We’ve all heard of ‘male bonding,’ but what about ‘female bonding?’ How do/can women connect to help and be there for each other? Check out this article for info on…

The bonding power of women in life and in business

Recently, I’ve begun doing some serious chick bonding.

Networking with large groups of women is something very new (and stimulating) to a person like me, who spends solitary hours in front of a computer writing all day.

Believe it or not, despite the large personality that may personify my writing, I am not a natural networker.

When my daughter was little, I tried to “coffee klatch” with neighborhood women, but ended up feeling uncomfortable. It may have been because I was in a different place in my life, unable to bust loose and let other women get close to me, or it may just have been that these women were not good matches for my off-beat sense of humor. Whatever it was, I was convinced that I could not function well in the company of more than one or two women at a time.

It wasn’t until my forties that I began to understand the value of women (other than my mother) in my life. I helped a friend through a divorce after a long-term marriage and a few years later, as fate would have it, she helped me through mine. We have been there for one another like sisters ever since and I cannot imagine life without her.

My move back to my beloved S.F. Bay Area during the divorce also highlighted the value of women in my life – one girlfriend gathered me up and took me dancing, another asked me to visit her in another state, and yet another invited me to live in the downstairs of her lovely home for nearly two years as I transitioned out of a 20 year married existence.

Now that I am blissfully remarried, I have begun to embrace the value of women with a vengeance. Writers groups, groups of women with small businesses, or getting in touch with ladies I knew 20 or 30 years ago on FACEBOOK – I am basking in a sisterhood unbeknownst to me in previous decades.

What I am finding, however, is that Generation X & Y seemed to have embraced this chick thing long ago. When my daughter (now 24 years old) was in school, I noticed that girls did things a lot of things in good-sized groups. No “date” for a school dance? No problem – they danced with one another and had a great time.

I don’t even think they use the word “dating” any more! None of the back-stabbing, competitive talk-behind-your-back stuff seemed to be going on there. Dropping my daughter off at school, I saw girls with huge balloon bouquets meant for a friend’s birthday and could remember nothing as gracious as that done by other girls when I was in my teens. I viewed it with envy and awe. My daughter still stays in touch with her high school buddies with IMs, blogging, emails and phonecalls.

Back in my “yoot,” however, girls would line the walls of the school gym, just hoping to get asked to dance. We would heave sighs when the “popular” girls danced up a storm with their boyfriends. In my high school there was the “front hall” crowd that gathered before and after school, exchanging gossip and making dates. And there were many more of us that were just invisible – counting the months until we could get the hell out of Dodge and find our own worlds, where we faced life on our own terms.

Another thing that amazes me is that I can’t imagine, when I was in my 20s even WANTING to be in the company of women in their 50s, more than old enough to be my mother. And yet, there they all are at these events of which I speak, treating us the way they would treat any girlfriend. And there WE Boomer ladies are, talking to women our children’s age and having a ball, not even thinking about it . . .

It’s kind of sad that it took me so long to figure this all out, but I’m sure I’m not alone. Spawned from a generation of stay-at-home moms, we were taught to be “private” about our lives, our hopes and our dreams. Women back then didn’t share stories standing in the middle of an elevator or waiting in line at the market. Now I just call it a “chick” thing and embrace it with all my heart.

We are a sisterhood indeed. And I am so glad to have been born female.

Lady Boomer Examiner: The bonding power of women in life and in business.

Image by deshanta via Flickr

Tags: bonding, Power, Women

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 15th, 2009 at 8:28 pm and is filed under Be a Better FRIEND, Books. 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.