I’m Katie, a women’s functional health coach sharing what I've learned about gut health, hormones, nutrition and the nervous system - without making wellness more complicated than it needs to be.

For more, come say hi at @harayahealth on Instagram & TikTok.

The Women Who Knew Us Before We Knew Ourselves

A note from Katie

Last week, I got to see my best friend, Iman.

She lives in New York and I live in London, but our friendship has never operated on vague promises to “catch up soon.” It looks more like comparing which friends weddings we’re both attending to work out where we can steal some time alone. It’s coordinating Christmas plans with our families so we can see each other before the festivities begin. It’s opening our diaries at the start of the year and asking: Right, when can we make this happen?

We don’t wait for our schedules to align accidentally; we actively make room for each other in them. So when Iman and her husband came to London for a wedding, catching them while they were here wasn’t simply a convenient coincidence. It was another moment we had intentionally protected.

Iman and I met when we happened upon each other through mutual friends and decided to live with each other our first year at university (wee little 18 year olds conquering the US capitol). We then chose to live together for all four years of university, surviving a shared bedroom (as that's how housing works in US universities), what felt like end of the world "situation-ships", and far too much burnett's vodka.

We’re also complete opposites.

Iman is creative, artistic and a dreamer. I’m pragmatic, strategic, sporty and usually thinking about the plan. She comes alive at night; I am emotionally attached to my mornings. But perhaps that’s part of why our friendship works. She encourages me to dream beyond the plan, while I’m usually the one asking how we’re actually going to make the dream happen.

Since graduating, we’ve never lived in the same city. And yet, if I trace the biggest milestones of my adult life, Iman is woven through almost every one of them - sometimes physically beside me, but often supporting me from across an entire ocean.

The first milestone was finishing university and stepping into our first big-girl jobs.

At university, Iman was always the person who helped me find the story in my ideas. Writing came naturally to her, whereas I approached most assignments with my much more logical, rational brain. Even when my thesis focused on a grassroots study of HIV and AIDS among young people in Washington, DC, she poured her heart into helping me shape the narrative and communicate why the work mattered.

She encouraged me to embrace a creative side of myself that I didn’t always recognise - something that feels particularly meaningful now that I spend so much of my time writing, creating and building Haraya.

Then came my first serious relationship...and my first real heartbreak.

When it ended, Iman flew across the country to California to be with me. I hadn’t asked her to come. She simply knew that this was one of those moments when a phone call wouldn’t be enough. There is something extraordinary about a friend who doesn’t wait to be told exactly what you need before showing up.

The next milestone was deciding to uproot my life and move to London.

Iman knew that encouraging me to go meant giving up the possibility that we might eventually live close to each other again. It meant missing the spontaneous Thursday-morning coffees, Saturday walks and all the ordinary moments that make friendship easy.

But she pushed me to go anyway. She wanted me to move beyond what was comfortable, experience more of the world and find the place where I could grow into myself - even if that place was an ocean away from her.

The distance hasn’t stopped her from being the first person to wish me happy birthday at exactly midnight every single year, despite the time difference. And it certainly didn’t stop her from flying to London to surprise me for my 30th birthday and join the birthday shenanigans.

Then came finding my person and allowing myself to fall properly in love.

With every partner I’ve had, Iman has been able to sense how happy I am from the way I speak about them and the way I behave around them. She knows the difference between me choosing someone because I like the comfort, routine and companionship and choosing someone because they genuinely challenge me, add value to my life and match what I bring to the table.

She encouraged me to let myself fall hard without trying to control every possible outcome. To accept that love is always a risk, but being loved deeply (& loving someone deeply in return) is worth taking it.

That is the kind of friendship that runs deep: someone who doesn’t tell you what to feel, but helps you hear yourself more clearly.

And most recently, she has supported me through another enormous transition: pivoting my career and starting my own business.

Iman knows how ambitious and driven I am, but she also knows how easily that ambition can consume me. She reminds me that building something meaningful shouldn’t require abandoning myself in the process. That I can work hard and still make space for my wellbeing, travel, adventure and the people I love.

When I told her about Haraya, she immediately committed to becoming my first client - not because she needed convincing, but because she is so deeply invested in my growth and determined to see me succeed.

Through every milestone, she has helped me navigate both the excitement and the uncertainty that come with growing up.

Our most pressing university conversations once involved deciding whether we were going to Tombs, Piano Bar or Cities on Saturday night...and, crucially, what we were going to wear.

Now, we talk about health challenges, family trauma, ageing parents, marriage, starting families and taking risks on new ventures in our careers. We’ve known one another single and falling in love, struggling and succeeding, lost and slowly finding our way again.

Iman has known the university version of me, the ambitious career version, the heartbroken version, the woman brave enough to move countries, the woman learning to be loved and now the woman building something of her own.

She has never asked me to remain the person I was when we met. She has simply continued to love each new version of me as she arrived. And whenever we’re together, it feels as though no time has passed. I feel lighter, freer and completely myself. My whole body seems to recognise: I’m with one of my people. I’m safe here.

Nearly four years ago, during another visit to London, Iman gave me a letter.

There is a passage in it that I return to because it describes this once-in-a-lifetime kind of friendship better than I ever could (although that feels slightly unfair, given that Iman is literally an author.)

She wrote:

It still makes me emotional because it captures something I hadn’t been able to articulate myself.

The rarest friendships don’t simply make you feel loved. They reflect you back to yourself. They see the parts of you that have become tired, muted or difficult for you to recognise and somehow help bring your colour back.

Iman has always done that for me.

Let’s make that make sense

We talk constantly about individual wellness: what to eat, how to exercise, which supplements to take and how to perfect our morning routines.

But one of the most important parts of our wellbeing may be the people with whom we feel safe, supported and genuinely known.

Meaningful social connection is associated with better mental and physical health, which is why the World Health Organization recognises social connection as a public-health priority.

There is also a concept called co-regulation: our emotional and physiological states can be influenced by the safety and steadiness we experience with another person.

It doesn’t mean that seeing your best friend magically eliminates stress or fixes your cortisol. It means that sometimes nervous-system support looks less like another breathing exercise and more like sitting across from someone who allows you to stop performing for a moment.

Long-term friendships offer something else, too: continuity.

A friend who has witnessed multiple versions of you can remind you how much you’ve grown when you’re too close to your own life to see it. She remembers what you survived, what you once dreamed about and who you were before your current worries took over.

And women are exceptionally good at this.

We remember the person who upset you ten years ago. We notice a shift in your tone before you’ve admitted something is wrong. We arrive with snacks. We can conduct a complete emotional-health assessment over a quick coffee and celebrate your success as if it happened to us personally.

...we are truly superior beings!!

Our people still matter even when our lives look different

Our thirties are a wild decade.

One friend might be single and dating while another is married. One might be starting a family while another is starting a business. Someone may be navigating divorce, fertility struggles, a career reinvention or the growing responsibility of caring for ageing parents.

It can become harder to see each other - not because the friendship matters less, but because everyone’s life is suddenly asking something different of them.

This is precisely when we need to keep the people who anchor us close.

Female friendship isn’t a placeholder until you find a partner, get married or start a family. It remains important whether you are single, partnered, married, raising children or rebuilding your life after a relationship ends.

And you don’t have to be in the same life stage to remain deeply connected.

You may no longer share the same routines, priorities or milestones, but that doesn’t erase the history you hold for one another. She is still your person, and you are still hers.

The friendship simply has to keep evolving - just as both of you do.

Try this: open your diary

Think of the friend who makes you feel most like yourself.

Instead of sending, “We really need to catch up soon!”, send her this:

“Here is my diary for the next few months. Show me yours. Let’s choose a date and protect it.”

If she lives nearby, plan dinner or a walk. If she lives far away, schedule the call, book the weekend or start looking at when you could realistically be in the same place.

Then tell her something specific: one way she has supported you, one quality you admire in her or one moment that made you realise how deeply she loves you.

Friendship deserves more than the time left over once everything else has been scheduled.

FOR REGULAR GIRLS 💩

Because good digestion deserves good food.

The “come over, I need to tell you everything” creamy pasta

Serves: 2 generously

​
​Prep and cooking: 25 minutes

You’ll need

• 200g pasta
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
• 1 medium courgette, chopped into small pieces
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 x 400g tin cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
• 150ml chicken stock
• 150g thick Greek yoghurt (I like 5% fat)
• 40g Parmesan, finely grated, plus extra for serving
• 2 large handfuls of spinach
• Salt and plenty of black pepper
• Chilli flakes, optional
• A splash of pasta water, if needed

How to make it

1. Cook the pasta in well-salted water according to the packet instructions. Save a mug of pasta water before draining.
2. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large frying pan. Add the onion and cook for four to five minutes, until softened.
3. Add the courgette and cook for another five minutes, stirring occasionally, until tender and beginning to colour.
4. Add the garlic and optional chilli flakes, then cook for one minute.
5. Stir in the cannellini beans and chicken stock. Allow everything to simmer gently for three to four minutes.
6. In a bowl, mix the Greek yoghurt and Parmesan. Gradually stir in two or three tablespoons of the warm liquid from the pan. This gently brings the yoghurt up to temperature and helps prevent it from splitting.
7. Reduce the heat to its lowest setting or briefly remove the pan from the heat, and stir in the yoghurt mixture. Add the spinach and allow it to wilt into the sauce. Avoid letting the sauce boil once the yoghurt has been added.
8. Add the drained pasta and toss everything together. Loosen it with a splash of pasta water if needed, then season generously with black pepper and a little salt.
9. Divide between two bowls and finish with extra Parmesan.

Why your gut will thank you

The cannellini beans bring fibre and plant-based protein, the vegetables add colour and variety, and the Greek yoghurt and Parmesan create a creamy, comforting sauce without requiring an entire tub of double cream.

Most importantly, it’s exactly the sort of meal you can make while listening to your best friend gab!!

Until next time,

Katie x

Big thank you from me for joining my little corner of the internet for women who want to understand their bodies better - from gut health and hormones to nutrition, stress and everything in between.