As the days in this journey called “life” manifest, I’ve been blessed to see and experience a number of situations that have shaped the woman I am today. Experiences come in forms of good and bad, but nevertheless, I’ve been blessed so that I can tell a story to help someone else along the way. One of the numerous experiences I have enough stories to write a book on is female friendships. Many of you who can relate can tell you the many ways this conversation could go.
I have never understood the need to compete against another woman. We are all the same gender, but have thousands of idiosyncrasies that make us unique individuals. So why is it that we as women can’t celebrate that more in each other? This is not in reference to someone that has done something against us, but our judgements of other women in general. Somewhere along the way, we’ve told ourselves that because another woman is “different” or doesn’t “act like us” or “look like us”, we’ll just treat her as the outcast. We are all guilty of it. We’ve created “cliques” that include a bunch of people that think and act like one another because it’s familiar. Rather than having a challenge, we’ve settled for comfort!
Growing up, one of the hardest situations I had to deal with was having female friends that were true, never wavering in their dedication of our friendship, and them treating their “friend” like a sister that cares about her and her well being. My experiences with having female friends has been such a roller coaster of a ride that there was a point I would shut out anyone that even remotely tried to be my friend. I began to immediately conclude in my mind that when I turned my back, they were laughing and talking about me or they weren’t being real about having my best interest at heart. Now that I’m older, I still carry many reservations because I refuse to deal with the “cattiness” and gossiping, but I’ve told myself I need to change this. So how will I work on this? With a new year, I’m challenging myself to take on a new approach.
To challenge my thoughts and fears, I’m reevaluating and recalibrating my reservations and judgements I’ve had for years on female friendships. I am to a point where I do pick and choose wisely who I call my “friends”, but learning that every woman that I encounter does not have to be the enemy. Everyone is not meant to be a “friend” or a “bff”, but I do believe we as women should learn to accept each other as they are and celebrate those things which makes us different.
Ladies, whether someone is affiliated in our same circle of acquaintances or not, let’s lift each other up, rather than tearing each other down. Let’s learn to stop talking about each other behind their backs. You never know what that woman may be going through that day. Although we have idiosyncrasies that make us unique, those traits can be the very thing that can strengthen us if we learn to get over our own insecurities and fears of who we are. We can all learn from each other. Ladies: let’s continue in this new year to challenge ourselves to reevaluate ourselves and how we view others, as I do the same.
Source
Source
Source
Source
Source
