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Remember to Schedule a Play Date for Mom!

Sometimes when I watch Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte on Sex and the City reruns, I am filled with envy. What gets me the most is the freedom they have to spend seemingly endless hours just hanging out together. I am blessed to have amazing friends but weeks, sometimes months go by when I don't get the chance to be with them, to laugh with them, to just be myself with them.

By Julie Burton

Sometimes when I watch Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte on Sex and the City reruns, I am filled with a certain amount of envy. What gets me the most is not so much the sexual freedom that these women have (well?…), but the freedom they have to spend seemingly endless hours just hanging out together. I am blessed to have amazing friends – rocks as I call them – but there are weeks, sometimes months that go by when I do not get the chance to be with them, to laugh with them, to just be myself with them. Maybe there is a weekly two-minute phone conversation while I'm holding my 2-year-old, making dinner, and helping my forth-grader with his homework. But these are often unfulfilling and somewhat frustrating exchanges.

My roles as wife, mother of four children, and writer/editor keep my plate very full, and most of the time I love all the hats I wear. But I do find myself missing time with my girlfriends. Usually, my girlfriend time is squeezed in, it's lower on the priority list than I'd like it to be, and it has to be scheduled, and often rescheduled. But wow, is it ever ESSENTIAL! Taking or making the time for girlfriends is critical for us moms with harried, jam-packed, and sometimes overwhelming lives. We need each other. We need to talk, and listen, and talk some more. Yes, we need to talk about our children, our husbands/significant others, and our jobs, but we really need to talk about ourselves – our hopes, expectations, fears, dreams and disappointments.

Some women are better able to incorporate their girlfriends in their life on a consistent basis. I am not one of those, and ironically, many of my closest friends are not either. We have an understanding that our husbands, kids, and jobs take up most of our available time and energy, so our girlfriend time is limited, but treasured.

So, as you are leaving the Little Gym class with your toddler, on your way to pick up your Kindergartner to take him to a play date after school, and then off to drive your 3rd grader to dance class, and making a quick trip to the grocery store because you are out of milk, and then home to do some more work because you have a huge presentation tomorrow, make sure to give Susie a call and ask her if she can grab lunch on Friday because you really need to re-connect. And remember that re-connecting with Susie is also a way for you to reconnect with yourself.

The following are some suggestions that my dear friend Amy Susman-Stillman, Ph.D., and I put together that may be helpful when trying to incorporate our girlfriends into our already over-scheduled life. (Amy is the mother of two children and Director of Applied Research and Training at the Center for Early Education and Development at the University of Minnesota.)

• Move "spending time with girlfriends" up on the priority list and put those wonderful women on your schedule.
  (My friends reading this are invariably laughing because they know how I struggle – we all do, with making this a reality. One of my closest girlfriends who lives out of town, just sent me an e-mail saying that she will be in town on a particular weekend and wants to schedule a breakfast or lunch. Low and behold, I have to be out of town for a family engagement that weekend. So, we keep trying. And after 25 years of friendship, the majority of which we've lived in different cities, when we do connect, it's as if no time has passed.)
  
• Purchase Guthrie or Ordway tickets with girlfriends in advance so you have scheduled times throughout the year that you know you'll see each other.
  
• Try to coordinate your workouts with a friend. It makes the time on the treadmill fly by when you are gabbing with a buddy.
  
• Schedule a "late night" phone call when everyone is asleep.
  
• Plan a "girls' weekend" at a cabin or grab a cheap flight to Mexico. Once you buy those tickets, you're going!
  
• Run errands together – all moms need to go to the grocery store and to Target – and try to make time for a quick cup of coffee after.
  
• Organize a book club with friends.
  
• If there is an opportunity to be spontaneous, go for it! Stop over at a friend's on your way home from work for a quick hug. Drop off a Starbucks (and some doughnuts for the kids) at Lucy's house on a Saturday morning to let her know you haven't forgotten about her. (I soooo need to be doing more of this.)

Most importantly, let your friends know, by way of a quick e-mail, voice mail or a card, how much you care about them and that you are thinking about them even when you are not able to spend time with them.