I get by with a little help from my (girl)friends.

I spent my Memorial Day weekend on a three day climbing intensive course in Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine. It was pretty amazing, and I’m hoping that even without a high frequency of us, that I will retain most of my newly acquired knowledge of anchoring techniques and gear placement and knots and hitches.

And I’m glad that my body was cooperative for the weekend, and that I was able to make it through several eight hour days without experiencing any of the sort of Crohn’s symptoms that would be the worst to have while on the edge of the cliff in a national park, while in the company of a group of virtual strangers. This part of the trip feels like a small miracle. Maybe a small miracle of the Prednisone variety, as after meeting with my doctor on Thursday we re-upped my dosage due to symptom resurgence in the week prior.

There’s a lot more that could be said about either of the above. But there’s something even more important that I spent a lot of time thinking about, recently in general, and this weekend in particular.  Girl friends. Or you know, female friendship, if the term girlfriend has an air of ambiguity in your head.

This trip was planned with one of my closest girl friends, Jessie, and a new girl friend who we met through the climbing meet up group that I organize. And I can’t imagine having had better companionship for the weekend.

Girls, by whom I mean women, and their friendships – both in girlhood and womanhood, get a lot of bad media. Some of which is certainly deserved, and much of which there is a basis for. We can be, as Jessie put it, silent competitors – even with our best friends. We can be catty bitches. Judgmental. Back-stabbing. Queen bees and wannabes. I don’t know any adult woman who has not been on both the giving and receiving end of all of this, at one point or another.

I’ve struggled through much of my own adulthood with friendships, and in a variety of painful manners have lost several female friends who I had thought were too close to have the kinds of falling outs that led to our friend break-ups. But in the past few years I’ve been lucky enough to meet and become friends with some girls who seem to have transcended these dynamics. Women who truly care for one another, who are supportive and nurturing but who also won’t stand for unnecessary drama. Women who know how to boost me up, but who can still set limits, because honestly I sometimes still need them.

Without these ladies, my life today wouldn’t be half of what it is. I hope that over time as they make their recurring guest appearances here you will get to know and love them even half as well as I do, because they are truly spectacular