Valentine’s Day may be just around the corner, but there’s another (arguably more important) holiday that deserves your attention: Galentine’s Day .
This concept was introduced by the ever-quirky Leslie Knope in Parks and Recreation .
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She created Galentine’s Day as a way for her and her female friends to leave their significant others behind for a day and celebrate the divine gift that is female friendship!
Female friendships enhance our lives in so many magical ways.
Men are great and all, but there are only so many episodes of The Bachelor they can watch before they say, “enough.”
That’s where female friends come in; they pick up the slack that men drop off. This includes unconditional trust, acceptance, understanding, and lots of fun.
Their understanding knows no bounds.
Who understands the female brain better than an actual female? This makes them able to understand the things we’re going through without judgment. They validate our feelings without making us feel crazy.
This, in turn, allows us to be our most vulnerable selves.
Secondly, female friendships help you harness your feminine energy.
There’s beauty, empowerment, and sensuality in being a woman.
Your sisters help you tap into your feminine energy and feel confident in these traits instead of letting the masculine traits of society bring you down.
The connection between females is difficult to wane.
The women who avoid female friendships because “girls are too much drama” are missing out.
Female friendships can easily become a sisterhood once we decide to not let outside factors dictate the friendship.
There are even health benefits to having a girl gang!
“Research shows that women, [possibly] more than men, need to maintain those connections. It increases serotonin and oxytocin, the bonding hormone,” Alisa Ruby Bash, PsyD, LMFT told Healthline .
A UCLA study also confirmed this.
It showed that in times of stress, women release oxytocin (the love hormone) in addition to experiencing a feeling of fight or flight.
These hormones cause them to protect their kids if they have them and connect with other women.
We don’t just preach about female friendship. We see it in some of our favorite shows!
Sex and the City , for example, centers around the lives of four best friends.
Although a lot of the show is devoted to the men they date, the friendship between the four girls is at the center of it all.
They are each other’s true soulmates.
This was shown in the show’s reboot, And Just Like That , when Carrie’s husband, Big, died.
It was her friends who were there to help put her life back together when everything else fell apart.
A similar story was shown on the ‘Golden Girls’.
Science has found that the mortality rate is higher in males than females. Translation: it’s likely that our female friends are who we’re left with at the end.
This means that it’s important to cultivate these friendships now. Doing so could turn you into the next Rose, Dorothy, Blanche, and Sophia.
Even with all this emotional and factual evidence, people still don’t talk about female friendships the same way we do romantic relationships.
It’s time to change that.
Gather your girlfriends together (whether virtually or in-person) and take the time to celebrate the bonds you have created!
Every day can be Galentine’s Day if you just try hard enough. Cheers to that!
