—to read a woman’s experience of miscarriage on paper—and to go back in my body’s remembering to my own miscarriages, and to feel part of a collective lived experience, versus feeling like an alien—the way I felt back 10 years ago during my experience of loss.
I asked her what’s most important to her now as a woman and mother who is creating. She shared that what’s important to her right now is to continue to push; to push the conversation forward where women aren’t just the “good” women, where she gets to write about women who aren’t the character everyone thinks they want to read about. She wants to write about women who even her editors question. In the darker aspects we can see parts of ourselves perhaps we didn’t see before, and we can see that other women have similar feelings and experiences, and that we’re not alone.
It was quite the conversation. We could have gone on forever.
Yes, we are going to see a TV Series of The Push and this is very exciting!
learn more about Ashley’s books here
Thank you Ashley for this conversation. It’s important. One of my favourite aspects of her writing is that I dropped into gripping darkness—really dark— and when I emerged, her writing led me to ask some questions of myself I’d never asked about envy and darkness. I loved both of her novels and respect her bravery in writing them. It was a total pleasure to bring her to our women On Friday.
On-Friday Full Series offers 6 workshops, every other month, in person, in Toronto, over the course of one year. Our themes include: Clarity, Rhythm, Celebration (bonus!), Transition, Relationships, Wealth and Courage. The Full Series, Season One, is now closed.
However, you can join us for any or all of the remaining sessions, a-la-carte. Visit the Events page, and choose your desired theme and date, or Bundle the remaining Season One sessions for 2024, here. In each session, we dive into content for business and wellbeing, we hear from a woman we admire for a fireside chat intimate gathering, and we gather and connect for cocktails and kombucha. See the full Events line-up, or check out our Speaker list.