HERE'S TO GIRLFRIEND ENCOURAGEMENT

I read an interesting article several weeks ago and was intrigued by what the author said. "I just finished taking an evening class at Stanford. The last lecture was on the mind-body connection - the relationship between stress and disease. The speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that one of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be married to a woman, whereas for a woman, one of the best things she could do for her health is to nurture relationships with her girlfriends."

Of course, we women have always known this, right girls?

Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other deal with stress and difficult life experiences. Physically this quality “girlfriend time" helps us to create more serotonin - a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling of well being. Women share feelings whereas men often form relationships around activities. They rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf? Yes. But their feelings? Rarely.

Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with our sisters, mothers and friends and evidently that is very good for our health. It has been said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging, working out at a gym or eating the right food.

True friendship is a sacred important thing and it happens when we drop down into that deeper level of who we are, when we cross over into the broken fragile parts of ourselves. We have to give something up in order to get a friendship like that. We have to give up our need to be perceived as perfect. We have to give up our ability to control what people think of us. We have to overcome the fear that when they see the depths of who we are they’ll leave. But what we give up is nothing in comparison to what this kind of friendship gives to us. Friendship is an opportunity to act on God’s behalf in the lives of people that we’re close to, reminding each other who God is. When we do the hard intimate work of friendship, we bring a little more of the divine into daily life.

So whenever we hang with our gal pals, let’s just pat ourself on the back and congratulate us for doing something good for our health and let's toast to our friendship with our girlfriends.

Evidently it's very good for our spiritual and emotional health.