Women + Stress

I received this email from a girlfriend this morning, and I can’t help but just sit, read it a few times over, and smile.

Women + Stress

... 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!

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.

It also makes me think of how great of a night I had last night and how lucky I am. First off some yummy snacks, great conversation and drinks at our girlfriend Maggie’s house, then off to play a random spontaneous game of King’s Cup with Jaime, Ryan and of course – Rocco.




Jaime, Ryan and I have quite the track record for getting ourselves into trouble with King’s Cup.



Poor Jaime even had her own rule! 5 - Wives.




It really doesn’t matter the time or place { not even Easter Sunday is off limits to our KS shenanigans } but thankfully we ended the night early { due to someone having an empty tummy and a lot of booze } { Hi, Jaime! } so I didn’t have to be Jaime and Ryan’s roommate last night.




Was there plenty of other things I could have been doing besides playing cards, eating foods I shouldn’t have been eating and getting home a tish late? Yes. But last night, it was perfection to exercise my soul, rather than just my body.




Oh – and it’s a DANG good thing Rocco is so darn cute, because I hold him responsible for not only kissing a rubber chicken, but also pulling the last King. He’s a heck of a player, let me tell you…










Thanks to all the girls in my life who have helped me stay healthy, happy, and feeling very loved.
Life isn't about surviving the storm; but how you dance in the rain.




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