Girl Power

Last night I had cocktails with 3 of my girl friends. As we sat at the table, sipping our martinis, we jokingly compared ourselves (as countless other women have, I am sure) to the most famous four girlfriends ever: Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte.

"Oh, well, Liz is definitely Carrie, and I'm Charlotte, and..."

"No, no! You are so not Charlotte. You are more Miranda."

"Miranda? Me? Well, maybe in some ways, but you're a little Carrie too."

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This is how it went.

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And we came to the conclusion: Each one of us is all of them.

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That was the whole point, I think, of the show....that although we probably related to one character more than another, we're all a complicated mish mash of these 4 women.

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Depending on the day, the time in our lives, who we are with, and perhaps the kind of shoes we are wearing, we're all a little Carrie/Samantha/Charlotte/Miranda. That's what makes us, as women, interesting, complicated, and probably incredibly infuriating to our signifcant others (and ourselves).

I've known these girls for a long time, 2 of them for over 10 years. We are all teachers. We all have children. Three of us have gone through divorces. We have a million things in common. We all like each other. We all complain about not spending enough time with friends, doing what we like to do, relaxing away from the husbands and the kids and life's laundry list of to-dos. And yet I don't remember the last time we did something together. We've gone months (or maybe it's been over a year?) without going out together, but last night they practically had to kick us out of the restaurant at closing time. And then, we stood outside of the restaurant and talked and laughed and cried for another hour and a half.

I write on this blog all the time about how hard life as a mom can be, especially when you don't want to give up "the rest." I write about how amazing it is that I've found these women out there in the blogosphere who are "like me," who understand, who help me realize that I am not crazy or abnormal or a bad mother. And I always wish I could meet these women on the playground, at the coffee shop, at the bar, instead of just online. (And I still do wish you all lived nearby.)

But last night, as I sat there, with these 3 women I've known for so long, who I see almost daily at work, I realized that sometimes if you make the effort, if you open yourself up enough to let others in, what you've been looking for could be found right under your nose.

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Last night, there was no judgment, no drama, no complications, no stress. What there was, however, was laughter, confessions, honesty, respect, and an incredible amount of understanding. There was also a lot of: "Me too!" and "I thought that was just me!" and "Oh, so that's normal?" and my personal favorite: "Oh my God, I always thought that made me suuuuch a bad mother..."

At one point in the evening, I admitted that I always feel guilty about not being joyful first thing in the morning when I see my kids. We laughed, because most of us are not full of joy over anything in the morning, much less when our children are wailing for breakfast or Barney or a diaper change at 6 in the morning on a weekend. But here's the amazing thing: this morning, when I saw the boys, in spite of the cocktail-induced-cotton-mouth and 3-hours-sleep-headache, I had to smile. I was happy to see them. Perhaps not happy that it had to occur before 7 in the morning, but I was happy to look at their little faces. And I realized that it was because of last night...because I was able to talk about this, to vent, to laugh, to compare notes, to feel understood and to provide validation, to be away from it all...that I was able to face the morning and the requirements of Life with some amount of happiness.

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Last night, I felt free to be myself.

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I felt genuinely understood and supported amidst the laughter and the squeals and the silliness. We were our interesting, complicated selves.

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Unapologetic.

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So there we were: this complicated, interesting mish mash of 4 women, all so alike and all so different.

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And there they've been...all along.