For the girls...

A while back my friend Jill sent me the following article. We already knew it, but it was nice to hear it was the topic of a lecture from a fancy Stanford prof...

They Teach It at Stanford

"In 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 was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends.

 At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.

Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems

that help each other to 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 evidently that is very good for our health.  He

said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our

general health as jogging or working out at a gym.

There's  a tendency to think that when we are "exercising" we  are

doing  something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with

friends,  we are wasting our time and should be more productively

engaged-not  true. In fact, he said that failure to create and

maintain quality personal relationships with other humans is as

dangerous to our physical health as smoking!


(ONLY photo I could find of us, sorry:) 

So every time you hang out to schmooze with a gal pal, just pat

yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something

good for your health! We are indeed very, very lucky.  Sooooo. let's

toast to our friendship with our girlfriends. Evidently it's very good

for our health."

Our husbands understand this need that we have for our girlfriends very well. Periodically they send us off for a day (or two or three if we're lucky) to reconnect and reenergize. 

I am so grateful for this time with my girlfriends.

Thank you all for being you to me!