Today is National Women’s Friendship Day. It is important for every woman to have one friend on which they can depend. It’s not a matter of having a large group of women either. When you go through stages of life and your realize the power of friendships and how much they shape your world. Let’s talk about the stages of life and women friendships and lastly how you can strengthen them.
Learning how to Make Friends
When you are a young girl, you start the process of learning how to put yourself out there. You go to school usually or maybe daycare and start to be friendly in exchange for friendships. As you go through those stages you are learning how to be nice, what friends are, and yourself.
However, your concepts will change. When I was in school, I had more issues learning how to meet people because we moved schools a lot. I remember a best friend named TJ Villanueva. She was an amazing friend. We clicked over erasers. I am still to this day fascinated with writing tools. That should have been an early sign that I would be a writer.
She and I was thick as thieves. My parents let me go over her house and her to mine. However, that was in Newport News/Hampton Virginia. After at least a few years we are moving back to Pennsylvania. I was upset because as a kid I didn’t understand the concept of staying connected. I still wonder if she is okay. One day we will connect.
Friendships as a Young Woman
I met and kept a lot of friends from high school and even a lot of childhood friends from my church. Church friends were special. They kept me sane. As a PK it was a rough world.
There was so much I wasn’t allowed to do. They understood the assignment of keeping us grounded. I learned that friendship meant more about the negative things that bound us. It’s the reasons many of us went our own ways. The ones that I have kept we are bonded because we made individual relationships because of church and outside of it.
In addition, as I got to college, I learned that friendships were about having an enjoyable time and an unbreakable bond that turned into a sisterhood.
Those relationships have sustained as we have been a sea of support through deaths of family members, marriages, breakups, and more.
The older you get and friendships
I watched the older women around me and how they process relationships. They are losing their friends. These sisterhood doesn’t stop when one transitions. The heartbreak that I have seen is both beautiful and sad at the same part. If your relationships are strong the support increases in beautiful ways. I have watched friends support through cancer and other health ailments and more. Again, there is a benefit to having solid friends.
I have met a lot of friends through content creation. Those friends have turned into a sisterhood because although Drake said no new friends this changes when you get older. As I have gotten older making friends as freely as I did over erasers change. My goals in life change and quality over quantity changes dramatically.
Struggle with Friends
There are always challenges with friendships. For me I have a lot of friends who are connected but we don’t live close. Being available to connect matters. Let me give you a little advice I know to be true, don’t negate your friendships over relationships. As a married woman I take care of being a great wife but ignoring my friends who aren’t married is not a wonderful thing to do.
When I got engaged my mom reminded me that marriage is great, but you never know when you will be single again for several reasons. Stay connected with your friends. You will need them.
Take the time to nurture relationships
Your friends and thierlives are important. Knowing you have someone to love you hits different as we phase the various parts of life. Life is life(ing) to all of us do it with great friends in tow. Call a friend, write a friend, check in, make plans to take a trip or two, anything to stay connected. Sending love to all of my girlfriends and sisters.
