"to not only love each other more, but to love each other better"

I had originally drafted this post a few months ago, but I wanted to post it after "International Women's Day" (which I honestly thought was like a European Mother's Day or something).  

"Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, 
but backwards and in high heels."

If you're a woman, you'll understand that there is nothing quite like getting together with a group of really good friends and spending an entire night talking. At my bridal shower I remember being told that the best advice for marriage was "to keep your girlfriends." I thought that advice was perhaps a little bit sarcastic and funny at the time, but after my own experience, I can't tell you how honest and real it has become for me. I got together with a couple of friends a few weeks ago and although the night consisted of eating muddy buddies and sitting on a living room floor for three hours, I went to bed telling Max just how amazing these women are, and how good I feel about myself around them. And as much as I love my husband, there are just some things that women need - and that's each other.

A few days later, I met with a different group of women for a church meeting. We are all at various stages in life, different ages and personalities, different jobs, different backgrounds and interests, but we get together once a month to meet and discuss our roles and responsibilities regarding our church callings. And I've always enjoyed our meetings, but this time after we finished discussing what was on the agenda, we just started to talk to each other. And we talked and we talked and we talked. Everything from marriage and kids, to Bruce Caitlyn Jenner and books we'd recommend... and I think at least four or five times I heard someone say, "It's so nice to be able to open up..." -- by the end of the night I felt like these women had been three of my lifelong friends. Friends who could just talk and share and be there for one another, even if we didn't really know each other all that well the day before. I went to bed that night again, telling Max just how much relationships like these mean to me.

Frankly, I've always felt like "guys were easier to be friends with," but the older I've grown, the more I've realized just how much women need each other. We need to be each other's teammates and cheerleaders and friends. I don't understand and I can't tell you why it seems easier to pit women against women, or why women tend to compete with one another, but I like the charge Bonnie Oscarson once gave: "I invite you [women] to not only love each other more, but to love each other better."