Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship - Kayleen Schaefer

My Review - 4 Stars

An examination of the importance of female friendship, Text Me When You Get Home is sure to inspire a reflection about the role of female friendship in your life. Part memoir and part social history, Schaefer's stories and illustrations show the many ways female friendship has evolved over the years.

"Text me when you get home" is a statement women use for many reasons. It's to make sure our friend is safe or because we want an update on the cute guy they met at the bar or because we simply don't want the conversation to end. The phrase grounds this work and offers a place for Schaefer to start her exploration.

The author and I have had drastically different experiences with friendship. The arc of Schaefer's story of how she came to appreciate female friendship is well worth reading. In the second chapter, she examines the prevalence of the myth of mean girls, a myth she bought into. I never thought girls were mean- I thought there were kids who are mean. While I wouldn’t want to repeat junior high or high school, reading about Schaefer's experiences made me even more grateful for the friends I had back then. I lucked out.

In fact, I've lucked out regarding female friendship throughout my life. While my local community hasn't always been as big as I've wanted, I have always, always had at least a few close friends. As I've grown older, I've stayed connected to a large number of friends, not only across the US but around the world. So often I'd finish reading a chapter and be awash with gratitude for the women in my life. Don't be surprised if you feel a deep need to call or text your friends to tell them how wonderful they are.

The release of Text Me When You Get Home could not be more timely. As I read my advance copy, the #MeToo movement had started to emerge and it made for quite the backdrop to my reading experience. The book illustrated the many ways women look out for one another and support each other.

The book offers mostly the perspective of white straight women and this is a missed opportunity. I did appreciate Schaefer's examination of class and how this affects the way we approach friendship. The history of friendship over the ages could have been more in-depth but if you're not aware of the history, as say presented in Bachelor Girl or All The Single Ladies, it's a good place to start.

One of my favorite parts of the book was the way pop culture factored in. For instance, we learn the history of Galentine's Day, which was created on Parks & Rec and has become an actual holiday women celebrate in the years since. That was such a good show. Just thinking about Leslie and Ann's friendship makes me happy.

I hadn't thought about the way friendship was presented on shows like Golden Girls or Designing Women—this made me appreciate even more how groundbreaking they were— or how they paved the way for shows like Girlfriends and Sex and the City. 

I'm really glad I read this. My female friends mean so much to me and I hope there will continue to be more discussion about and appreciation of the importance of friendship. 

Synopsis

From Girls to Parks and Recreation to Bridesmaids, the female friendship has taken an undeniable front seat in pop culture. Text Me When You Get Home is a personal and sociological perspective - and ultimately a celebration - of the evolution of the modern female friendship.

Kayleen Schaefer has experienced (and occasionally, narrowly survived) most every iteration of the modern female friendship. First there was the mean girl cliques of the '90s; then the teenage friendships that revolved around constant discussion of romantic interests and which slowly morphed into Sex and the City spin-offs; the disheartening loneliness of "I'm not like other girls" friendships with only men; the discovery of a platonic soul mate; and finally, the overwhelming love of a supportive female squad (#squad).

And over the course of these friendships, Schaefer made a startling discovery: girls make the best friends. And she isn't the only one to realize this. Through interviews with friends, mothers, authors, celebrities, businesswomen, doctors, screenwriters, and historians (a list that includes Judy Blume, Megan Abbott, The Fug Girls, and Kay Cannon), Schaefer shows a remarkable portrait of what female friendships can help modern women accomplish in their social, personal, and work lives.

A validation of female friendship unlike any that's ever existed before, this book is a mix of historical research, the author's own personal experience, and conversations about friendships across the country. Everything Schaefer uncovers leads to - and makes the case for - the eventual conclusion that these ties among women are making us (both as individuals and as society as a whole) stronger than ever before.

Buy The Book Here:

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Disclosure: I received a review copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Affiliate links included in this post.

Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash

It's possible this question came up at some point in my 20s. I clearly recall a couple of conversations around it in my early 30s.

I've lost track of how many times the question has come up in the past year or two as I straddle the line between mid and late 30s.

"Have you thought about having kids on your own?"

It's not a question we start with. No, it comes up when we're well into the conversation and our meal or drinks are almost gone. We've pushed back a little from the table we're sitting at, our bodies more in tune with ourselves and each other.

It's not a question I would want my married and mothering friends to ask me, though it's possible one or two have. I would probably be horrified if a relative brought it up. (This is different from me raising the topic with them, when I can set the tone for the conversation with the people closest to me.)

But when I'm with my friends who are also single, the question is natural at this point. It might flow out of a discussion of singleness or dating or something else altogether.

For those of us in our late 30s and early 40s, the question takes on a different tone. Not all of my friends want to have children but most of them do. The years of this particular possibility start to dwindle and it may not be left to fate. We may still get married but will it happen while we're still able to have biological children? There's an urgency there now.

So this is why we ask each other. We want to know whether the dream of motherhood matters enough to do something about it. Do we want to be mothers regardless of whether marriage is in our future? 

This question is both clarifying and revealing. Each time it comes up, we learn something about each other and we reaffirm our respective decisions.

For me, I've determined parenthood isn't something I would want to purposefully do on my own. Wanting to be a mother has always been in the context of raising children with my husband. 

That could still happen but it might not. It won't negate feelings of sadness if I find myself in the same situation a few years from now. But it does show me I don't need to take concrete action toward motherhood either.

I remember the granddaughter of a hospice patient who adopted her daughter when she was in her 30s. She lived next door to her parents and they watched her daughter while she was at work and the set-up completely worked for them. I've met a few other single women since then who adopted and at least one friend is seriously considering it now.

A couple of friends have tried or are thinking about trying IVF. I always think of one of my high school English teachers when this option comes up. She was the first person I knew who was unmarried and had a child this way.

A couple of friends volunteer for CASA or something similar. They're not acting as mothers but they are playing an important role for those children and that's worth noting. There are a number of ways to nurture children without being their sole caregiver.

There is beauty and joy in cheering someone on who is pursuing a path different from mine and in talking things over with someone who has come to the same conclusion.

More than anything, I'm grateful to be friends with amazing single women who are a safe place for the hard conversations and who consistently champion one another. I've grown to love discussing this question with them because it reminds me of the support and solidarity we extend to one another, no matter where we land on the subject. 

Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash

My mind did not initially register what I saw.

I walked toward where my car was parked and saw a white car with random parts on the ground in front of it, the bumper hanging partially off, the headlight busted. What happened to that car, I wondered. How did that even happen?

Wait. 

"You guys," I yelled to my friends, trying to keep the note of hysteria from creeping in. "Look at what happened to my car!" 

Melissa and Danielle rushed over from where they'd been headed and we gaped at the destruction. 

This was not how the weekend was supposed to go.

We had picked a random town in Wisconsin to meet up at the end of July. I hadn't seen Melissa and Danielle since before I moved to San Francisco but now that we lived in adjoining states, it was time to catch up. 

We've been friends for almost 20 years now and it's easy to feel like we're still in college when we're together, no matter how much has changed since then. Saturday evening  we'd visited a brewery and then found a restaurant serving our beloved fried pickles. We all agreed: these were as good as the ones at La Grotto's. No small feat. Sunday morning we'd planned on checking out a cute coffee shop we'd passed on the way to the brewery.

That plan was put on hold as it became clear my car had been the victim of a hit and run. While a few hotel guests had witnessed it happen late the night before, they had been unable to catch the license plate. 

On any given day, my mind is a wild cacophony of thoughts. Put me in some sort of difficult situation and those thoughts take a hyperbolic and/or fatalistic direction. Welcome to the jungle.

I needed to drive home that afternoon. Was my car even drivable? If it wasn't, how would I get back to the Twin Cities? I didn't know any mechanics there. How soon could it be fixed? What would I do if I had to stay in Wisconsin? What about work? 

Then looming behind all that: the knowledge my temp job would be ending soon without any good prospects on the horizon. I was about to be unemployed again while having to pay my deductible and a portion of the rental car for something that wasn't my fault. Stressed was an understatement.

This all passed through my mind in seconds.

Then I took a deep breath. If I'd been there on my own, I might have fallen apart. The last straw and all that.

But I wasn't alone.

I looked at Danielle and Melissa and this zen state came over me. Unlike most things in my life, I didn't have to go through this on my own.

Sure, there was still strong language but the hysteria that tried to take hold quickly ebbed away. Everything rolled off my back. I focused on one thing at a time: talking to the sheriff's department, calling insurance, determining if my car was drivable.

Emotional equanimity is the gift of the healthy Four and that day it was on display in full force. I am convinced my friends were a big part of that. Their presence kept me present. They kept checking on me because they were ready for the breakdown. I was upset but I held it together because what else can you do?

Instead, I focused on what I did have.

My friends stayed by my side while I made phone calls and waited for the police. They waited with me and took me out for tea while we waited for a mechanic and drove to get  gorilla tape and took my mind off of the weight of this new disaster. 

Unless you have been single for many years, I'm not sure you'll understand how much this means.

I wasn't alone.

Let me repeat that: I wasn't alone.

I'm in charge of everything in my life. Whether it's chores around the house or everything that comes with moving out of state, it all comes down to me. It can be exhausting but I'm used to it. I don't have a choice. Either I take care of things or they don't get done. Full stop.

When it came to this car debacle, I still had to make all the phone calls and deal with the car rental company and the mechanic. But I had two dear friends by my side and that made all the difference. Having Melissa and Danielle there to bear witness and help out in tangible ways was a balm. I didn't know how much I needed that balm. 

The gift of presence goes farther than any of us ever know.

My Glory Was I Had Such Friends - Amy Silverstein

My Review - 5 Stars

It is rare to read a book and feel grateful to have read it. Not in the "that was a great book!" sense but in a "this book is changing me for the better" way.

I'm going to admit right off the bat I had high hopes for this memoir. A celebration of friendship and an insider's look at illness and dying? SOLD. I was pretty sure I'd like it but truly, it exceeded all expectations and that is all because of the author.

Amy Silverstein had a heart transplant at age 25 in 1988. At the time, her doctors predicted she might live another 10 years at best. Instead 26 years passed, during which time Amy married her husband Scott (who proposed while she was in the hospital awaiting the transplant!), finished her law degree, adopted a son, and amassed a wonderful collection of friends.

People think once you get a heart transplant, life goes back to normal but Amy shows this is not the case. While she's lived a full life, she's also had to be vigilant about her health, dealing with numerous hospitalizations and close calls along the way. There's so much I hadn't realized about post-transplant life. When the book begins, she's learned her transplanted heart is failing and she'll need to undergo another transplant. This is not an easy decision for her and she does not hold back on taking readers through her mindset about whether to take on the odds.

After hearing about her medical history, I have no idea what decision I would have made in her shoes. In the end, she decides to go for it and her friends immediately rally around her. Since Amy and Scott will have to relocate to LA for several months, nine of her friends decide they will take turns flying out and keeping Amy company while she waits for a heart.

Talk about greater love! 

I don't know if I've ever read a memoir that details the dynamics of a group of friends. Often friendship memoirs focus on one friend or if they mention more, those friends are not connected to one another. Amy's friends come from different parts of her life- childhood to law school to where she lives- and most have met before or are even close friends themselves. I loved seeing how they related to one another and how their bond grew as they supported Amy.

We learn about each friend- how Amy knew them, what made their friendship unique, their personality and some of their history. We see how they support Amy and when they get it wrong. It is a beautiful and loving portrayal of friendship. It made me think about how I support my friends and what I will do when my friends go through chronic or terminal illness. (I say "when" because it is bound to happen. I've walked alongside enough family members to know that.) 

This is an honest and unflinching portrayal of friendship and end of life issues. Her friends fight some of her medical decisions and do not always listen to her exhaustion in the face of her illness. They don't want her to give up, yes, but sometimes they forget to respect what she's gone through. Getting to listen in on the resulting conversations was powerful. Amy does not always come across as the best and admits it but we also get to see her grow and learn through the process of how sick she gets and as she confronts her mortality. At the same time, there is a lot of light in this book. I laughed out loud a couple of times and I cannot emphasize enough how much I loved Amy's husband and friends. The sacrifices they made (that they do not view as sacrifices) inspired me.

Amy is a gifted writer and I'm so glad not only that she received a new heart in time but that she was able to write this account for us. It was incredibly moving and life-affirming. I will be encouraging my friends to read it and I'll be reflecting on its message for some time to come. 

The title- a line from Yeats- is apt. May we all be so blessed. 

Synopsis

In this moving memoir about the power of friendship and the resilience of the human spirit, Amy Silverstein tells the story of the extraordinary group of women who supported her as she waited on the precipice for a life-saving heart transplant.

Nearly twenty-six years after receiving her first heart transplant, Amy Silverstein’s donor heart plummeted into failure. If she wanted to live, she had to take on the grueling quest for a new heart—immediately.

A shot at survival meant uprooting her life and moving across the country to California. When her friends heard of her plans, there was only one reaction: “I’m there.” Nine remarkable women—Joy, Jill, Leja, Jody, Lauren, Robin, Valerie, Ann, and Jane—put demanding jobs and pressing family obligations on hold to fly across the country and be by Amy’s side. Creating a calendar spreadsheet, the women—some of them strangers to one another—passed the baton of friendship, one to the next, and headed straight and strong into the battle to help save Amy’s life.

Empowered by the kind of empathy that can only grow with age, these women, each knowing Amy from different stages of her life, banded together to provide her with something that medicine alone could not.  Sleeping on a cot beside her bed, they rubbed her back and feet when the pain was unbearable, adorned her room with death-distracting decorations, and engaged in their “best talks ever.”  They saw the true measure of their friend’s strength, and they each responded in kind.

My Glory Was I Had Such Friends is a tribute to these women and the intense hours they spent together—hours of heightened emotion and self-awareness, where everything was laid bare. Candid and heartrending, this once-in-a-lifetime story of connection and empathy is a powerful reminder of the ultimate importance of “showing up” for those we love.

About Amy Silverstein

Amy Silverstein is the author of Sick Girl, which won a “Books for a Better Life Award” and was a finalist for the Border’s Original Voices Award. She earned her Juris Doctor at New York University School of Law, has served on the Board of the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS), and is an active speaker and writer on women’s health issues and patient advocacy. She lives in New York.

Find out more about Amy at her website, and connect with her on Facebook.

Buy The Book Here:

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Disclosure: I received an ARC from HarperCollins and TLC Book Tours in exchange for an honest review. Affiliate links included in this post.

A few months ago, as I am wont to do, I shared an article about the end of a friendship on my Facebook page and someone commented, asking what motivated me to share such articles and whether I'd experienced something similar.

The answer, of course, is complicated. The prose was gorgeous and the article moved me. That's why I shared it. But also, I don't think you can get to your mid-30s and not experience difficulties with friendship at some point. I am no exception.

What matters is how you respond. Either you work through it together, ignore it as resentment piles up, or one or both of you decide to walk away. 

This is why I'm drawn to books and articles about friendship. I like to see how other people approach friendship. It reminds me of the friends I've had for years upon years and the ones who meant something for a season and then those few who are purposefully no longer part of my life.

When I first heard about Deborah Shapiro's The Sun In Your Eyes, I was intrigued. It's rare to find novels where friendship takes the center stage.

Lee Parish is the daughter of a dead rock star and his model/fashion designer wife. She is magnetic and alluring and she knows it. Vivian Feld knows nothing of Lee's world when they first meet in college but meeting Lee brings Viv to life. They are roommates with Andy, who is in love with Lee, and it is clear from the start that won't end well.

The novel shifts between when they first meet and years later after a three year break in contact. Viv and Andy are now married. Her friendship with Lee has drifted away when Lee resurfaces with a proposition: help her find her dad's last recordings, tapes which disappeared the day of his accident.

Viv has every reason to say no and yet she is swept back into Lee's thrall and a road trip ensues.

The power dynamic between the two is compelling. Who is using who? Are they more equal than either think? The time apart has given both a chance to reflect about their relationship. (We experience more of Viv's perspective in the first half and some of Lee's perspective in the second.) As we learn about how they first met and the circumstances that strengthened their bond, it becomes clear that for all their closeness, there are parts of each other they do not know or understand. 

In the years since, as they've dealt with their respective life choices, they are still tethered to each other.

"She was often still the one I wanted to talk to, not simply out of habit, but because if she were listening, if she knew about it, whatever it was would be more interesting, more significant. I wavered between believing she felt the same way- how could she not?- and sensing that I was deceiving myself. If she'd really wanted or needed to talk to me, she would have. But it couldn't be that simple, I thought. Our relationship wasn't that simple. No, she must have wanted to talk to me but couldn't bring herself to do so precisely because it wasn't that simple and she trusted me to understand that. Unless our relationship really was that simple for her? She had left me with a mystery I tried to solve with circuitous thinking. It was a way to keep her present." p. 49

As I read, I wavered between thinking Lee manipulated everyone around her to whether they had a co-dependent relationship to how Viv benefitted from her relationship with Lee. There were no easy answers. Even when the characters made choices with which I vehemently disagreed.

At its heart, The Sun In Your Eyes is about the ups and downs of friendship and whether we can see another person clearly. I'm not entirely sure we as readers should judge the nature or health of Lee and Viv's friendship. We are changed by the people we befriend. At times, this blinds us to their faults- and we benefit when we are on the receiving end of this.  

Those three years of silence gave Lee and Viv the gift of perspective. Very rarely can I see my friendships in a stark light, even when navigating through conflict. The intimacy a friendship requires is complex and dazzling. We should be in awe of our friends. We should be their confidantes and cheerleaders and teachers. And they should be the same for us. When there isn't such reciprocity, cracks and splinters will emerge, as Lee and Viv ultimately learn. But even then, the path forward is not often clear.

Shapiro's debut novel impressed me for the ways she welcomed us into Lee and Viv's world and showed us its nuances and heft. It is at once a gracious and incising portrayal. Neither character is demonized but nor are they idealized and idolized. In other words, they are you and me. While I don't have any friends like Lee and Viv, their portrayal gave me hope about the state of female friendship because no matter how they leave things, it shows why women need each other. And we do need each other.

The Sun In Your Eyes is a lovely and worthwhile addition to the friendship canon.  

Purchase Links

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About Deborah Shapiro

Deborah Shapiro was born and raised outside of Boston, Massachusetts. A graduate of Brown University, she spent several years in New York working at magazines, including New York and ELLE, and her work has been published in Open City, Washington Square Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other places. She lives with her husband and son in Chicago. The Sun in Your Eyes is her first novel. Follow Deborah on Twitter. 

Disclosure: I was provided a free copy of this book from TLC Book Reviews but it did not influence my opinion. Affiliate links included in this post. Any purchase you make helps support this site.