Tag: friends

Friday, Friends and the Freakin’ Weekend

“The only trip you will regret is the one you don’t take.” – unknown

“Cheers to the freakin’ weekend.” – Rihanna

Happy Friday, readers and friends!! I am writing this from afar today. I am on a weekend trip with my best friends from college. We do this trip every year since we graduated and sometimes it feels like we are still back in school. It is such a blessing to reflect on life – life’s adventures, life’s misadventures, life’s sorrows and life’s greatest joys, with people who have known each other since the dawning of each other’s adult lives. It makes today a very special Favorite Things Friday. For new readers, I usually describe three favorite things, websites, songs, products, etc. on Fridays. Please see previous Friday posts for fun and helpful ideas. Fridays are always light, pleasant and airy here at Adulting – Second Half. But today, I am going to do it a little differently, in honor of my dear friends who knew me in my Adulting – First Half.

Here are my favorite things about being with really good friends. I hope this list will spur you on to make your own list about your friends and you will carry those warm feelings with you all of the way into a wonderful weekend.

My favorite things about being with my friends:

  • Feeling like you never left off. Even if you haven’t seen each other all year long, you come together so easily and happily, it’s like you just saw each other yesterday.
  • All of the inside jokes. Long histories make for crazy stories that never seem to lose their luster and novelty for the people who have shared funny times and hilarious memories.
  • The feeling of total acceptance. Your long-time friends know almost everything about you and love you anyway.
  • Knowing that you have a big group of gals who “have your back.” The wonderful feeling of being cared for and supported and the good feeling of being that same source of support and caring for others, in their times of need.
  • Making more fond memories with new shared adventures, that will add to the cache of inside jokes.
  • Really good insights and ideas and perspectives about situations going on in each other’s lives, that come from people who know each other well and earnestly care for one another.

I could go on and on, but I don’t like to get sappy on Fridays. Let’s just say that this wonderful group of women are treasures to me. They were a huge part of my first half of adulting and I look forward to all of the fun, joy, tenderness, reflections and wisdom that we will share as we travel together on this journey through our second halves of adulting.

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A friend is a gift you give yourself.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

Keeping it “Real”

Well, here I am at Day 2 of my Second Half of Adulting.  I wish I could say that the watermelon sized lump in my throat has gone away, but it hasn’t.  In fact, I woke up in “Moody Trudy” mode for sure.  Then I did the worst thing you could ever do.  I fed Moody Trudy by going to Facebook, which is not something that I even do very frequently.  So even though I am having a nice summer and we had a truly awesome memorable family vacation before my son left home, the comparison monster, made me feel even more miserable looking at everyone’s happy faces on their delightful summer adventures and travels.  Then I slogged Moody Trudy for not being a better person and feeling happy for all of her dear friends and family, which just spiraled me even more.  This is not a good way to start the day nor my second half of adulting, but it is what it is and the truth must be told.

Now, in the first half of my adulting, I learned that we women need each other.  Yes, we can be each other’s worst enemies or passive aggressive “frenemies” (on an aside, when I started my first job out of college, I asked a female manager what was the hardest thing about being a professional woman and without a blip of hesitation she said, “other women”), but in the end, no one “gets us”, like us.  I have gotten discerning over the years and I have learned to put up better boundaries.  This has helped we whittle it down to primarily two solid groups of women friends with whom I can keep it real.  Really real.  So, this morning, I texted both groups.  Turns out, I’m not the only Moody Trudy today (which is not surprising in a group of chiefly middle aged women, many with a few teenage kids in the mix) which helped me feel supported, eased me into a lighter mood and got me “out of myself”.  I was then able to help other friends with their own problems which helped me to put my issues into perspective.

Bottom line, today emphasized something very important to keep and to treasure in my second half of adulting – the awesome support of true, kind friends.  Maybe I should keep a list of “keepers” for my second half?!?  Number one on the keeper list:  Solid female friendships.