🧵 In Today’s Edition

1. Women in the Triad Are Forming Their Own Community
2. Around the State
3. What We’re Reading

Creating Their Own Villages

Shawntelle Minear was tired of being ghosted.

But not by men, by women her age.

Minear and her husband moved from California to Reidsville in 2021 while she was pregnant with her daughter. After a few years, they moved to Kernersville then High Point, where they live now. She was looking to make new friends. 

“I started meeting people online, and then I would try to meet them in person,” she said. “But then I would get ghosted every single time.”

Her parents lived close by, but she was starting to get lonely, she said. That’s when she used her background in marketing to create a solution: a mom meetup.

Now, more than three years later, Minear’s group, Her Hive, has grown into a membership group with hundreds of women who meet each week at different locations around the Triad. 

Sometimes it’s just for coffee. Other times, they might go on a nature walk or do a plant swap. As reports of a loneliness epidemic make headlines, Minear is part of a growing trend of women who are creating their own affinity groups to make it easier for strangers to become friends.

“Finding friends has been slower because we’re so connected to our phones all the time,” said Jordan Lacenski, founder of SheWolf, a separate women’s membership club in Greensboro. “But we’re still craving that in-person, real-life connection.”

In the Triad alone, several women-only groups meet regularly. For both Minear and Lacenski, the goal wasn’t to make money or a career. It was simply to make new connections.

— Sayaka Matsuoka

Thanks for reading The Thread, a 3x week newsletter written by Greensboro editor Joe Killian and reporters Sayaka Matsuoka and Gale Melcher. Reach us with tips or ideas at greensboro@theassemblync.com.

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What We’re Reading

No Waiting Room: Guilford County will hosting a free health care clinic Friday, offering no-cost screenings for blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels. It will also provide free and confidential testing for sexually transmitted infections. WFDD has more.

Remembrances of Malls Past: O. Henry Magazine has a look at the early days of the Four Seasons and Carolina Circle Malls. One lives on only in memory, and the other has changed pretty drastically. These stories and photos from their early days are fascinating. whether or not you were there.

To Incentivize or Not to Incentivize: The Guilford County Board of Commissioners will consider $25,000 in pass-through funding for a proposed project by an unnamed charter airline company. The company is pledging to create 122 full-time jobs and spend $6.9 million on capital investments. The News & Record has the story.

Joe Killian is The Assembly's Greensboro editor. He joined us from NC Newsline, where he was senior investigative reporter. He spent a decade at The News & Record covering cops and courts, higher education, and government.

Sayaka Matsuoka is a Greensboro-based reporter for The Assembly. She was formerly the managing editor for Triad City Beat, an alt-weekly based in Greensboro. She has reported for INDY Week, The Bitter Southerner, and Nerdist, and is the editorial/diversity chair for AAN Publishers.