Style Inspiration: My New Girlfriends

As I came back from dinner one night, I ran into one of our building's Crazy Old Ladies in the elevator.

"You look elegant," she said. "Did you go out to dinner?"

"Thank you," I demurred. "I went to work," I deflected, "and then I went to dinner with some girlfriends."

"Girlfriends are really important. Husbands are good, but girlfriends are really important," and the elevator doors closed on the tail end of her thought as she got off at her floor.

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She's right. I'm blessed to count my family among my dear friends. I'm also blessed to have grown up in one place, and have some 30+ year friends with whom I barely have to say a word. Then there are the friends I've made who live across oceans; because we met across oceans, far away from all of our homes. That, too, is a special bond.

Then there are my newest friends. Nope, not the Other Mommies, though some of this group are. The first friend I met this way introduced me once (6 years ago now) to an ecclectic group of her friends with, "We met on the internet."

Other bloggers have written, tweeted, and posted about this friendship phenomenon. They've said how they're grateful for the people they've met, the things they've done, and so on and so forth. Well, it's true. Through blogging and twitter (and now Instagram - really), I've been lucky to find a group of women who are innately savvy, stylish, sometimes sarcastic and snarky, but ultimately, they're incredibly supportive. Sure, we interact primarily online, but we've moved off of the interwebs and into Real Life, revealing who we are and what we do - and for some of us who still remain anonymous - we reveal our faces. We've not known each other long, but there's a sensibility and a commonality there that connects us, and for which I'm grateful.

So I just want to say thank you, Al Gore, for introducing me to My New Girlfriends.