Girlfriends

Talk about excellent timing.......as I was getting ready to load this blip, I checked my email and saw that my mother-in-law had sent me this cool forward about friendships. And as I started to read it, I smiled because it validates everything that I feel about close and treasured girlfriends. My girlfriends mean the world to me. I am so fortunate and blessed to have so many trees in my life.


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"I just finished taking an evening class at Stanford. The last lecture was on the mind-body connection-the relationship between stress and disease. The speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that the best thing a woman could do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends. At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.

Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences. Physically this quality girlfriend time" helps us to create more serotonin-a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling of well being. Women share feelings whereas men often form relationships around activities. They rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf? Yes. But their feelings?-rarely. Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with our sisters/mothers, and evidently that is very good for our health. He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging or working out at a gym.

There's a tendency to think that when we are "exercising" we are doing something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends, we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged--not true. In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical health as smoking! So every time you hang out to schmooze with a gal pal, just pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your health! We are indeed very, very lucky. Sooooo let's toast to our friendship with our girlfriends. Evidently it's very good for our health."
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If you look closely to my blip today, you will see a collaged collection of some of my best friends. Friends who I have met at different times, in different places, and through different people. When I met each of these amazing gals, I knew instantly that there was a special and unique connection. An connection that quickly became a good friendship. At this point in my life, I am looking for quality in my friendships versus quantity. Quantity was found in my college years but now that I am 'grown up' and have a family of my own, quality is what I invest in.

Tonight I made dinner for my close girlfriends. The girls who know me. Who know my heart and who understand my soul. I invited these ladies because I wanted to celebrate them. Some of them have even just recently met one another but you would have never known that by the level of good conversation and laughter going on at the table. And now all of these girls are friends. So as we began to eat our meal, a few toasts took place. One toasted to the evening. Another toasted to everyone getting to spend time together. And I toasted to them. I thanked them for their friendship. New and old. Each of them have made an impact in my life and it is important to me that they know that. Ufortunately one of my closest girlfriends who was supposed to be in this photo collage, couldn't be because her husband was sick last night and she needed to stay home to help with her kids. So the last toast was to her. We toasted our friend who couldn't be with us around the dining room table. She was very missed.

Friendships. Just as important as family. They offer perspective and diversity. Excitement and calm. But most importantly, they are shared. When you have a good friend, you can count on the fact that they are just as happy to see you as you are to seeing them. So these are a few of my favorite girls. And this is my first blip collage and I'm not going to lie, it was a bear to create but I love it. I love the energy that can be felt through the entire photograph. Thanks girls!