I don’t want to talk about it…

by Carolyn Thomas    @HeartSisters

When you get together with your girlfriends, are there any conversation topics that you believe are not open for discussion? Any that are off-limits? Any personal stories that you think are, well, just too personal to talk about to those women closest to you?

No, me neither.

Nowhere is this communication openness more visible than with our health. We generally like to share our medical news, updates on that medical news, and our opinions about each others’ medical news.  Health topics appear increasingly popular as we age (and thus have way more medical news to discuss).  It’s what my friend Dave likes to call “the organ recital”.  But when it comes to serious health conditions, do you ever wonder if all that sharing is necessarily a good thing?  Continue reading “I don’t want to talk about it…”

How our girlfriends can help us get through the toughest times

by Carolyn Thomas  @HeartSisters

Here’s the difference between men and women. Some years ago, a couple we knew announced that they were getting a divorce. We were gobsmacked! None of our friends had seen this announcement coming from what appeared (to us) to be one of those “perfect” couples. The day we heard their news, it happened that our friend Paul was scheduled to go on a long day-hike in the mountains with the soon-to-be-single husband, just the two of them. At the end of that day, Paul’s wife waited impatiently for his return to hear the scoop about the split. When he finally arrived home, she asked him:

“Well? Well?  What did he say?”

“What did he say about what?” asked Paul.

“The DIVORCE! What did he say about the DIVORCE?”

“Oh,”  he replied. “It didn’t come up.”

It didn’t come up?  It didn’t come up?  Can you imagine two close women friends hiking together for hours and the most important personal crisis of the decade “doesn’t come up”?   It would never happen. And here’s why:  it turns out that when emotions and feelings are running high, women actually respond with a neurochemical reaction that propels us to seek out our women friends to debrief what is happening to us. Continue reading “How our girlfriends can help us get through the toughest times”