My best friend of over twenty years and I recently had a girl’s weekend – full of a hotel stay, dinners out, hikes, and shopping! I needed to go to the West Coast for work, so I went the weekend before my meetings started and met her in her neck of the woods for a beach getaway. It was an awesome trip and an amazing time together (more on that in a later post)! We live on different sides of the country, and our current lives couldn’t be more different, yet we found ourselves bringing up the same things that we both experience on a daily basis.
My bestie lives in LA, is single without kids, and works for entertainment tech start-ups/small businesses (i.e., she’s SO COOL). On the other hand, I live in Indiana, where we grew up, have been married for fifteen years, have two kids, and have a corporate job with a Fortune 500 company. She’s super funky and cool, and I have the same Lululemon sweatshirt in at least three different colors. Yet, as we spent the weekend on Laguna Beach catching up on each other’s lives, I realized how many common daily experiences we share despite our different lives. Three things stood out to me that I experience on a near daily basis that she expressed are a big part of her life, too. So, whether you’re seeking validation for what you’re feeling or experiencing in this life stage, or you are simply interested to hear that someone living a drastically different life than you (a mom in the burbs) is actually going through many of the same things, this list is for you!
We ALWAYS carry our water bottles
On this trip, I even forgot to pack a water bottle (to be fair, I’ve been carrying around a 40 oz Stanley tumbler, and I didn’t think that would travel well and then forgot about trying to find a different one to bring on the trip) and was PARCHED by the time my plane landed. We stopped at Target on our way from the airport to the hotel to pick up some snacks, and she didn’t think twice about helping me find the water bottle aisle so I could find my emotional support Camelbak bottle for the weekend. She, too, experiences the necessity of the emotional support water bottle. We laughed about this in the car: how did we survive childhood without a constant water supply with us? We didn’t drink water throughout the day at school unless it was a quick sip from the water fountain in the hallway (“one, two, three… that’s enough for me!”). Our drink with lunch from elementary through high school was a tiny carton of chocolate milk, and we never felt like we were missing anything. So why, now, do we have to be carrying a water bottle with us constantly? Although we both realized how ridiculous this is, we agreed that it is healthy and probably for the best, so there is no need to change this obsessive behavior.
We have sore lower bodies
I seriously thought this was just me. My second child was born and then six months later the world went into lockdown. With that, I never left my home, even for work, and my hips and lower back have been in pain. I figured it was because I’m much more sedentary than I used to be, or it was just the pains of growing older after pushing out two babies. It turns out that even thirty-five-year-olds who live in healthy/active LA and haven’t carried children also experience tight hips! Not that I enjoyed knowing she’s in pain, too, but it did make it less embarrassing to ask if we could start our day with a ten-minute Peloton “Lower Hip Mobility” exercise in the morning!
We are getting increasingly sweatier and stinkier
I’ve talked about this before, but I have gotten so sweaty and stinky in the past several years! Again, I thought this was due to hormonal shifts after pregnancy. It must just be growing up (cue the Blink 182 riff) because BFF also said she has experienced the same thing! We shared tips and tricks on trying to stay dry and not stinky, but it made me feel better that I’m not the only one with this issue.
This all just goes to show that we are more alike than we think we are and that you should never be scared or ashamed to talk about what you’re thinking, feeling, or experiencing because odds are that the woman you’re talking to feels the same way—even with your super cool bestie who lives across the country from you.
