XX vs. XY

I’ve always wanted a bunch of best girlfriends.

I’m envious of the characters on Sex and the City. Women who have known each other since grade school and still consider each other besties into adulthood make me kind of jealous.

And while I’ve had girlfriends growing up – even ones I considered BFFs at the time – it always seemed to be a passing trend with me. For some reason, the girlfriend relationship was beyond my realm of complete and total understanding.

Guys were just… easier. They understood my sense of humour. They didn’t get mad at me or hold grudges. They didn’t expect much.

So after 32 years of taking the easy route I found myself as a new Mom, surrounded by fun, easy-going guys. Which is great, right? Right.

Except.

Guys, as well-intentioned as they are, just don’t get the girl thing.

They tend to think I’m silly when I cry at commercials. They don’t share my love affair with So You Think You Can Dance. They certainly don’t want to have a glass of wine and chat about our list of Celebrity Top 10 Guys We Would Get With.

You need girlfriends for those things.

Women need other women. And it took becoming a Mom for me to realize this.

I’m lucky enough to have an incredibly wonderful husband. A soul mate. A best friend. All of the things you want in a partner. But, there came a point in time that he had to go back to work (we decided paying the mortgage and putting food on the table was just as essential as staring at our gorgeous baby all day long. Go figure.)

And without a bunch of close Mom girlfriends to spend each day with, I found myself lonely on maternity leave.

My baby was 3 months old, and I wanted to get out and about with her. But you can only go for so many walks by yourself before you start to get bored. So I joined a Mom’s group. Something I thought I would never do.

And that’s when it happened.

That’s when I became a part of an incredible community of women.

I met women who were going through the same things I was. Women who I could relate to and who seemed to relate to me.

These women, who I had literally just met, were supporting me when I was exhausted. They talked to me when I had questions about breastfeeding or reaching milestones or teething. We met up and laughed over coffee. We shared stories about our husbands, our jobs, our interests.

I found myself thinking, “Holy crap – I’m not the only one!”

We became a circle of Mommy friends. They understood the enormity of this intense, wonderful, huge learning-curve-of-an experience that having a baby is. And they got it completely from a woman’s perspective. In a way that my wonderful husband just couldn’t. (Bless his heart).

And, suddenly, I realized I had found one of the most rewarding relationships a woman can have.

I had found some girlfriends.