Real Talk | What We Actually Talk About on Girls’ Night

Tonight was our first wine night in what felt like three breakdowns and a failed pap smear ago. And let me tell you—I missed every messy, oversharing, laugh-til-you-pee-a-little second of our Thursdays. The wine flowed like our estrogen *used to*, and no topic was safe. We went from “remember blacking out and waking up with some guy's Quiksilver hoodie on?” to “is perimenopause supposed to feel like demonic possession?”

Girls’ night in our 40s hits different. It’s less “who’s getting laid?” and more “who’s still awake past 9?” Gone are the stilettos, the body glitter, the club lineups at midnight. These days, it’s more like sweatpants, wine that costs more than $10, and maybe someone’s kid asleep on the couch because they couldn’t find a sitter. But let me tell you—these nights? They’re sacred. Nobody’s pretending they’re drinking gin because they like it anymore. We’ve been through too much for that kind of performance art. We’re in the era of comfort, chaos, and complete honesty—and if you’re not showing up in sweats and trauma, you’re not doing it right.

But girls’ night isn’t just about obsessing over dating nonsense. In fact, men get about three minutes of airtime before someone says, “Ugh, anyway,” and we move on to the real stuff. At some point—usually around glass number two—the conversation turns. We get real. About work. Burnout. Parenting guilt. PMSing-at-40 symptoms no one warned us about. The crushing expectation to hold everyone else together while quietly falling apart ourselves. Someone will say, “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life anymore,” and the rest of us will nod, because same. The myth that by 40 we’d have it all figured out? Ha!

Girls’ night starts with life updates. Not the glossy, social media ones. I mean the unhinged, real-life kind. Like how one of us has been Googling “Can perimenopause make you cry over a bread commercial?” while the other is explaining how she’s now a part-time energy healer because her back pain told her to. Someone’s kid has discovered how to swear in Cree. Someone else showed up with a bottle of wine and no bra, and we all silently salute her.

The topics shift fast. One second we’re talking about gut health, and the next we’re dissecting the psychological implications of binge-watching crime documentaries while folding laundry. Someone says, “I’m thinking of getting bangs,” and the room erupts like a fire alarm. “Do you want bangs or are you just tired of everything and need a new identity?” We don’t play around.

The food situation is part feast, part experiment. We’ve got dairy-free cheese, gluten-free cookies, and at least one bowl of mystery dip that someone swears is “anti-inflammatory.” We eat like women who’ve survived two decades of diet culture and have now entered our “eat what you want, but also maybe it has chia seeds” phase. We’re not judging. We’re just hungry and philosophical about it.

There’s a lot of laughter. Like, scream-laughing until someone pees a little (because let’s be honest, our pelvic floors have seen better days). We laugh at how we now make noise just standing up. We laugh at how we used to think 30 was “getting old.” We laugh about how we joined a gym and then ghosted it like a bad online date. The absurdity of adulthood is our favourite genre.

And somewhere between the laughter and the chips, we get honest. Not performative, not inspirational-podcast honest. Raw honest. We talk about how tired we are. Not just physically, but in our souls. We talk about feeling stretched too thin and still being expected to be the emotionally available one for everybody else. We admit that sometimes we cry in our cars or fake sleep to get out of life for 15 minutes. And the moment that truth hits the air? Nobody flinches. We just nod, pour another drink, and go, “Same.”

Yes, sometimes we talk about men. Briefly. Casually. Like how one of the girls is dating again and we’re trying not to skewer her new beau over his one-word texts that simply start with “yo.” Or how we’ve collectively decided that men who say “alpha” should be banished from the dating pool. But honestly, it’s not the focus. We just raise a glass, toast, and move on.

What I love most is how nothing’s off limits. We can talk about anti-aging serums and bowel irregularity in the same breath. We can admit we miss our old selves and still wouldn’t trade our current selves for anything. We can go from laughing so hard we choke on a cracker to having a ten-minute TED Talk about how society gaslights women into thinking burnout is a personality trait.

This is our version of church. Our soft place. Our hilarious, slightly chaotic, deeply validating sanctuary.

So no, girls’ night isn’t what it used to be. And thank god for that. I don’t miss the tiny purses, the body glitter, or pretending I liked tequila. I like this better. This version where we show up as we are—messy, wise, funny, hormonal—and hold space for each other like it’s second nature. Zero judgements—true acceptance.

And honestly? That’s the kind of safety nothing can compete with. ❤️

~smy