So, What's the Gossip?

On the word they took from us, and why I want it back.

I've been running since I got home from Asia.

Not metaphorically. Actually running. Sick but functioning. Back into the store, back into the buying schedule, back into the particular kind of busy that doesn't wait for you to catch your breath before it starts asking things of you.

Morocco is coming. Another journey to hold, another group of women to show up for. The calendar doesn't care that I'm still slightly jet-lagged and operating at about eighty percent.

And somewhere between the spreadsheets and the restocking and the quiet panic of being slightly behind, I picked up my phone and called my best friend.

Not because I had something to say.

Because I needed to hear her voice.

That's it. That was the whole reason.

She picked up, and before I could even land, she said it. "I don't have long." Just like that. Straight and clean, the way she always does, and honestly, it's one of my favourite things about her. No cushioning. No apology for having a life. Just the truth, handed over simply.

And somehow that made it better. Not worse.

I'm here. Here's what I've got. Let's not waste it.

She told me three things. Ordinary things. The texture of her week. Nothing that would make headlines anywhere.

And my shoulders dropped.

I was driving. I couldn't even sit down and fully receive it. But somewhere on that stretch of road, my brain left the list for a few minutes. I smiled at something she said. I was just in her life for a moment, instead of inside the noise of mine.

That's what I needed. Not advice. Not a mirror held up to my own chaos.

Just her. Just ordinary.

I've been thinking about that word since.

Gossip.

How it sits in the mouth now. A little sideways. A little guilty. Like something we're supposed to have grown out of, or at least feel mildly ashamed of.

But here's what I found, in one of those conversations that cracks something open without warning.

The word gossip comes from the Old English godsibb. Godparent. Trusted kin. Over time, it came to describe the women who gathered around a woman in childbirth. Her circle. The ones who showed up when things were raw and real and completely unfiltered. They weren't idle. They were holding space. Sharing stories. Passing down knowledge about bodies and birth and healing and life.

It was sacred.

And then the 16th century happened.

Men, largely excluded from these circles, began to see them as threatening. Women gathering freely. Talking without supervision. Supporting each other in ways that didn't require approval from anyone.

So they did what systems of control tend to do.

They named it. They diminished it. They made women afraid of it.

There were actual laws against women babbling. Devices used to physically silence women who spoke too freely.

And slowly, godsibb became gossip.

From a trusted companion, to a woman who talks too much, to something trivial and slightly shameful.

They didn't just change a word. They disrupted the connection. They made women distrust the very thing that was keeping them whole.

I think about that phone call on the road.

I also think about it in the context of what I do.

I lead journeys for women. Thailand. Morocco. Places where something shifts, usually around a table, sometimes on a long walk, often in the quiet of a new landscape that asks nothing of you. I know how to create the conditions for depth and truth and the kind of conversation that changes something quietly.

But I've also watched it happen in much simpler moments.

In the changerooms, of all places. Women standing in front of mirrors, trying something on, and somehow that's when it starts. I don't know if it's the vulnerability of it, standing there half-dressed and seen, but things come out. Real things. The kind of things you don't always say over dinner.

I've held a lot of space in a lot of rooms.

And still. The list of people who get me unfiltered? Two people, maybe.

And I don't think I'm unusual in that.

I think a lot of women reading this know exactly what I mean. The capable ones. The ones other people call. The ones who are good at showing up, at holding things, at being the steady presence in someone else's story.

We're not always as practiced at being received.

When calling someone, not because we need to process anything, but just because we want to be in their orbit for a few minutes. To be small and ordinary inside someone else's life. To let three unremarkable things about their week feel like a gift.

That's what my best friend gave me on that drive.

She didn't know she was giving me anything.

She just picked up the phone, said I don't have long, and told me three things.

And I drove the rest of the way home lighter.

If that's gossip, I want more of it.

Not as a guilty pleasure.

As a practice.

As the thing it always was before they took the word from us.

Connection. Witnessing. The quiet miracle of being known.

We were never meant to carry all of this alone.

And sometimes, all it takes is three ordinary things to remember that.

Xo

Penny

This is what I try to create on every Grit & Grace journey, not manufactured depth, but the conditions for it. Small groups. Long tables. Real places. If something in this piece resonated, you might find yourself at home here.

Take a look at what's coming up and see if anything calls to you.