The early internet had something the current one has largely lost: the feeling of stumbling into a room full of people who liked the same things you did, who shared little fixations and preferences with you, who were glad you showed up. Websites like Gurl and Disgruntled Housewife and Not Martha were spaces where the chronically-disenfranchised 20-something could find her people again, having left school and feeling rather rudderless, socially speaking. It made all the difference for me back then.

Much has changed on the surface since those days—maybe it's more apt to say much has been commodified, bought and sold and repackaged since those days—but I don’t think that people ever really change all that much. Now, having entered my fifth decade, with access to thousands of individuals, I long again for a niche where the conversation can be meaningful and not performed for public consumption. A community that isn’t bound by time zones and yet exists outside of the techbro oligarch manosphere. A place to be real. And, given my stage in life, I also want a place where being informed and furious exists right along with being whimsical and silly, right along with laundry and taxes and sandwich generation-ing. A very “yes, and” sort of thing, you know.

So: Here is Sable Haus. Welcome!

Sable Haus is for grrrls of a certain age, for women who miss the sense of camaraderie from the before times, for any femme-identifying person who craves real connection. I’ve dreamt of houses my entire life. They are, in many ways, how I make sense of the world. My boutique marketing agency was called Crow Haus. This is called Sable Haus because sables are prized and have beautiful, soft fur, and are also hideous little feral creatures. And because sable in French means sand, and we all know that the only constant in life is change.

Feel free to wander or to settle. Dip in and out. Take what's useful and leave the rest on the shelf. And if something here catches the light in a way that feels familiar, consider this your place to remember who and what you are.