The Power Of Friendship

The Power of Friendship

Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.”

“I only use disposable dinnerware because I am literally studying sooooooooo much that I don’t have time to do my dishes.”

I listened politely to my law school classmate as she smugly told me how very, very much she was studying each day, even as Liar, liar, pants on fire played in singsong meter in my mind.

That was the moment I decided I didn’t need friends in law school. I made sweeping judgments about every woman in my first-year class, deeming them ultracompetitive and unsafe, and then preemptively rejected all of them. I was polite and kind, but with the exception of one woman with whom I was carefully friendly, I invited no one into the vulnerable space of genuine friendship.

I created a false narrative that I carried with me for more than a decade: attorneys cannot be good friends; they are unsafe in friendship by personality and training. Any attorney who didn’t fit my narrative was explained as not being a “real” attorney—meaning there was something about his or her personality that made them different from the hundreds of thousands of legally trained individuals in our country that I had rejected.

I wish I could go back to that younger Julie and unpack for her the story of Ruth and Naomi—two women who loved one another fiercely, and who took turns spiritually carrying one another when the other was too weary to continue. The book of Ruth is far more than a love story. It is an instructional tale about the immense power of friendship that has both encouraged and convicted me as I’ve let go of the lies I’ve believed about women.

Younger me desperately needed girlfriends in law school, but my false narrative blinded me to the potential friendships all around me. My regret over those lost opportunities fuels not only how I teach my daughter about friendship but also reminds me not to reject other groups of women based on stereotypes.

— Julie

— Today’s Act of Friendship —

Is there a group of women you have preemptively rejected, perhaps based on clothing choices, denominational affinity, or some other stereotype? Invite someone from that rejected category out for coffee and get to know her.