This week I’ve been thinking a lot about intimacy—not just the romantic kind, but the kind that makes us feel safe, known, and at home in our own skin. Being back in North Carolina has stirred up old memories and new realizations about where intimacy shows up, where it doesn’t, and why it’s the real secret sauce in every relationship that matters.

Raleigh holds an ancient intimacy for me.

It’s a city that has stretched and grown in my absence—new buildings, new businesses, new people—but underneath it all, the bones are the same. The highway corridors are still cloaked in kudzu vines, green and lush, draping over the forest like emerald sheets covering antique furniture in a sitting room no one enters anymore. The streets still run in the same directions, the same houses still stand at either end.

I know this place. And yet, it doesn’t feel like home.

That absence of home is a theme that’s resurfaced here in another way with Charlie too.

This past week, being reintroduced and interfacing on the daily, I’ve learned more about who she is—her past, her perspective—than I did in all the years we lived under the same roof. For so long, I used to say we were strangers who shared a house. There was no intimacy. No closeness. No connection.

Four walls do not make a home. And blood does not guarantee belonging.

Meanwhile, other relationships keep proving themselves to me—loudly, joyfully, over and over again. Sisterhood is one of those things I wasn’t born into but I’ve found. The women who have held me through grief, laughed with me until my ribs ached, reminded me who I am when I forgot—those are my people. Those relationships carry an intimacy deeper than bloodlines. They are home and they’re all around me now.

While my days here have been filled with appointments, errands and logistics for Charlie, my nights have been spent in High Point, about an hour and a half from Raleigh, with one of my dearest friends.

We’ve known each other nearly twenty years—through booze and bad decisions, men and motherhood, heartbreaks and hilarity. We’ve walked each other through some pretty wild evolutions. And being under her roof for a week has reminded me what intimacy really feels like.

Every night, I’ve been able to fall apart with her. To speak the raw truth of whatever rose up that day, without censoring myself, without fearing judgment, without her rushing in to fix it. She didn’t do any of that. She just listened. Loved me. Celebrated me.

And that’s been real medicine.

It doesn’t hurt that she has her own special breed of mom-shit, so she gets it in ways not everyone can. But more than that—she gets me. She loves the me I was and the me I am, even though those two selves look wildly different. That’s intimacy. The kind of sisterhood where you can take off your skin and not feel ashamed.

Drenching my soul in that every night has been a game-changer. It’s what’s keeping me steady. It’s what helped get me up every morning ready to try again.

And it’s reminded me of something essential: intimacy isn’t just for romance—it’s the heartbeat of every real relationship.

Here’s the thing about intimacy: we tend to think of it as something reserved for romance, or even just sex. But that’s such a narrow frame.

Intimacy is everywhere. It wears many faces, and each one feeds us in ways we don’t always realize until we’re starving for it:

At its core, intimacy is the secret sauce in every relationship worth holding onto. It’s the invisible glue. It’s what turns four walls into a home, friends into family, and conversations into lifelines.

And maybe the truest definition is this: intimacy is the courage to be seen in your total, honest, flawed, deeply human way—and the grace to be loved anyway.

That’s the good stuff.

So why do so many of us struggle to taste it?

Because intimacy requires risk.

It asks us to take off the armor we’ve spent years building. To lay down the masks we’ve carefully crafted. To tell the truth—even when our voice shakes.

Most of us learned somewhere along the way that our full selves weren’t safe to show. Maybe we were told we were too much. Too sensitive. Too needy. Maybe we were punished for telling the truth. Maybe the very people who were supposed to love us unconditionally taught us to hide.

So we adapted. We performed. We perfected. We became caretakers, comedians, stone walls—anything but the tender beings we really are.

And even now, the reflex lingers. We self-edit. We hold back. We show the polished version instead of the raw one. And it comes at a cost.

Without intimacy, relationships flatten into transactions. Houses remain houses. Families become strangers. And we move through life known only in fragments, when what we’re really craving is to be known in full.

But the truth is: intimacy is always available to us.

It doesn’t happen by accident. It’s chosen, built, nurtured. Every time we risk honesty instead of hiding, intimacy deepens. Every time we listen without judgment, love without conditions, stay present without fixing—it grows.

When intimacy is present, relationships transform. Trust grows roots. Conversations become oxygen. Home stops being an address and becomes a feeling.

And it begins with us. When we allow intimacy with ourselves—when we stop hiding, shaming, and editing—we create the foundation for intimacy everywhere else.

So here’s an invitation:

A micro-practice: This week, share one piece of truth with someone you love that you usually keep hidden. See what happens.

Intimacy is the secret sauce, but it isn’t magic. It’s simply the practice of showing up in your full humanity, again and again, with the people who have proven themselves safe to receive it.

And when you do, the payoff is immeasurable.

T and I met almost twenty years ago in Wilmington, North Carolina, when we were both rock-star kitchen bitches, hustling and sweating in back-of-house chaos. Shoulder to shoulder shaking pans, tossing dough and talking shit, our friendship was forged in fire, for real. Maybe that’s why it feels so poetic that here I am now, sitting at her kitchen table, being fed food she’s lovingly prepared. It’s intimate. It’s special. It’s more than just a meal. It’s the kind of nourishment that goes far deeper than macros or recipes. It’s food for the soul.

And the other night, I found myself crying into her homemade spanakopita, realizing: there’s no place like home.

That’s the good stuff.

-Sunny