karaspeak

It's funny that in my nearly five years of living in Westhaven (wow, five years already!?!) I barely knew people that live within houses of me. While I longed for new friendships, I just felt out of place for some reason. Not sure if it was the fact that I was a stay at home, working mom surrounded by a lot of non-working moms, or that I didn't have a golf cart, or that I didn't have millions of dollars, but I just felt out of the loop. This past fall, I had the chance to meet some girls on my street, and become a little more open with them...not only about my surface level Kara stuff that everyone gets to see, but the stuff that women really need to talk about when they are together - struggles, hurts, frustrations, joys, prayers, pain points, thrills, secrets...you know, the good stuff. I grew up being hurt by girls so often in friendships and learned to keep myself guarded in relationships, only letting a little piece of myself out. But when I changed my attitude and opened myself up to not only possibly get hurt, but also possibly to make some amazing friends in the process, I learned it was possible to move beyond the "out of place-ness" I was putting on myself.

We began having "Bachelor Mondays" where we said we'd watch "The Bachelor" and drink wine, but really just drank wine and talked all night. All of a sudden, we had a weekly forum to vent, get support, get encouragement, while we painted nails, taught each other how to do eye make up, and shared our "sale day" shopping successes. And though some of us really did try and watch the show, most of us just did all the other stuff. But regardless, I learned a lot about these girls, and I loved Bachelor Monday. It was good crazy girly fun, which was good to realize can happen even after you turn 30.

While "The Bachelor" is over for the season, and we don't meet every week, we do get together fairly often, and I think we all look forward to it just as much as we did when it was weekly. We've realized a lot of things about ourselves, about each other, and about relationships. We are able to bear with each other when things are bad, and have a big blow out in celebration when things are good. And it makes a world of difference to feel like there's these awesome women who all have your back when the going gets tough and when the lights start to dim on the parade. From life experiences to love lost, it's on the table and stays at the table.

Feeling so lucky to have gone beyond the restrictions I had on myself and the self-doubt that I was not likable and found these girls. One in a million.