You Gotta Have Girlfriends

I just had the pleasure (and I truly mean pleasure) of reading a pre-publication copy of  Suzanne Braun Levine's newest e-book, You Gotta Have Girlfriends. For those of you who have been living under a feminist rock for the past few decades (and if you have, it's okay to come out now) in addition to authoring several books on women in their "second adulthood", Suzanne was also the first editor of Ms. Magazine. She has been an icon in the feminist movement and has covered the issue of women and aging so beautifully over the years. In her new e-book, she addresses one of the fullest expressions of our feminine power- friendship.

I had a busy schedule the other day but had set aside an hour to begin reading Suzanne's book. Before I knew it hours had passed without my looking up once.  I was gripped by the stories, and saw myself and my experiences reflected in every chapter. 

This much I know: I would not have made it this far without my girlfriends. They witness me, encourage me, make me laugh when life is painful, and at times, they have literally saved my life. And now as I transition into midlife, that awful, awkward reverse-puberty phase, I can't imagine surviving it without them. I was happy to learn from Suzanne's book that not only do our friendships save us on a metaphoric level, but also on a physical.

"One of the best things a woman can do for her health is to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends, especially after the age of fifty."Hanging out with a small but trusted group of other females reduces damaging spikes in stress hormones, reports New York Times science writer Natalie Angier. A circle of trust can, as she puts it, “mop up the cortisol spills that can weaken the immune system,” which in turn can support additional years of good health.

So there you have it, ladies. Sharing a bottle of wine (or four) and spending the day at Burke Williams Spa is actually a preventative health measure. Cheers!

But as much as we can improve each others' health, some relationships are just plain toxic. Suzanne's book also addresses this. Our friendships with other women can be complicated. Sometimes they are fraught with competition, jealousy, and oversensitivity. And sometimes, they just don't work out. I have recently experienced the loss of a close friendship. This has resulted in many sleepless nights and has been excruciating, to say the least. Reading Suzanne's book helped me to feel less alone.  It was comforting to read the experiences of other women who had been "dumped" by a friend, such as novelist Jacqueline Mitchard, who shared her story with Suzanne. In fact, reading You Gotta Have Girlfriends felt like a heart to heart with a close friend, someone who understood everything I was feeling.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. It is a celebration of friendship, and a look into our deeply layered relationships. It is both encouraging and uplifting and clear-eyed about healthy boundaries. After reading it, I felt a deep sense of gratitude for the close circle of women who surround me, and more at peace about the ones who left the circle.

As Suzanne says so elequently:

"In your gut, you know who your friends are. They are the ones people you choose over all others to spend your fiftieth birthday with. They root for you and they put up with you. They stand up for you and they stand by you. They patiently teach you how to use your smart phone (and can be trusted not to tell your kids you couldn’t figure it out yourself). They listen sympathetically when you need to vent. They know when you are hurt or angry and how to patch things up. And they make you laugh."

Do yourself a favor and buy this book today (at only $1.99, how can you NOT buy it?), and then, share it with ALL your girlfriends.
http://www.openroadmedia.com/you-gotta-have-girlfriends

A few words from some of Suzanne's girlfriends.....

“Suzanne Braun Levine made me understand why I always envied older women . . . life just gets better—more outrageous, more radical, more passionate, less fraught, wiser, deeper, and kinder.” 
—Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues
“Levine takes us beyond the frontier of our own expectations and into a new and hope-filled stage of life.” 
—Gloria Steinem

** I was honored to meet Suzanne at the Women At Woodstock conference last October where she sat in on a workshop Amy Ferris and I were leading, and then to have her on our Women Write their Lives panel at the San Miguel Writers Conference. We are thrilled that Suzanne referenced  Dancing at the Shame Prom in her chapter about overcoming shame. 

Gossip Girl

 Years ago, the “Gladys Kravitz” of our neighborhood told me that one of our local handymen was a pedophile. No one else in the neighborhood ever confirmed that, and this woman told me many other things about neighbors that proved to be untrue. Still, every time I saw that man I grabbed my kids and pulled them inside. She had tainted my opinion of him forever, and he was most likely innocent.

Gossip spreads like virus, and causes irreparable damage. You may one day have a change of heart and forgive the person you are maligning. But it’s too late. Opinions have been formed based on your words.

I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing to talk - we’re all interested in each other’s lives. What’s important is intent. Are you talking about a friend to knock them down a peg? Are you vilifying them to make yourself look like the good guy? Are you trying to lower others’ opinions of them?

Or are you coming from a place of love?

This reminds me of an old Jewish proverb:

A man went about his community telling malicious lies about the town Rabbi. Later, he began to feel remorse. He went to the rabbi and begged his forgiveness, saying he would do anything to make amends. The rabbi told him, "Take a feather pillow, cut it open, and scatter the feathers to the winds." The man did it gladly. When he returned, the rabbi said, "Now, go and gather the feathers. Because you can no more recollect the damage your words have done than you can recollect the feathers."

So keep this in mind. If you’re going to be a gossip girl, once you’ve fired off your missives, you’ll never be able to put those bullets back in the gun. Or the feathers in the pillow.

Whoopi Goldberg had a great line in The Color Purple:

“Everything you done to me, you already done to yourself.”

No truer words were ever spoken. The damage you do to others in spreading malicious gossip will always be with you, and will ultimately hurt you in the end.

The moral of the story?

Words have power. Wield them wisely.

Those Were The Days….

I have just returned from a whirlwind trip to Las Vegas, where my husband and I drove five hours just to meet a few of my childhood friends for dinner. We have been reconnecting through facebook, rekindling the bonds of our girlhood. We were in grammar school and girl scouts together back then, but actually, we weren’t that close. We didn’t have sleepovers or vacations together, yet somehow it just makes my day to see them pop up on facebook now, and I miss them when they’re not there.

The irony is that I spent the majority of my adult years tamping down memories from my childhood. I never ever revisited the old neighborhood. Never wanted to set eyes on the house I grew up in. Those are not happy memories. But here I am in my forties, cherishing old ties, and rehashing silly stories from that time.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot over the past few days. What is nostalgia, and what is this hold it has on us as we grow older? Why did our parents idealize the 1950s, when we know it was a time of Cold war, racism, segregation, Mc Carthyism, and backyard bomb shelters? Why do our grandparents spin yarns nonstop about the good old days on the farm, when the reality is it was grueling, back-breaking work from sun up till sunset?

When I was a child living in my mother’s house, I used to watch the next-door neighbor through my bedroom window. He was a quiet, sort of grumpy man. At the time, he seemed old to me, but he was probably only about 40. He had a ruddy complexion and the lines in his face told a story. I didn’t know what the story was, but it seemed like a sad one.

Every weekend he would work on his yard while listening to the oldies station. Fifties doo-wop would waft in through my open window. It made me depressed and heavy
though at the time I wasn’t sure why.

Once in a while a certain song would come on, and he would stop what he was doing. It seemed to me like he would get lost in a world of his own memories, a world that didn’t exist anymore except inside those songs. Only when he went into this little world did I catch a glimpse of a smile dart across his face. Weekend after weekend he’d be out there, waxing his car, raking the leaves, painting the trim on the house, only half alive. Living only for those memories inside the songs as if today were inconsequential. As if right now did not exist. To this day, fifties music depresses me.

I made a promise to my young self to never be like that. You can’t live for something that has already gone. It can live in you, but you can’t live for it. Even still, I find myself reliving the old days and it surprises me. My childhood was not happy. Far from it. Yet there was something about that time. No matter how bad things were, there was a hope that lived in us when we were young. There was this belief that the world was ours to conquer, that we could have any dream we set our mind on. Everything was shiny and new and possible.

Now that we are older, it seems those feelings have been replaced by hard realities. Somehow we forget to believe in possibility even though life is still full of unexpected surprises. When I was depressed about turning forty, I had no idea that at forty-one I would have an unexpected pregnancy and would be shopping for preschools at mid life. There is still so much in the second half of our lives to be discovered and lived, but we don’t approach it with the same wide-eyed wonder. Why not? Has life jaded us so much that we forget all that we have overcome and accomplished, and what we are capable of? We are so busy reflecting back on the old days, when we should be excited about what’s yet to come. There are so many beautiful memories that are yet to be made, things we can’t even imagine now.

Nostalgia does have its place. I am thrilled to be reconnected with my childhood friends. I cherish these bonds and shared memories. But what I am most excited about is building new friendships with them based on the women we are today. We have all weathered some storms, suffered disappointments, and witnessed miracles. We are mothers, grandmothers, burnt out career women, survivors. We come to the table with so much more to share.

Driving home from Vegas in bumper to bumper traffic, I had six hours to ruminate on the experience. The sun was setting magnificently in the sky as we crossed the Nevada state line. I spied other passengers in cars passing us on the highway. Everyone looked dog-tired and downtrodden, driving home hung over and busted-flat broke, no doubt. Vegas will do that to you. But I felt I came home richer.

In my musings, what I came to realize was pretty much the same thing I always come to realize. As with all things, balance is what’s important. I can hold onto my fondness for the past, and keep hope for the future, but I must stay rooted in the present and enjoy every moment of it for the gift that it is.

Because my friends, These are the days….