Creating the room I needed

If the room you want to be in does not exist, there comes a moment when you stop waiting for an invitation and quietly start setting the chairs out yourself. 

That realisation is rarely dramatic, it often arrives disguised as loneliness, restlessness, or the sense that a whole part of you has gone oddly quiet. Creating Working Women Club was was a response to that silence.

When I moved from London to West Yorkshire in 2021, I arrived as an outsider. A neighbour told me, only half-jokingly, that even after twenty-five years you can still be “not from here” if you are not a Yorkshire lifer. Recently married and moving to my husband’s home turf, I became “Sam’s wife.” After my daughter was born, I became “Penelope’s mum” at The Nest, Baby Sensory or MummyFit. Being a mum is a role I will never resign from, but one that, quietly, began to eclipse a big part of me. 

What I noticed almost immediately was how little work featured in conversation. In London, most people I knew were there because of work. Careers were the common denominator. After-work drinks were normal, and conversations revolved around office politics, promotions, disasters, and small, hard-won victories. People lived across the city with housemates rather than families, and work was often the thread that connected you.

In Yorkshire, the rhythm felt very different. Conversations centred on new restaurant openings, local favourites like Norman’s or The Dunkirk, family updates, or the latest council upheaval. None of this was wrong, but it was unfamiliar. Something I had relied on for making connections had disappeared.

I returned from maternity leave to my London adtech role fully remote. For someone who draws energy from being around people, it did not suit me. Then Society opened in Holmfirth, a co-working space that felt like a lifeline. I imagined it as a place to meet people who wanted to talk about work without the baggage of office politics, because everyone worked for different businesses. It was most definitely energising, but something was still missing. Most of the people there were men! 

Working with Zoe, the owner of Society, I pitched an idea: workshops designed to bring women into the work conversation. A reason to step away from kitchen tables where working hours blurred into laundry, toys, and unpaid labour. A space that acknowledged that many women were building careers while holding households together. The first workshop had two women attend. Some would call that a failure. I saw it as proof of appetite, however small, and a reason to keep going.

The workshops needed a name. Working Women Club. A space for women to share business ideas, to practise speaking up even when crippling shyness takes hold, and to support one another through the layered reality of working life in the Huddersfield area.

What makes these sessions powerful is how quickly the conversation deepens. One minute we are talking about social media strategy. The next we are unpacking rejection, self-doubt, or how our brains shift through hormonal changes. No topic is off the table, because working life does not exist in neat compartments.

I have watched women cry in these sessions, not from overwhelm, but from sheer relief. Relief at being seen and being listened to. Relief at realising they are not failing or having to do it alone; they are navigating something really complex without a map.

Working Women Club exists because it needs to. It continues because the need has not gone away. Sometimes the community does not arrive fully formed. Sometimes it starts with two women in a room, an idea that refuses to disappear, and the decision to build the space you were quietly searching for all along.

Originally posted on Huddle Online