To All My Girls

I have been pondering for the last few months, the importance of my friends in my life.
Some thoughts that I’ve had:

1. Women like to talk things out and we learn really well when we can listen to the experiences and thoughts and ideas of other women and then glean the things that apply to us.
2. Women also really, really need the validation that comes from sitting with other women and hearing that we are not alone in feeling overwhelmed. Or to hear an older friend remind us that the toddler years do pass. Or to have a friend say that sometimes it takes 10 years of marriage before a husband and a wife learn how to fight fairly. We need validation.

We’ve lived in 4 different states in the last 12 years and in each place, I’ve been lucky enough to make some really amazing friends- women who were just the people I needed at the particular point in my life.

• I can’t begin to express my gratitude to the friends who tolerated my early 20s when I was overwhelmed as a young mother and I was still really self-centered.
• I can’t begin to express my gratitude for my friends that validated me and loved me in my later 20s when I was overwhelmed and overworked with 3 small children and suffering with post partum depression.
• I can’t begin to express my gratitude for friends that loved me, supported me, and advised me in my early 30s when grown-up life encroached and employment and finances and actual real life got tough.
• And this year I’ll be 35. (Weird) And right now I have great friends who are wonderful examples of selfless service and kindness and compassion- they are just the kind of people that I want to be when I grow up.

I also hold my mission companions near and dear to my heart. 6 amazing women who have tracked through life with me for 14 years now. The kind of dear friends that I talk to and it does not matter how much time has passed- we pick up with each other like it was yesterday. It was a gift to spend 18 months of my life serving with each of them.

And of course I have to mention my own sisters. And when I say sisters, I mean my actual sisters and also my amazing sisters-in-law. I could not ask for better people to be aunts to my children and sisters to me.

Most men, I’ve realized, are more solitary creatures (despite all the sports type things that they do together). It’s the rare man who seeks out and cultivates friendships with other men. Most of the men that I know rely on their wives for friendship and interaction and socializing.

I love Ernie- I think that’s pretty clear. But I can’t live without my girlfriends. I still remember coming home back in 2006 from a whirlwind 72 hour trip to California (of which I slept maybe 15 hours) that I spent with my dearest Mission Companions- where we talked and talked and talked and talked about everything you can possibly imagine for 3 days. We discussed husbands, children, life from every angle. We reminisced and planned for the future. (What man has the patience for that? Not even Ernie.) And when I got home Ernie asked me how my trip was and I looked at him and I said, “Honey- I have nothing left to say. I talked this weekend to the point that now I literally have nothing left to say.”

It was awesome. And that’s why- too all my girls out there- I couldn’t do it without you.