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Jeffrey Zaslow is a Wall Street Journal columnist and, with Randy Pausch, coauthor of The Last Lecture, the #1 New York Times bestseller now translated into forty-six languages. Zaslow attended Dr. Pauschs famous lecture and wrote the story that sparked worldwide interest in it. He is also the coauthor of Capt. Chesley Sully Sullenbergers bestselling autobiography Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters. Zaslow lives in suburban Detroit with his wife, Sherry, and daughters Jordan, Alex and Eden.
www.girlsfromames.com
For all those whove known the gift of friendship...
On pages ii and iii:
The Ames girls, circa 1981
Karla, Sally, Karen, Diana, Jenny, Sheila, Jane and Angela
Introduction
At first, they were just names to me.
Karla, Kelly, Marilyn, Jane, Jenny.
Karen, Cathy, Angela, Sally, Diana.
Sheila.
They arrived, unheralded, in my email inbox one morning in June 2003. The email came from Jenny, who offered three understated paragraphs about her relationship with these women. She explained that they grew up together in Ames, Iowa, where as little girls their friendship flourished. Though all have since moved awayto Minnesota, California, North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Massachusetts, Montanathey remain a powerful, loving presence in each others lives. Now entering their forties, Jenny wrote, theyre bonded by a lifetime of shared laughs, and by more than a few heart-breaking memories.
After I read Jennys email, I sent her a quick reply, thanking her for writing. Then I printed out her message to me, bundled it up with a couple of hundred other emails I received that day, and put it in the bottom of a filing cabinet, where it remained untouched for three years.
Jenny had contacted me because I write a column for The Wall Street Journal called Moving On. The column focuses on life transitions, everything from a childs first crush to a dying husbands last words to his wife. Though the Journal covers the heart of the financial world, my editors have embraced the idea that we must also tend to the hearts of our readers. And so theyve given me freedom to do just that. There are a thousand emotionally charged transitions that we all face in our lives, and most come without a road map. Thats the territory of my column.
Jenny decided to tell me about the girls from Ames (and yes, they still call themselves girls) after reading a column Id written about the turning points in womens friendships. The column focused on why women, more than men, have great urges to hold on tightly to old friends. Sociologists now have data showing that women who can maintain friendships through the decades are healthier and happier, with stronger marriages. Not all women are able to sustain those friendships, however. Its true that countless grade-school girls arrange themselves in pairs, duos, threesomes and foursomes, vowing to be best friends forever. But as they reach adulthood, everything gets harder. When women are between the ages of twenty-five and forty, their friendships are most at risk, because those are the years when women are often consumed with marrying, raising children and establishing careers.
For that column, I spoke to women who had nurtured decades-long friendships. They said they felt like traveling companions, sharing the same point on the timeline, hitting the same milestones togetherthirty, forty, fifty, eighty. They believed their friendships thrived because they had raised some expectations and lowered others. They had come to expect loyalty and good wishes from each other, but not constant attention. If a friend didnt return an email or phone call, they realized, it didnt mean she was angry or backing away from the friendship; she was likely just exhausted from her day. Researchers who study friendship say that if women are still friends at age forty, theres a strong likelihood theyll be lifelong friends. Female friends show us a mirror of ourselves, one researcher told me.
That column ran in
The Wall Street Journal on a Thursday, and by 5 A.M. that morning, emails from readers had begun filling my inbox. Every few minutes, well into the weekend, Id get an email from yet another woman proudly telling me about her group of friends:
Weve gotten together twice a year ever since we graduated high school in 1939...
We met in Phoenix and call ourselves Phriends Phorever...
Weve had lunch together every Wednesday since 1973...
My girlfriends and I joke that when the time comes, well all just check into the same nursing home...
Im only 23, but your article gives me hope that I will hold on to my friends for life...
One reader told me about her grandmothers eight friends, all from the class of 89thats 1889! They stayed remarkably close for sixty-five years, and even when they reached their eighties, they still called themselves The Girls.
And then there was the letter from Jennifer Benson Litchman, an assistant dean at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Jenny from Ames.
In some ways, Jennys story was like so many of the others. She shared a few details about how the eleven Ames girls met, some as early as infanthood in the church nursery, and how they feel bonded forever. But her short, tossed-off note didnt fully reveal how extraordinary those bonds have becomeId learn all that laterand she didnt even tell any of her friends she had written to me. Jenny ended her email by saying that she appreciated my take on female friendship. She also paid me a compliment: You really seem to understand women. Your wife is very lucky indeed.
My wife would have to speak to how lucky she is or isnt, but I can say this: I do feel an almost urgent need to understand women. Thats mostly because I am the father of three teenagers, all daughters.
I have seen my girls pout and fret and cry over friendships in turmoil, and I have seen how their friends have buoyed them at their lowest moments. At times, their sweetest friends have turned into stereotypical mean girls. At other times, former mean girls turn into friends. As a parent witnessing it all, I often feel helpless and exasperated.
Having observed how my mother, sister and wife built lovely friendships over the years, I naturally hope that my daughters can be as fortunate. When I think about their futures, I want them to feel enveloped by people who love them, and I know theyll need close, loving friends at their sides. (Im also aware that mens friendships are completely different. Ive been playing poker with a group of friends every Thursday night for many years. About 80 percent of our conversations are focused specifically on the cards, the betting, the bluffing. Most of the rest of the chatter is about sports, or sometimes our jobs. For weeks on end, our personal livesor our feelings about anythingnever even come up.)
There have been many self-help books designed to help women find and navigate friendships. Scholarly books have been written, too. And of course bestselling novels have won huge audiences by focusing on the sisterhood among fictional women.
