While I grew up mostly boy, running amuck in the country with a slew of brothers and male cousins, it is the women in my life that shaped me. My mom, granny and aunts are the people who taught me what I use most often in a micro ways like the fine art of stirring the milk in scratch-made banana pudding and the macro ways like how to silence random toddlers with the ever effective mean mommy stare. I feel grateful to have learned at the hems of their skirts. They were (and still are in many ways,) Bible reading, pistol packing, bad asses.

I saw the movie, “Bad Moms” with a group of girls friends back in the summer. It was funny and most of us could identify with one or more of the characters. While the plot line of women on women crimes was both subtle and obvious, the reality didn’t really hit me until recently when I read a series of real life comments on a post about that movie. It was shocking and heart hurting to read about people I know and love – smart, savvy, beautiful women who have been slammed by their sister-moms. Slammed for working, for not working, for going to the office, for going to the gym, for not going to the gym, for buying organic, for buying E-Z Mac, for spoiling kids, for being too strict, for home schooling, for going on too many field trips or too many business trips or too many girls’ trips – the never ending, no one wins or even gets a participation trophy race to balance being too much or not enough.

I am trying to figure out this phenomenon. What makes a woman who has chosen to pursue a career and have children and be married and have hobbies and be fit and have girlfriends and have fun a target for judgement? What makes a woman who has chosen to stay home and grow a vegetable garden and homeschool her kids and have a spelling bee in her dining room and leave her husband, taking a younger man as a lover open season for snarkiness? What makes others even give a crap to the extent that gossip becomes heart rate raising cardio? Who drew the hierarchal girl org chart and who made the rules and where the hell are they published so one can at least review the transgressions? And, who says I have to apologize for my decisions or the way I live my life? Most everyone I know is, to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, “Doing the best they can, where they are, with what they have.”

When Ryann was in third grade, she cursed on the school bus. If you know me and my children, this doesn’t come as a surprise as we are an expressive breed of people. There was another child named Ryann at the school and that child was mistakenly called to the principal’s office. When all the confusion settled and my Ryann fessed up, other Ryann’s mom made sure I knew that her kid was accidentally blamed. She did so by telling me that she was sure it was hard for me to keep a handle on everything what with being a single mom and working. I replied that if I stayed home like her my kid would probably have said a worse word than “shit.” Even though my response was a touché kind of moment, looking back, I’m not proud of it. I wish I would have asked her instead what she meant by her comment. I wish I would have interrogated our reality and asked her what I might do to be a better mom. I wish I would have with real earnestness said, “Dang I got freaked out about the school bus thing. I’m sorry that your Ryann was accused. Being a mom is hard as hell. I’m glad you find it easier than I do because most days I am trying to not accidentally or on-purpose kill the whole lot of us.”

While I have been dwelling on the moms, it doesn’t stop there – the guilt and shame that is exacerbated through our offspring amplify the self doubt, yet my single, kidless friends experience the gal on gal war too. The questions of why aren’t you married? Why don’t you have children? Why aren’t you dating? Why don’t you blahbedy, blahbedy? Why aren’t you blah, blah, blah? The fishbowl view and commentary on your single life or married without kids life is a 24 hour talk show, accepting callers for comments and questions. And when you become over the top fed up with the stupid things people say and raise your voice to plead, “Please leave me alone; I am just trying to live my life and be happy.” Then it’s, “Why are you yelling? No wonder you aren’t married – you’re so sensitive.” This is why otherwise nice, law-abiding women walk into the country club and jack a bunch of people up against a wall with a hand grenade and a nice Merlot.

Most intriguing to me, is the gal war in the boardroom. I am a girl in a male dominated field. I am okay with this. I have earned my stripes. Has it been harder for me than for guys? I’m not really sure. I have always been an intense, driven kind of person. As a six-year-old kid, I kept track of the odometer on my bike to know how many miles I had ridden each day. It is one of my strengths – competition. I am not as motivated by winning as I am by the pure joy of playing the game, every day. This has kept me engaged and persistent in my career. It has also kept me hopeful in a world where there is a buffet of struggles. Have I had men say inappropriate things to me? Yes. Have I felt the sting of women customers in power perhaps feeling threatened by my presence? Yes. Has that stopped me from doing good, meaningful work where I can? No. Have there been times that I have felt discouraged? Yes. Do I think we could create a better business kind of sisterhood? Absolutely! I love the other women in my company. They make me better and make me proud. I also realize that I work for a company that hasn’t limited the female seats at the owner’s table. Dale Carnegie says, “Earn the right,” and I feel like that has been the case for me. I notice that in other fields this might not be as true. I know that there may only be one “pink seat’ in a boardroom and it may feel conflicting to vie for that seat and simultaneously lift your colleagues. It may be tempting to cast a shadow on her weight, her make-up, her clothing choice, her hair (too long, too short, too curly, too straight, too frizzy, too fixed, too natural, too chemically enhanced,) her body type, her bra cup, her voice, her laugh, her nails, to the point that I no longer hear or see what really matters in the workplace – her talent, her contribution, her potential, her ability to do the thing that gets the job done.

And, lastly, this one is the hardest to write about, girl friend on girl friend. This year I made a tough decision to leave a women’s group that I had been part of for over a decade. I didn’t make or take the decision lightly and I didn’t do a great job breaking up with the group. I don’t completely remember what I said when I resigned from the group but I know from the aftermath and fallout that my leaving and how I left hurt some people and I really regret that. I wish I could do it over and leave in a different way and I wish that the girls that I was friends with didn’t think that me not being part of the group meant us not being friends. I also wish that 15 years of friendship wasn’t reduced to my departure from the group. I wish I could unknow what was said about me – I wish that it hadn’t gotten so personal. But maybe that’s my grandest discovery about us daughters of our mother Eve. We are beautifully flawed, yet we have the girl lantern to shine brightly upon our sisters or eclipse us all into darkness.