Letter to the Holdette Community

To our Holdette community <3

What a joy it has been to share meals, share stories, and share our lives with one another over the last four years. I’ll never forget the first Holdette community gathering I hosted a week after I moved into my first New York City apartment. The couch I had ordered had just arrived, but I hadn’t yet been able to unbox it. So what was meant to be a couch because the table we gathered around, a couple of bags of popcorn in mixing bowls resting on top of the box.

Since then our regular rhythm of gathering in homes across the country has meant that a place to breathe easy and find solace in shared experience has never been too far away. Since our inception, we’ve had 1,250 women join a Holdette season with countless stories of connection and friendship born as a result.

Holdette has been my fifth limb and my first child for as long as I’ve been on my own two feet in New York City. Our gatherings have marked my Tuesdays through three different apartments. And the girls in the East Village, Gramercy Park, and now Williamsburg groups have been the undercurrent as I started dating in the city, fell in love, got engaged, navigated health challenges, learned what it meant to rest, and started and ended new hobbies. The rhythm has been more than a marked event on my calendar- it’s been a relational lifeline across my biggest milestones since graduating.

I feel most fortunate that my experience with Holdette has been hardly unique. In fact, the greatest gift of running this community has been knowing that the members who it was always for have had their lives deeply impacted by it. Friendships and roommates and maids of honor and bridesmaids. Born out of the simple belief that when we hold space for friendship it will blossom.

And now I find myself five years out of college. Always the marked graduation date I advertised for our members but one that felt perpetually distant from me. And yet, here we are. I am, in many ways, the same gal who hosted those original Holdette members around her couch instead of on it and I am, in so many more ways, changed for the better because eventually we built that couch and knitted our hearts together on it.

I’m writing to share that the Holdette Spring 2025 community group season will be our last. Not for lack of desire to nurture and water the seeds of friendship that Holdette is known for, but in recognition that in this season, it’s time to harvest what has grown.

In the spirit of this harvest, I’m planning a celebration of our community and the close of this chapter. More details to come- but I hope you’ll join me in raising a glass to the friendships and memories that found their roots in Holdette.

I am so deeply grateful first and foremost for our hosts who have poured out so much of themselves to ensure we have beautiful spaces to gather. Who have modeled vulnerability so others felt safe to pull their own walls down. Who have listened quietly and nodded and laughed and made the girls in their circle feel so seen.

Thank you to our members who have shown up both physically and emotionally. Who have dared to share something for the first time with a room full of not-quite-yet friends. Who have taken the chance on themselves to explore what a friendship in their new city might become.

My greatest hope is that everything that I have learned- the best way to bulk-make grilled cheese, the gentle ease of tossing a blanket open on my bed for winter coats, the joy of faking a laugh so everyone gives you a real one in your group photo, will be things that get passed down into your own gatherings.

While this may be the end of this season, my ask to you is that it only be one of your stepping stones to being a gatherer of your community in whatever context you find yourself in. You are equipped more than you know to be the catalyst for new friendships all around you.

Geneva isn’t going anywhere. The numbers you have from girls you’ve met aren’t going anywhere. I have no doubt that the friendships you’ve built will continue to grow and I look forward to hearing about all the ways Holdette has and continues to impact your life.

Thank you for being part of someone’s story. Thank you for being part of my story. 

With all my heart,

Sarah Greisdorf
Founder, Holdette