girlfriends. life’s good stuff.

the friday before i left for my napa girlfriends getaway, i started to well up at dinner with danny. before it even started, i was already emotional thinking about the conclusion of our trip. a camera full of new memories. the tight see-ya-later squeezes. a million excited “can’t wait” texts zinging through your iPhone to a quiet low as soon as you unpack your bags. during the final brunch of our trip, we were sorting through jenny’s polaroids and again, i started to cry. i was looking at the already vintage looking photos and couldn’t help but think of the future and us actually looking vintage. it was instant nostalgia. our sepia tinted fresh faces, so young and carefree knowing that one day that photo would be a distant memory. even as i type this my eyes get dewey.

as my 30th birthday came i went, i really thought about what advice i’d give a young girl – and i kept going back to a common thread: surround yourself with wonderful women and foster those relationships with everything you’ve got. before life gets layered with careers, marriages, kids and responsibilities, establish relationships that will stand the test of time. because when life does get more complicated, those moments with girlfriends will be your saving grace.

i’ve forever held onto a quote from a sex & the city episode along the lines of, “friendships are like a savings account. you’ve got to continually put a little bit into it so that when you need it, it’s there.”

….after a long workday last week, a dear friend plopped on my couch and we opened our first bottle of red for the season. it’d been almost a month since we’d seen each other which felt like an eternity. we joked that we needed an agenda for the night because there was so much to catch up on. i didn’t have time for the grocery, so we picked at leftovers from my fridge. we bitched about some things, laughed about others and swapped the kind of stories that girlfriends divulge and validate that you’re totally normal.

a few days later i had a spontaneous happy hour with a girlfriend that was followed by dinner for two with another dear friend which ended in real talk and us snapping blurry selfies in the restaurant’s bathroom mirror.

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these are the moments that rejuvenate me. and ting sees it. after time with my girls, i always walk away so happy, satisfied and sentimental. i continue to learn so much from each of the women in my life. i watch and listen… take a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

i don’t have sisters, but count my lucky stars that female friendships have filled that biological void tenfold. love you girls xx

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