Thankful Tuesday!

Yesterday I got caught up in an episode of Katie Couric's talk show. She had on the female members of the Mary Tyler Moore cast. And watching the show brought tears to my eyes. These women, one of them living with terminal cancer sat down and appeared to have a wonderful and genuine friendship that has lasted for years! DECADES! Mary Tyler Moore, Valarie Harper, Betty White, Cloris Leachman and Georgia Engel. 5 women ranging in age from 64 (Georgia) and 91 (Betty) who have been friends since at least 1970 when they were all apart of the MTMS. They spoke of leaning on each other and learning from each other over the years. And even dealing with a diagnosis that will not be changed. They lived at a time where they were likely in competition for jobs and yet decades later, these women are still friends. They love each other and want to make the most of the time they have together.And they seemed so thankful for each other. And it made me think about friendships between women. There are so many things to tear our friendships apart. But the biggest one is us. I read an old article asking Can women be friends with each other?.  Everything was stated so simply and honestly. You always hear people say it takes a village to raise a child right? Well I think that village includes girlfriends. My village includes my younger sister, Le, Kris, Rae, Crys, Mellie. These are the women I consider my inner circle. These are the women I want around me when things happen. Good, bad, funny, sad...whatever it is I want to share with these women. They love me, support me, pray for me. When I've been injured or sick, they've taken care of me. When I was too drunk to make good decisions, they've made them for me :-) They've consoled me after break ups and they celebrated with me as MK and I began dating, got engaged and married. They are the ones who have given me a place to stay when I needed it and the ones who helped me gut my home after a flood. Have we had problems? Absolutely. Do we agree on everything? Nope. Have we hurt each other before? Yes, and we talked it out, apologies were made and accepted. And we decided that our friendship was worth another chance. Sometimes we've needed a break from each other. And when we were ready, came back together. These are my life friends. These are the women I hope to be on a beach with our families watching our grandchildren run around. While there are times jealousy may arise, misunderstandings happen and feelings may get hurt but we make the choice that our friendship is worth more to us. And we work on it. Maintaining relationships take work. ALL relationships take work. Relationships with your family members, co-workers, children, friends, neighbors...etc. If the relationship is important to you, work on it. Thanks to social media sites people seem to think that since they've seen your update and you've probably seen theirs, you know they're doing fine so you don't need to call... Well it's still nice to get a phone call, or text, or even an email just saying hi and hope you're doing well! And if you have kids, try to teach them the joys of actually communicating with someone face to face! So many kids don't know how to talk to people because they spend so much time messaging behind a phone or computer screen.

So today I am thankful for the female portion of my village! I didn't name everyone - sorry about that!