We Ladies Need To Stick Together

We ladies need to stick together.

Sandra Bullock echoes this sentiment exactly when sharing her reactions to winning the Oscar for best actress.

I couldn’t agree more.

Ladies, I’m sure you can think of at least five women who have significantly helped you succeed in your life. Unfortunately the truth is I’m also pretty sure you can think of one or two who haven’t been helpful at all. Maybe she even blew you off completely, never called or emailed you back despite your best efforts to contact her for help. Or maybe she’s purposefully made life difficult for you.

Madeleine Albright apparently wasn’t kidding when she once said, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”

In a day where thinness is celebrated to the point of pushing women into anorexia, where family and career become impossible juggling acts, where the stresses and societal, even cultural pressures to be perfect in every aspect of your life become too much – we women need to stick together. You’ve all seen the bumper sticker, Mean Girls Suck. Maybe you’ve even seen the movie. We all know what it feels like to be ignored. We must stick together. Let’s celebrate our differences, put away our pettiness, and instead reach into our hearts and pull out the empathy and innate nurturing abilities we possess to lift one another.

Life is full of distractions, but nothing adjusts our focus clearer than altruism in the form of reaching out to one of our own.

Sticking together doesn’t necessarily mean spending weeks or years helping someone succeed. It means smiling at another woman when you see stress flash across her face. Putting an arm around her when her posture looks heavy. Helping a stranger who “cold calls” or emails you to ask for your professional advice.

Let’s be the women who have been there and who willingly reach a hand down to help the woman who wants to get there.

So to my many women friends: Thank you for celebrating with me, for empathizing with me, and for answering my “cold call” emails. For telling your friends about my book, for calling your legislators to help pass important autism legislation. For being my friend. For sticking together.