With my oldest in high school, I have been reliving many memories with each passing day of stories that my trusting and sharing girl brings home to me. With the description of the daily high school life, my teenage self comes bouncing back to the surface. The insecurities I felt are ripe as if they were just yesterday; the confidence I enjoyed also emerges with a fresh remembrance, and the Mean Girls' drama comes roaring down upon me with the re-breakage of my emotional dam.
Mean Girls. You suck. There you go.
If you know your best friend likes a certain boy, the absolute WORST thing you can do is go after said boy. Seriously? Do you value your friendship? Apparently, the answer to that prior question is a big resounding no.
You see, this particular incident also happened to me during my freshman year. Thankfully, the experience has fast forwarded some twenty-five years and I am now able to share my story with my freshman daughter. I honestly do know how she is feeling. I also know that when this experience happened to me, it opened the doors for me to become friends with a beautiful girl who I am still very good friends with today. Had I not had a Mean Girl experience, I would not have opened my friendship door of opportunity to someone else.
Sharing my freshman Mean Girl story helps my daughter, but it does not take away the pain and the hurt she feels by being betrayed by her best friend. Oh, did I mention this best friend has not done this once, nor twice, but multiple times in the past month or so? My Momma-Bear claws are out; however, I can only gently guide my daughter through the Bitchland. She has to make her own choices, her own decisions on what is the best way to handle her relationships. She has taken my life lessons of being the bigger and better person to the ultimate level thus far.
As I have reflected upon this visit through high school estrogen sabotage, I realize that even as an adult there are still quite a few residents of Bitchland. I guess some Mean Girls grow up to be mean women.
Am I naive to think that all of us women should be supporting each other? I understand that in high school, the girls are still navigating their ways through uncharted terrorities of boys, high school curriculum, finding their role in this universe and so much more. As grown women, with many years of life experience under our belts, should we not have enough to guide us in a gentle way with each other? Can we not have the opportunity to agree to disagree with each other, without belitting or hurting the other's feelings?
I promise to support my female friends in any of their endeavors. I may not agree with your choice, or your action, but I will support you. Why would I not? I will offer you my advice and my experience in your times of tribulation; and I may not prefer your method in handling the same but I respect that it is your choice to make and I will not judge accordingly.
At the end of the day, being kind to each other really is the best way to spend our time on this Earth. Our lives, as we know, are too short and to waste any time being negative or mean is just so sad.
For those of you who have been a Mean Girl to me in my lifetime, both past, present and future - well, go ahead. Shame on you. I will still walk with my head high. I will still kill you with kindness. I will dump you from my life. I will teach my children how to behave around your very likely Mean Children and they will walk with their heads held high.
My inquiring mind wants to know, how do you handle a Mean Girl experience either now as an adult or with your child(ren)?
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