Get Yourself Some Girlfriends

Young and newly married, I was relaxing under a magnolia tree on a humid Louisiana summer day, drinking iced tea and getting to know my new sister-in-law. Not much older than me, but already the mother of three, she seemed experienced and wise. Her face suddenly took on a very serious expression and in the most charming of Southern drawls she said to me, “Get yourself some girlfriends,” clinking the ice cubes in her glass. “You’re gonna need girlfriends to go places with and do things with.” 

What a funny piece of advice, I thought. Hadn’t I just gotten married? But I listened to this new sister-in-law and I got myself some girlfriends. As the years tumbled by, one after another, gradually I came to understand what she was talking about. And I remembered that she had said the word “girlfriends” with a lot of emphasis. And year after year I discovered the subtle difference between friends and girlfriends. 

You go to work with friends, go to dinner with friends, go to church with friends, belong to clubs with friends. You send friends greeting cards. You need friends in your life. After all, all girlfriends were once only friends. But a girlfriend is different. 

Here is what I have learned about girlfriends: 

Girlfriends don’t compete. 

Girlfriends will bring casseroles and also scrub your bathroom or all floors when you are sick. 

Girlfriends will keep your children, and they will keep your secrets. 

Girlfriends give advice when you ask for it. 

Girlfriends don’t always tell you that you are right, but are honest.

Girlfriends still love you even when they don’t agree with you.

Girlfriends laugh with you and you sometimes need absolutely nothing to start the laughter. 

Girlfriends don’t talk about you behind your back. 

Girlfriends help you out of jams, the dumps, and the blues. 

Girlfriends don’t keep a calendar that lets them know whose turn it is to do what. 

Girlfriends will give a party for your son or daughter when they get married or have a baby in whichever order that comes! 

And girlfriends are there for you in an instant, and truly…  hard times will come. 

Girlfriends listen when you lose a job, a husband, or anyone dear to you. 

Girlfriends will listen when your children break your heart, and will hold you when you cry. 

Girlfriends will listen when your parents’ minds and bodies fail, and cry with you. 

When girlfriends are young, they have no idea of the incredible joys or the incredible sorrows that lay ahead of them. Nor do they know how much they will need each other. 
Young women today should take my sister-in-law’s advice.

“Get yourself some girlfriends.” 

You’re gonna need them.