I love women.

I revered both my grandmother’s, have a strong relationship with my mother and have acquired and maintained friendships with a plethora of girl friends. I love the easy camaraderie women have with each other, how quickly we share intimate personal history and hard humbling truths. But at the same time as I love women, I also acknowledge the fact that women can be bitches. The hurtful things women do to each other is not equaled among men.

In general men, especially heterosexual men don’t shun each other, gossip and pick on one another out of jealousy or insecurity. The worst boss I ever had (and I’ve had plenty) was a woman. It hurts to hear tales of women my age in their 50’s and 60’s deliberately hurting female friends. Don’t we know any better by now? That’s middle school stuff. At lunch recently a friend relayed the story of a lovely woman that I happen to know being summarily thrown out of her long time bridge group, simply because one difficult woman decided she wanted to get rid of her. The queen bitch let others in the group relay the news, which crushed my friend. What a bunch of petty ass horse shit. As someone wiser than me once said, “We just don’t have time for this nonsense.”

As disgusted as I was by that behavior, my optimism returned a few days later when I was chatting with a woman following a meeting. She had been a big fan of mine during my radio days so the conversation started there and then took a serious turn. She told me she admired my independent spirit and wished that she could have emulated it earlier in her life. She had been in an abusive marriage and it took years and a broken shoulder for her to break free. She told me she was ashamed that she mentored young women to be independent and stand on their own and she couldn’t do it herself. I hugged her and shared my own struggles with two bad marriages and career struggles in my past. We need to realize that the road isn’t smooth and straight. The learning curve is steep and sometimes it takes time for our actions to match our words. There’s no shame in being a slow learner. I wish we could be kinder to each other and to ourselves. When I was beating myself up recently about my weight I thought about what a friend told me, “Leave yourself alone.”

Wise words from a wise woman. I love women but they can be bitches.