Inspiration, Appreciation and Celebration of Girlfriends – for five years!

Five years ago today I wrote a ‘love letter’ to my girlfriends. Brought on by two dear friends dealing with cancer and feeling a very conscious ‘need’ to be around my friends, I wanted to express my appreciation and to explore why female friendship was so important to me and to all women.

Research confirmed the reasons we NEED girlfriends. Female friendship makes us healthier, happier, less stressed, live longer and feel more beautiful. Again, we NEED girlfriends. Husbands, boyfriends, guy friends can be great (we’re not against that) but there is nothing that can take the place of a dear friend who understands, cares, accepts and loves you. Nothing. Nada. No way. We need girlfriends.

Like a tiny seed that one day becomes an orange gerbera daisy (aka: our friendship flower), Girlfriendology  sprouted roots and became a growing community of women around the mission of ‘inspiration, appreciation and celebration of female friendship.‘ Brought together by our need for female friendship, strengthened by supporting each other and striving to be a better friend, we’ve become girlfriends, BFFs and sisters.

Girlfriends encouraged us. Inspired us. Shared their stories and made us cry.

Or, as this Girlfriendology bag says: “Stand by your man, but sit with your girlfriends!”

Most of my girlfriends ‘got it’ – why I had a passion to do my part in making the world a better place, one friendship at a time. Thanks to all of you amazing women who have inspired and supported me. There are way too many to name so I should even try. But just consider it YOU because you may have inspired someone with your friendship who became a better friend to a friend of mine. To every women who has been there to listen when a friend needed to talk or cry, for each friend who gave a ride to chemo or met a girlfriend for coffee, forgiven a friend and given a new girlfriend a chance – THANK YOU. You live Girlfriendology and that’s what really matters.

I’m also very passionate about being an entrepreneur so thanks to the women and men who have shared ideas, resources and time to help me follow my dream of growing the community and building the brand of Girlfriendology. Also, in the spirit of female friendship, I’m thankful for four other female friendship blogs who have joined together with Girlfriendology to form The Friendship Circle. (I love when women collaborate!)

Relationships take time to grow and so does Girlfriendology.

We started as a blog, went to two blogs, back to one and now have over 1300 blog posts. A wild idea … hmm, wonder if bestselling girlfriend author KRIS RADISH (shown here in our first video interview) would do an interview with us (to which she responded: ‘Sure babe, let’s talk!’) lead to doing podcasts, which lead to 100 interviews with inspiring women like CAROL DUVALL, DEBBIE MACOMBER and KATE JACOBS. Next came BlogTalkRadio shows with 97 more wonderful women like SUSAN MALLERY, TISA POWELL, and Molly, Kelly and Caitlin from COOKING WITH CAITLIN. (Our 100th show is coming in early February. Something more to celebrate!)

Knowing that women love to give and receive great girlfriend gifts, we created Girlfriendology t-shirts, bags, baseball caps, jewelry and perfume. We get great responses from women on these fabulous, female-friendly gifts for girlfriends!

As a female-friendly brand and website, we’ve had the honor of working with great brands we’d recommend to our girlfriends like BIZ Stain Fighter, Mean Green Degreaser, Frito-Lay, Kroger Company, Healthy Choice, Crystal Light, The UPS Store, Office Max, International Delight and more. We’ve even taped a TV commercial and were featured in a newspaper circular for BIZ that went to 57 million households!

I’ve had the opportunity to speak for women’s organizations, community clubs, blogger/social media conferences, PR and advertising agencies, and even several hundred girl scouts – on the topics of female friendship, social media and/or marketing to women online. We’ve represented brands at events like SXSW and BlogWorldExpo, and have met some smart women and men at conferences like BlogHer, Blissdom, SOBcon and various PodCamps.

Now, through the awesome, female-filled world of social media, Girlfriendology continues to grow with our 21,000+ Twitter Fans (& we block most men), 13,500+ female Facebook friends/fans (with 40-80,000 DAILY post impressions!), thousands of women in our online communities and newsletter list – and growing!

What’s ahead for the next five, ten … years of Girlfriendology?

That’s an exciting question! Just like girlfriends share great advice and information, we’re becoming a publisher of ‘women’s wisdom.’ We’ve already launched our first webinar (‘Hey Girlfriend! Get Your Career on Track’ with career strategist JULIE BAUKE) and are launching our first two eBooks in February (on Female Friendship by Girlfriendology/me and on Girlfriend Advice for Women’s Sexual Health by our girlfriend and ‘sexpert’ TISA POWELL).

We’re celebrating on the high seas with a couple hundred of our closest girlfriends in June on our Girlfriend Cruise (with JANET DEVITO, from GirlsonaCruise.com). JOIN US! (Also, we’re starting to work with some great brands to make this cruise extra special. Let us know, debba (at) girlfriendology.com, if your company would like to be ‘girlfriend recommended‘ and promoted to all these women as well as thousands of passengers on the cruise.)

In addition to the cruise, we’re working with national/international brands to promote your company as ‘girlfriend recommended’ to female consumers through sponsorships, advertising, social media connections, speaking, events, licensing and more. Please contact debba (at) girlfriendology.com.

How are we celebrating this BIG blogging birthday?

Well, you’ll have to come back and see. We’ll have a blog later today on some great prizes and other insights from the first five years of Girlfriendology.

Thank YOU for making the journey fun & friend-filled!