How would your friends feel if you picked up and moved to another city?

Would they miss you? Stay in touch? Wonder how you’re doing? And what does that say about you and your friendships?

How cool is this girl’s night out thrown recently by First Lady Michelle Obama?! Check out this article from Huffington Post by our girlfriend IRENE LEVINE (and listen into our podcast with Irene – she’s the pro on ‘fractured friendships‘).

The latest issue of People magazine (February 25th) featured a cover story on Michelle Obama’s first days in the White House. While the President was in Canada, the first lady orchestrated a ‘Girls’ Night In‘ at the White House, which might be a first! She invited a diverse group of women: secretaries (with a small ’s’) and policymakers to watch a screening of the chick-flick He’s Just Not That Into You while they munched on popcorn. I wish I had been a fly on the wall to hear the girl-talk that followed.

Shortly after the November election, an article in the Chicago Sun-Times noted that Michelle Obama’s friends in the windy city would sorely miss her. I thought that spoke volumes about the character of the wife of the President-elect.

Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell quoted one friend of nearly 20 years, Yvonne Davila, who said: “Michelle is grounded in the sense that she is a woman just like you and me. She is a working mom. A girlfriend. A wife. She is a regular person and I think that is what makes her special and what resonates with people. People can see themselves in her,” Davila said.

Clearly, this is a First Lady who strives to balance family, friends and career. Just like one of us.

[A segment on Good Morning America interviewed some of Michelle Obama's friends.]

Irene S. Levine, PhD is a freelance journalist and author. She holds an appointment as a professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine and is working on a book about female friendships, Best Friends Forever: Surviving the Myth, that will be published by Overlook Press in September, 2009 and recently co-authored Schizophrenia for Dummies (Wiley, 2008). She also blogs about female friendships at The Friendship Blog.

Dr. Irene S. Levine: Michelle Obama: First Friend.

So, girlfriends – when was the last time you got some women together for a ‘girl’s night out’? Maybe it’s time. If our First Lady can make time for her girlfriends, shouldn’t we?

Girlfriendology, the online community for women based on girlfriend inspiration, appreciation and celebration

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Tags: Chicago Sun-Times, First Lady, Michelle Obama, White House

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 10:59 am and is filed under Be a Better FRIEND. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.