And all at once, it came to Sarah: It was like being back at the Women's Center. For the first time since she graduated from college, she'd managed to find her way into a community of smart, independent, supportive women who enjoyed each other's company and didn't need to compete with one another or define themselves in relation to the men in their lives. It was precisely what she'd been missing, the oasis she'd been unable to find in graduate school, at work, or even at the playground. She'd searched for it for so long that she'd even come to suspect that it hadn't actually existed in the first place, at least not the way she remembered it, that it was more a product of her romantic undergraduate imagination than anything real in the world. But it had been real. It felt like this, and it was a huge relief to be back inside the circle again.
