On Making Friends

I've been making a concerted effort recently to make more friends. More girl friends specifically. I don't really have any girl friends that are close to me, geographically speaking, and I feel as though that is taking a toll on me spiritually.

I've been working on my relationship with a girl we'll call C. C is the girlfriend/partner to one of my Big Human's friends/former coworkers. In the past, we have only hung out when our male counterparts have gotten together. I've hung out more with her boyfriend than her simply because my Big Human would be hanging out with him and I would go meet up with them. But in an effort to cultivate my lady friendships, I've been hanging out with her doing other things. She is pregnant and so we have been going to pregnancy meetings and she has asked me to be her birth partner/doula. I've never served as an "official" doula but it is something that I have been toying with in my head so since I have to start somewhere, C will be my first "client". I'm not charging her and I won't be able to use her birth towards my accreditation but it will be good experience. Doing this for her is bittersweet. I had kind of shut myself off from the birthing world because it was too painful for me to be involved with based on the bleak prospects of me ever birthing myself. But I can't hide from one of my true passions. I have loved birth and learning about birth and watching birth since I was in middle school. I can't deny it. So in working on my friendship with C, I have had to dive back in to something that I love so dearly. I really missed it. I'm glad that C has forced me to open that part of my heart back up.

I'm still looking for more lady friendships. I wasn't prepared for it to be so much work. In high school and college, you became friends simply because you were with these people every day. In the grown up world, it's work just like any other relationship. Whew!