As if I needed justification? Conveniently, I already had a mom-date on the books for tonight with a group of local gals whom I really like — smart, funny, and educated! If I weren’t working, I’d see them more often…but damn it all…

One gal sent this article with the email titled, “Proof that moms’ nights out are medically necessary:”

A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are. By the way, they may do even more. Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis.

Here, here. This is where working from home can be the worst of all worlds. I don’t have the freedom to parent full-time (say, at the zoo on any given Wednesday morning), but I’m also not in daily conversation with a group of peers. Being a WAHM is exhausting to me, and that’s why I’m job-hunting. Maya’s extraverted enough, I think she’ll benefit from being in a childcare setting now that she’s older. A year ago, we weren’t ready, but now, it’s time.

This part doesn’t surprise me at all:

The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in a classic “aha” moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded, says Dr. Klein. When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress research is on males.

Research done on men, then assumed to apply globally? No way. That doesn’t *ever* happen, does it? Say it isn’t so.

I’m especially guilty of this:

Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women, explains Dr. Josselson. We push them right to the back burner. That’s really a mistake because women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they’re with other women. It’s a very healing experience.

And that’s so true, for me at least. When I’m stressed out, I NEED to be around other people, and yet when I’m highly stressed, I sometimes withdraw. Part of it is the whole “not wanting to dump my baggage on someone else,” which is why the blog is a wonderful help. Once I got over the public nature of the blog, I decided that I could write whatever I wanted here. As I’ve said before, the blog isn’t for an audience; it’s for me. The friends I’ve found via this blog (and others) are such a bonus.

Go read the rest.