What Happens When Three Generations of Women Share a Pool
Dragonflies, Naturism, and Women Growing Older Together
A dragonfly spends about 95% of its life becoming itself, and only 5% of it being seen as the fully formed dragonfly we admire.
This was my favorite takeaway from a recent Füde gathering I hosted, a room full of women spanning six decades.
A few months ago, Cynthia, president of the Southern California Naturists Association (SCNA), reached out wanting to collaborate. She’s on a mission to bring more young women into the naturist world, and wanted to talk through how. I went over to her house in Altadena and shared everything I could about what's worked for Füde and bringing younger women into these kinds of spaces.
When I first started practicing nudity, I hadn’t even thought about “nudist” or “naturist” community too much. Nudity was just one tool among many I was using for self discovery and healing. Füde grew out of that. Most people who come to a Füde dinner have never been nude in a group before in their life. But once Füde started getting real exposure, nudists and naturists started finding us too, and that’s how I first learned more about community that had existed long before I showed up.
I still think about the night Linda, president of American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR), came to her first Füde dinner about 3 years ago. She was amazed by how many women were in the room. It sent me down a research rabbit hole afterward, and what I found lined up with her reaction: nudist and naturist spaces have historically skewed heavily male. Some clubs try to hold a 60/40 ratio, but spaces can run as high as 90%+ male, and women, if they’re there at all, are often the minority by a wide margin. Linda’s been part of the Füde community for years now, so supportive, so sweet, and grateful to have her apart of the Füde community. We love her so much!
So when Cynthia called after that visit to Altadena and asked if we’d host something together, it felt full circle. On that call, she told me something that basically wrote the whole event for me: the women of SCNA call themselves the Dragonfly Ladies. They were all in a pool once, at one of their gatherings, and a dragonfly landed on one of them. The name stuck. How cute! I loved it instantly, and I knew right away, that was the theme.
Once I started reading about dragonflies, the rest of the symbolism followed just as easily. They spend years submerged underwater as nymphs before they ever become a dragonfly, and once they finally do, their whole adult life in the air lasts only a few weeks. Most of a dragonfly’s life is spent becoming, only a sliver of it is spent being the thing we actually admire.
The rest of it is pretty interesting too. During those years underwater, they’re quietly growing and molting, completely unrecognizable from the stunning creature they’ll become. Then, when they’re ready, they climb out of the water, split open their exoskeleton, and emerge, soft bodied, wings crumpled and full of fluid, nothing like the thing they’re about to be. They have to pump that fluid through their wings to unfurl them, then sit still in the sun for a few hours while they harden and dry. They can’t fly wet. Only once they’re finished becoming do they finally take off. Rest isn’t the opposite of becoming. Sometimes it’s the requirement for it.
It could not have been a more perfect theme for the day we had.
The applications rolling in beforehand had me thinking differently than I’m used to. Honestly, I was LIVING reading them all. Every Füde experience starts with a questionnaire (dietary restrictions included), and this time around, three separate women in their late 60s and 70s wrote that they were allergic to American cheese. Like juuust American cheese... no other dairy or anything. LOL. Can someone please explain this to me?
Then one woman mentioned a couple of times on her application that she had no teeth, and I just sat with that for a minute, thinking through the whole menu differently. What’s soft enough that she could actually eat but still feels special? Gazpacho!
She sadly ended up being a no show:( was excited to meet this diva.
We hosted at Caster House, my favorite place to host in LA. Bryan Whalen and Ali are two of the loveliest creative humans and lovebirds behind one of the most special spaces in LA. The house itself feels like you've stepped into Greece for the afternoon. Unreal energy in that home, every time. <3 Caster House
I guided some movement. Crystal guided a serene sound bath while pregnant. We did drinks and bites by the pool. I made a pomegranate rose elixir, carrot cake bites, watermelon bites, blackberry & Monty’s cream cheese bites on the most beautiful artisanal flower crackers by flouwer co I found at Bestie’s Vegan Paradise, fresh cherries, endive bites with peanut sauce and fermented beets, cucumber dill bites. Plant based, always. Assisted by the loveliest Dominique & Odessey <3
The group was one of the most diverse I’ve hosted, age wise, women spanning their 20s all the way to their 70s, almost evenly split across every decade in between. Most Füde dinners skew young, mostly 50 and under. This one didn’t, and it changed the entire texture of the conversation.
A 24 year old and a 74 year old undressed in the same room, both just as exposed, both just as human, isn't something built into how modern life is structured. You have to go out of your way to create it. And once you're actually in it, you realize how much you didn't know you were missing. What it looks like to grow older, what it sounds like to still be figuring things out, and how much less alone we all feel by the end of it.
I posed the question: Like a dragonfly emerging from water to air, what’s one transformation in yourself you wish you’d understood earlier?
And the floor opened up. Motherhood, wanting to be a mother, choosing not to be one and everything that comes with that choice, shame or freedom or both at once. Being gay, being queer, dating, all of it. All that make up what it is to be a woman. Everyone kept circling the same idea: pushing back on what we’re “supposed to be” and leaning instead into everything we actually want to be and do. Some women cried. Everyone got vulnerable, the way people always seem to at Füde <3 And across every single age group, one thing was unanimous, how healing, how necessary, spaces like this are. I see it at every Füde experience, but it was especially potent this time, hearing it echoed the same way by a 24 year old and a 74 year old in the same breath.
Toward the end, Cynthia, looked around the circle and said, "Do you want to hear from the greys now?" I got a kick out of that. I was wondering if she'd been sitting on that line the entire time, waiting for her moment, or if it just came to her right then. Either way, so good.
And then they shared. Trusting your instincts. Just going for it in life instead of waiting for permission. Speaking up. One woman talked about keeping her hair long despite the pressure to cut it short as she got older, and how much that small refusal meant to her. Failed marriages, successful partnerships. Kids, no kids. The loves of their lives that we get to look forward to. One woman, who is blind, spoke about how liberating naturist spaces have been for her. It struck me that even without seeing the bodies around her, she still felt the freedom that comes from being in a space where everyone is simply allowed to be. And they told the room how amazing it was to see so many young women already doing this work, already "ahead of the game".
Another woman said, “They don’t tell you what happens during menopause. They do NOT tell you.” And all of us who hadn’t gotten there yet were like, “WHAT DON’T THEY TELL US!” I don’t think she heard us… so we never actually got the answer. If anyone reading this knows, please, let us girlies know what happens in the comments!
SCNA wants more young women at their gatherings, and tbh I’d love more older women at Füde too. There’s something that transpires when generations sit in a circle together that just cannot be replicated any other way.
I think we all become more ourselves when we're in community with people unlike us.
We’ll be sharing the rest of the photos from this experience tomorrow here on substack <3
And if you want in on the next one in los angeles, our next all women’s Füde experience is August 9th, cake decorating with cake artist Dev Smith. Sign up here
And if you're already part of the online Füde Community, don't miss our free hour long journaling Zoom on inspiration, details here.
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It sounds like a beautiful experience
❤️❤️❤️