Friendship and Aging is a topic close to my heart because as I age it seems the friends I have cultivated all my life have become more important.  Children grow and move onto their own lives, husbands come and go either through divorce or death, our career’s grow and fade, well life just ebbs and flows.  But for me one constant has been the friendships that I have hold dear, the people that have been around the majority of my life and the new friends that have come in during my career days and marriage.  I find that through the thick and thin of my life, the friends I hold most dear have been there through it all and as life mellows I have found that I couldn’t have made it through without the caring love of friends.  Enjoy this story which was originally published in MORE magazine, May 2007.  I have added the photos of friends.

Maya. She lived on a ranch in Nevada with a wide view of the plains and

plenty of room for guests. People were always passing through, bearing wine

and ingredients for dishes they’d cook and eat together. When her daughter

invited me to stay on the ranch to write a novel, I became part of Maya’s

vibrant social circle. She was 90 then, and the fact that she was keen to

get to know a woman half her age was testimony to her gift for friendship.

My friend Sheila died of cancer Nov 9th, age 55

When she died, I told her daughter that no one had had such a good old age

as Maya. Though she’d been divorced for years and had lost her son, she was

rarely lonely. Her friends helped her keep an amused sparkle in her eyes and

vigor in her step.

Maya made me realize that the secret of successful aging lies in our

friendships — so I’ve been reassessing and reconnecting with people I

consider friends. Who are the perennial flowers in my life, those who bring

color and delight every year? And who are the weeds, who leave me feeling

depleted? At midlife, there’s plenty of time to sow new seeds of friendships

that will bring us joy and — as it turns out — good health.

My soul sister Olga (r)

Cultivating Chemistry

There’s solid scientific research showing that friends actually change the

biochemistry of our brains and the functioning of our immune systems. “Good

friendships put our brains and bodies in an optimal state of function,” says

psychologist Daniel Goleman, author of Social Intelligence. “That state is

associated with positive emotions, like joy, which help strengthen the

immune system and the cardiovascular system.”

Scientists have long observed that people with rich social relationships

Neighborhood Friends

live longer than those who are lonely. The more close friends we have, the

more likely we are to be healthy — suffering lower rates of chronic

diseases, accidents, and psychological impairments.

Friendlessness, by contrast, is a major risk factor for disease and early

death, comparable to high blood pressure, obesity, and other serious health

risks. “Being socially isolated is comparable to the negative effects of

cigarette smoking for your health,” says James Coan, PhD, a psychologist and

neuroscientist at the University of Virginia.

What causes this strong correlation between friendship and health? One

Two long time girlfriends Carrie & Linda

theory is that friends provide stress buffering, which is basically social

and psychological support. “Friends may encourage health-promoting behaviors

like proper sleep and exercise, and nag when you drink too much or smoke,”

explains Eric Loucks, a psychologist and epidemiologist at McGill University

who studies the effects of social isolation on heart disease. Maya had a lot

of friends who served as stress buffers, driving her to the doctor, filling

her freezer with soups, and calling in the twilight hours, when she’d

sometimes feel melancholy.

How Loneliness Harms Us

Scientists are also finding that we’re hardwired to seek out others. Too

much alone time and our bodies send out distress signals. “Humans are

fragile as individuals, so when we’re alone, we are in a state of potential

danger,” says John Cacioppo, director of the Center for Cognitive and Social

Neuroscience at the University of Chicago. When you feel lonely, your brain

responds by increasing levels of the hormone cortisol, putting you on alert,

as though an enemy were present.

With long periods of loneliness, the overload of cortisol can harm us,

increasing our chances of getting chronic conditions such as cardiovascular

disease and hypertension, Cacioppo says. It can also destroy neurons that

affect memory and interfere with sleep. So much for going it alone.

We’re so wired to make friends that the absence of companionship registers

in our brains like pain. Naomi Eisenberger, a research psychologist at the

University of California at Los Angeles, has found that when people

experience social exclusion, it activates the same region of the brain as

when we’re physically hurt. “Since humans need others to survive,” she says,

“we’ve adapted this mechanism to feel distressed when we’re separated from

others, so that we’ll seek them out.”

Longtime friend Jan (r)

Midlife Companionship

But at midlife, we’re more careful about who gets close. “There’s a

narrowing and deepening of friendship as we get older,” Coan says. We may

have fewer friends, but they’re the ones who can help us be healthy. When we

know someone for a long time, he says, we begin to mirror their emotional

reactions. If we have many positive interactions with someone, our brain

associates that person with good feelings and reacts accordingly.

That’s why, when I’m feeling blue, I call my friend Cristina. It actually

Great friends always include you

doesn’t matter what she says; the fact that we’ve spent so much time

laughing together cheers me up. When I went through a difficult divorce

several years ago, it was my longtime friends who eased my pain: Mary, who

suggested I fill my calendar with a social event every night, and penned

herself in first; Cecilia, who called every week to suggest a long hike; and

Lauren, who introduced me to a handsome single guy. Now those are good pals.

How Society Thwarts Sickness

Like Maya, I love having people over — and it turns out that this may do me

as much good as the multivitamin I take daily. When Sheldon Cohen, PhD, a

psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University, measured volunteers’ levels of

sociability and then exposed them to a cold virus, those with the fewest

close relationships were four times more likely to catch the cold.

Even nodding acquaintances — someone, say, in a yoga class — can

contribute to our health, but close friends are best. When psychologist

Lynne Giles, of Flinders University in Australia, looked at the effects of

social networks on longevity, she found that of 1,477 people age 70 or

older, those who had the most close friends — four or five confidantes –

were 22 percent less likely to die over the next 10 years than those with

fewer friends. Whether or not they had children made no difference in

longevity. “Not everyone has a fantastic relationship with their children,”

Giles notes.

My friend Maya lived so well in her old age because she cultivated her old

My Aunt Fran's 90th b-day party

friends, pruned out the ones she couldn’t bother with, and stimulated her

mind by getting to know new people who told her what they were reading or

talked about their recent travels. Since Maya died, I have appreciated my

relationship with her daughter even more.

It’s wonderful to know that just

by being close friends, we can help keep each other healthy for decades to

come.

Circle of Strength is about strength we derive from the circle of women around us. Honor  those in your circle with an inspirational gift from the Circle of Strength Boutique.

Tonight I returned from a fabulous weekend retreat hosted  by Humor Exchange and Karla Heeter at a beautiful resort located in northern Minnesota.

Friday morning I connected with my two girlfriends Kim and Sheila, we all loaded our bags into my car and made our 3 hours drive to the resort.  We left behind family, business and worries for a weekend to relax, revive and connect with other women.

The theme of the event was set by our hostess and keynote speaker Karla Heeter who talked about the fact that happiness matters and she inspired us to be filled with joy and laughter over the weekend.

As women, we treasure our friendships with our women friends. We are a trusted source of strength for each other.  Girlfriends form a bond, a sisterhood, where we support one another’s dreams and passions even when our spouses or children don’t understand. They give us the courage to discover what our passions are and cheer us on to make our dreams a reality.

I urge you to take time and celebrate the incredible strength you gain from your girlfriends and embrace their love and support because they will see you through the decades of your life.

I wanted to share the following article about a study that shows the great value in your overall well being by having girlfriends.  “Women are such a strength to each other” and that’s what Circle of Strength is all about!

UCLA STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG WOMEN
By Gale Berkowitz

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. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women
respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to
make and maintain friendships with other women. It’s a stunning find
that has turned five decades of stress research—most of it on
men—upside down . “Until this study was published, scientists
generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a
hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee
as fast as possible,” explains Laura Cousino Klein, Ph.D., now an
Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University
and one of the study’s authors. “It’s an ancient survival mechanism
left over from the time we were chased across the planet by
saber-toothed tigers.

Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral
repertoire than just “fight or flight.” “In fact,” says Dr. Klein,”it
seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress
responses in a woman, it buffers the “fight or flight” response and
encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead.
When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies
suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress
and produces a calming effect. This calming response does not occur in
men”, says Dr. Klein, “because testosterone—which men produce in
high levels when they’re under stress—seems to reduce the effects of
oxytocin. Estrogen”, she adds, “seems to enhance it.”

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. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two
of us knew instantly that we were onto something.”

The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one
scientist after another from various research specialties. Very
quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women
in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that
women respond to stress differently than men has significant
implications for our health.

It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that
oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with other
women, but the “tend and befriend” notion developed by Drs. Klein and
Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after
study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by
lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. “There’s no
doubt,” says Dr. Klein, “that friends are helping us live.” In one
study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends
increase d their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another
study, those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their
risk of death by more than 60%.

Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses’ Health
Study from Harvard  Medical School found that the more friends women
had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they
aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In
fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that
not having close friends or confidantes was as detrimental to your
health as smoking or carrying extra weight! And that’s not all! When
the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the
death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this
biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend confidante
were more likely to survive the experience without any new physical
impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were
not always so fortunate.

Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much
of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to
our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them? That’s a
question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson, Ph.D.,
co-author of “Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls’ and
Women’s Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998). “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.”

Taylor, S. E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T. L., Gurung,
R. A. R., & Updegraff, J. A. Female Responses to Stress: Tend and
Befriend, Not Fight or Flight

I am blessed by such great girlfriends in my life.  I believe we all need girlfriend relationships, they bring balance and beside that, I like to know that other women are going through the same stuff as I am.  Whenever I need a shoulder to cry on, a sounding board or a good laugh, I call on a girlfriend to share these times with.

I am only as strong as the coffee I drink,
the hair spray I use and
the friends I have.
To the cool women that have
touched my life. Here’s to you!

I have been buying daffodil’s all spring, I love the bright yellow color and the feel of spring it adds to my house. Here is picture of a bunch in my kitchen.

You’re probably thinking about now that JoAnne has lost her mind and is writing about daffodil’s, or you’re thinking it must be a slow news day and I can’t find anything to write about.  Well, neither is true. I just happened to receive a wonderful slide show called the Daffodil Principle that most of you have probably heard of, originally written by Jaroldeen Asplund Edwards, it’s been around for more than ten years as a source of inspiration for those who want to make something beautiful of their lives. I want to share with you again because it inspired me and I want to remind people that  “There is no better time than right now to be happy”

For all of my friends in California, go see the Daffodil Garden, it is located in Running Springs in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Please take a few minutes click  the link to begin. (the page arrows are at the bottom left of the screen to view each power point slide)

Last Wednesday I attended the California Conference for Women. The theme for this years event was “Be Who You Are. Feel it. Live it. Pass it on. This event is the largest of its kind in the country with the goal to educate and inspire women from all walks of life. Hosted by California’s First Lady, Maria Schriver and some of the notable speakers were; Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger & Warren Buffet who discussed the state of the economy. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and many more. What I took away from the day was feeling more empowered and focused and a desire to connect and inspire other like-minded women.

Some of the comments that I found most thought provoking for me were;

“It can take a really long time to be the person you want to be”

“What are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?”

“Fear keeps us from who we want to be”

A great read is Maria Schriver’s book called “Just Who Will You Be?”

Here’s a few photos’ from the day.

Tonight I had the pleasure of having dinner with a very dear girlfriend with whom I have this “soul” connection. It’s the kind of friend with whom you connect from the very beginning and even though we haven’t seen each other in well over a year, we talked just like we had seen each other last week. On the drive home I thought about how connecting with friends near and far really nourishes me and reminds me of how deeply friendships have impacted my life.

So, I urge you to take time and celebrate the incredible strength you gain from your girlfriends and embrace their love and support because they will see you through the decades of your life.

A couple of days ago I was able to connect with some girlfriends in Chicago for a short getaway. The trip included tickets to see a taping of the Oprah Show at Harpo Studios. We came upon the tickets through a connection of my friend Mary.

We received first class treatment when we arrived at the studio where we were invited into the Harpo Executive office area where we were to wait and would be escorted to the studio where the show is taped. While we were waiting, we admired the exquisite artwork that filled the walls, from a painting of Oprah depicting her in the movie “Color Purple” to the African masks that lined another wall. We waited on some comfortable sofas and were talking about our good fortune when Dr. Memhet Oz walks by and says hello on his way into a conference room. He has a warm smile is very handsome and appears shorter than we had imagined. We know the show we are seeing is a Dr. Oz segment and so he was obviously preparing with staff. As short while later who walks by but Oprah herself!! She kindly stops for a minute to say hello and generously poses for a picture with us.
Even Oprah says there are no coincidences in life and I don’t think this was a coincidence either!

After the taping of the show we were taken back to the executive offices to collect our purses and were each presented with a gift bag of items featuring the Oprah logo including a pink gym bag, ball cap, t-shirt, and coffee mug. This trip I was “Living My Best Life” (to quote Oprah) with my girlfriends and enjoying that camaraderie of friendship we have know for so many years. I understand the value of girlfriends and what meaning they bring to my life, I hope you do too!

L-R JoAnne, Judy Oprah, Deena & Mary

Today I had the opportunity to meet up with a girlfriend Debbie from my previous hometown of MoValley. Debbie is now living in El Segundo fairly near where I am staying at the moment. We hooked up for breakfast this morning with two of her friends and enjoyed a relaxing morning at Hermosa Beach. I couldn’t get enough of that salt air, I do miss the CA beaches -

Debbie & Me

Me taking in the salt air