Thank goodness for girls' nights

The other night I was with some of my friends for a semi-impromtu girls' night - nothing fancy, just a few treats and some catching up. It was good to see them, and even more good to plan for our next get-together. But I had a moment of clarity during the evening that I wish I fully put into words. This moment happened as I was listening to one of my girlfriends talk about the challenges she's facing right now and it allowed me to see all of us a little more clearly. I saw how we're all struggling with different things and how we're all in different places in our lives, but that it's a time of growth for all of us.

It was not a happy realization, or a sad one; it didn't make me grateful or pleased or discouraged. It was just...clarity. It wasn't a "Everyone struggles, even if you don't see it" epiphany and it wasn't quite a "We're all in this together" realization either. I just could see how our friendships had changed and grown as our lives have taken us on different courses, but how we're still friends and how girls' night is a safe place to share the things we're struggling with. We really are in every stage of life - married with two kids, married and expecting a second kid, married with no kids, single and working, single and looking for a job. We've completed different levels of education, we have different personalities, we have different ways of approaching the things that challenge us, but we're all in the same state of facing our individual challenges.

In my moment of seeing clearly, I guess what I really saw is that even though we're all struggling with very different things, we're all on our way to bigger and better things. This is a transition time for each of us, though what we're transitioning to isn't always clear and it definitely isn't the same thing. And the changes that are taking place are good reason for these girls' nights, no matter how impromptu, thrown together, or short they may be. We all need someplace to unwind and hopefully, if my moment of clarity was any indication, get some perspective. After all, and as we always said in high school, it's the little things in life that make living so grand.