fabulous@fifty and our Friendships

Good Morning fabulous@fifty ladies (and the sensational@sixty) Ladies. The good news is women improve with age by becoming better at relationships, including the relationships with our friends, children and our parents. We are better communicators at this stage of our lives and have greater emotional intelligence according to Cognitive Neuroscientist and Business Improvement Strategist, Dr Lynda Shaw.

The even better news is that we now have realistic expectations and generally we have invested heavily in great relationships with friends and family. Agreed we do get hurt by friends and family because they do not behave as "we" would like them to behave, think, and feel towards us. But this is where the greater emotional intelligence is of utmost importance, we cry, we justify, and we move on. Ultimately nobody owe's us anything. That is a revelation that only a women who has been hurt in her younger days come to understand. Move on, but don't sacrifice the friendship, the family member to the slaughter of negative feelings.

It is true, as our oestrogen supply runs down (eat right and remember it does not run out) we are prone to more tears, but on the other hand we are better able to observe, read a situation, evaluate and communicate. We intuitively understand things, we forgive easy and for that reason we should be extra intuitive. Remember as well that the female brain has a larger limbic system, which means that females tend to be more in touch with their emotions. In addition, the language centers are larger in women and females tend to respond better to auditory stimulation, so if we see pain, we feel pain and we express pain - at this age better than when we were younger. This is not due (lol) to a bigger vocabulary, but due to a better understanding of the pain.

fabulous@fifty and beyond is truly the time to see our (female) friendships as the most important emotional investment we can make. Cherish your friendship, and see the footprints the friendship has left, see the times when you were walking alone and another set of footprints were there to help you walk the path of sorrow. We can laugh together, cry together, cry for each other but always remember the beauty of friendship.