Female Friendships are Extraordinary

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Well, it seems to me that the best relationships—the ones that last—are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship.

—GILLIAN ANDERSON

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.

—JANE AUSTEN

It’s important to have girlfriends, because guys tend to come and go.

—ASHLEY TISDALE

Well, female friendships are extraordinary. They don’t have to be sexual to be intense love affairs. A breakup with a female friend can be more traumatic than a breakup with a lover.

—KEIRA KNIGHTLEY

My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion to the man I loved.

—C O L E T T E

Female friendship was one-tenth prevention and nine-tenths cleanup.

—MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD

This post is an excerpt from Friendship Isn’t a Big Thing, It’s a Million Little Things by Becca Anderson, which can be found at Amazon and Mango Media.

Friends Are Some of the Great Loves of Our Lives

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Here is the straight truth: you will experience breakups, and the odds are 50/50 that
you will get a divorce. Some of us, myself included, will also grieve a partner. That shock came like a bolt out of the blue, and diagnosis to death was less than a year.
Not only do you barely have time to accept the prognosis and try to deal with it in a supportive way, but when a life is cut short at such a young age, it is nearly impossible to be able to process it. As they say, “life comes at you fast,” and death comes even faster. Along with it comes a lot of paperwork and the business side that won’t wait for anyone. It is very difficult to sort through a loved one’s things when you can barely function, and every single thing is a memory. I can tell you that I would not even be here if it were not for my friends. They gathered around me and helped take care of memorials, organizing, bills, and even simple things like buying groceries and taking out the trash when I was in the fetal position. Needless to say, that remains one of the hardest times I ever went through, but, a couple of years down the road, I was able to realize that my friends are my Soul Tribe and they enfolded me with so much love that they essentially brought me back to life when I was so sad, I was not sure I could carry on. Friends are some of the greatest loves of our lives. Everything you give to your dearest friends, you will receive back a thousandfold.

The best way to mend a broken heart is time and girlfriends.

—GWYNETH PALTROW

I feel there’s so much pressure, especially for women, to declare what their life’s going to be and what their career is, and “Are you married yet? Are you single? But you’re thirty.” And girlfriends are so important. You can have a boyfriend or husband when you’re thirty, but you still need your girlfriends.

—KRISTEN WIIG

This post is an excerpt from Friendship Isn’t a Big Thing, It’s a Million Little Things by Becca Anderson, which can be found at Amazon and Mango Media.

To Be Rich in Friends is to Be Poor in Nothing

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Female friendships are important because they help define us in a particular time and place.

—VICTORIA SCOTT

To be rich in friends is to be poor in nothing.

—LILIAN WHITING

Anything is possible when you have the right people there to support you.

—MISTY COPELAND

I thank you, God in Heaven, for friends.

—MARGARET ELIZABETH SANGSTER

Friends and good manners will carry you where money won’t go.

—MARGARET WALKER

This post is an excerpt from Friendship Isn’t a Big Thing, It’s a Million Little Things by Becca Anderson, which can be found at Amazon and Mango Media.

I Can Trust My Friends

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Other people and other people’s ideas are often better than your own. Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.

—AMY POEHLER

I can trust my friends. These people force me to examine, encourage me to grow.

—C H E R

A friend will stand for you when you are no longer able. A woman can say to herself, “If I die, I know that my friend, my sister- friend will be here to hold up the banner.”

—MAYA ANGELOU

Female friendship has been the bedrock of women’s lives for as long as there have been women.

—REBECCA TRAISTER

Female friendships that work are relationships in which women help each other belong to themselves.

—LOUISE BERNIKOW

Behind every successful woman is a tribe of other successful women who have her back.

—A N O N Y M O U S

This post is an excerpt from Friendship Isn’t a Big Thing, It’s a Million Little Things by Becca Anderson, which can be found at Amazon and Mango Media.

Friends are Like Angels

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Friends are like angels following you through life.

—MARY ELLEN

My friends are my estate.

—EMILY DICKINSON

Never doubt that a small group of dedicated people can make a difference. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

—MARGARET MEAD

I’ve always believed that one woman’s success can only help another woman’s success.

—GLORIA VANDERBILT

We are each other’s magnitude and bond.

—GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Women hold up half the sky.

—CHINESE PROVERB

This post is an excerpt from Friendship Isn’t a Big Thing, It’s a Million Little Things by Becca Anderson, which can be found at Amazon and Mango Media.

With a Little Help from My Friends

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When I really stop to consider, many of the best things in my life have happened because of the kindness of not strangers, but friends. I got into book publishing because my friend Maria had the deep insight that was the right career for me. I had gotten a promotion in import-export and was set to travel the world as a buyer for an international corporation, only to learn that children were making the products in China and India. When my boss showed me photos of the factories we were going to visit, I asked him about the children. He flatly stated they were very happy to have jobs, adding, “You should be too.” In that moment, I knew I had to quit and did immediately. The look on his face was sheer astonishment. I packed up my few things, grabbed my purse and keys, and drove back across the Bay Bridge to my tiny apartment in San Francisco, wondering how I was going pay rent on the first of the next month. I ran inside, flung myself on the bed, and called Maria. She listened intently and said, “Your favorite thing is reading and talking about books. Maybe you should be in publishing.” Maria knew I was in bad shape both financially and emotionally, so she offered to help me with the job search. She also told me I had done the right thing in quitting that job, and I needed to hear that. As it turned about, Maria was exactly right in her career advice. I am proud to add that I was part of a task force that rated printers in other countries to make sure no children were involved in the manufacture of books. All with a little help from my friends.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

—AFRICAN PROVERB

A friend is someone who makes it easy to believe in yourself.

—HEIDI WILLS

This post is an excerpt from Friendship Isn’t a Big Thing, It’s a Million Little Things by Becca Anderson, which can be found at Amazon and Mango Media.

All About Trust and Loyalty

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The finest kind of friendship is between two people who expect a great deal of each other, but never ask it.

—SYLVIA BREMER

The only people you can really share certain things with in secret are your girlfriends.

—SHIRLEY KNIGHT

Honesty is the quality I value most in a friend. Not bluntness, but honesty with compassion.

—BROOKE SHIELDS

I think a good friend, to me, is all about trust and loyalty. You don’t ever want to second-guess whether you can tell your friend something.

—LAUREN CONRAD

Friends are those rare people who ask how you are and then wait for the answer.

—U N K N O W N

This post is an excerpt from Friendship Isn’t a Big Thing, It’s a Million Little Things by Becca Anderson, which can be found at Amazon and Mango Media.

Women Understand

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It’s important for our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to the friendship that we are not.

—MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN

No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.

—ALICE WALKER

The blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one’s deepest as well as one’s most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely.

—DINAH CRAIK

Talk between women friends is always therapy…

—JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS

I possess the faculty of enjoying the company of…my friends as well in silence as in conversation.

—ANNE BRONTË

Women understand. We may share experiences, make jokes, paint pictures, and describe humiliations that mean nothing to men, but women understand.

—GLORIA STEINEM

This post is an excerpt from Friendship Isn’t a Big Thing, It’s a Million Little Things by Becca Anderson, which can be found at Amazon and Mango Media.

A Good Friend is Cheaper than Therapy

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A good friend is cheaper than therapy.

—U N K N O W N

Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.

—MARGARET LEE RUNBECK

“Stay” is a charming word in a friend’s vocabulary.

—LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.

—BARBARA DE ANGELIS

We all need friends with whom we can speak of our deepest concerns, and who do not fear to speak the truth in love to us.

—REV. MARGARET GUENTHER

All you’ll get from strangers is surface pleasantry or indifference. Only someone who loves you will criticize you.

—JUDITH CRIST

This post is an excerpt from Friendship Isn’t a Big Thing, It’s a Million Little Things by Becca Anderson, which can be found at Amazon and Mango Media.

Girl Talk (Except When No Words Are Needed)

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You can tell when women have been friends for a long time. If you observe them even for a short time, you’ll see they have their own language. Some of this language does not even involve words! There will be various vocalizations, ranging from murmurs to grunts to guffaws, that say a whole lot without saying a word. The more enduring the duo, the more evolved the secret language is. It must also be said that a lot of communication also involves no sound; ever notice how your girlfriend can point with her head to a rack of clothes, and you know exactly which sweater she wanted you to try on? Or when you’re out on the town and she gently nudges you with the toe of her shoe in just such a way that you know she wants you to know you are being checked out by the cute guy by the bar but you must not look up quite yet. Here’s what I know for sure about girl talk. It can be anything and on any topic. Just keep communicating with each other, and the world will be a better place for it.

For women, talk is the glue that holds relationships together; it creates connections between people and a sense of community.

—DEBORAH FARMER

The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

—AUDRE LORDE

This post is an excerpt from Friendship Isn’t a Big Thing, It’s a Million Little Things by Becca Anderson, which can be found at Amazon and Mango Media.