Women of Notre Dame, continued.

I said in my last post that I learned the importance of the friendships of women at Notre Dame. When I started law school, of course, I had women friends. But I was always one of those girls who was more comfortable around guys. I wasn't a tomboy, I just didn't like the competition among women. I trusted men more. This was ironic, considering my past experiences with men, but that's another post. Before I started law school, a very good friend, S., told me that my attitude about women and my declaration that I just didn't like being friends with them as much as men was basically bullshit. It was my own insecurity prohibiting me from experiencing the joy of women friendships. Soon after, I went to law school and met my future roommate of two years, and from there, an incredible network of women. I learned that S. was right and these women at Notre Dame were what I had been missing.

For me, law school was much more about self-realization than preparation for my future career. I arrived having graduated from a small Christian college where, for the most part, I maintained the moral code my mother and my church had instilled in me. Despite the fact that I remained relatively sheltered from the sorority girl, frat party, drunken binging experience that many college students have, college is still the place where I learned to think for myself and grew into a "feminist" and a "liberal" (the quotes are because I hate labels and because most feminists probably wouldn't consider me one and plenty of liberals might not claim me either). Law school, on the other hand, is where I experienced the rebellion that most 18 years olds experience when they go to college. This has made me the brunt of the jokes of some of my friends. One guy friend always says, "Stephanie is the only person I know who was 'wilder' at Notre Dame than she was before she went there." "Wild" is relative. My rebellion was pretty tame, but it was rebellion for me. And if it wasn't for the amazing women I met, I might have completely lost myself.

Each woman reminded me who I was in her own way. They let me be completely juvenile when I was way too old to be acting that way. They knocked me back down to reality when I became too full of myself. They held me accountable for my actions. They refused to let me be controlled by my insecurities and put the need for attention from men before the most loyal of friends. They challenged my faith and taught me about God - that the God of the sheltered evangelical upbrining of some of us and the same God of the similarly sheltered Catholic upbringing of the rest was so much bigger than either of the boxes we had put Him in. That strong, smart, independent women all had similar struggles. That despite our experiences with men, our differing models of marriage and our various families, we all wanted something better than we had known in the past, but reflective of the good we had taken from it. That we all were grateful for the women who had forged the way before us, but that we weren't sure if we wanted it "all." We knew, however, that we wanted the option of all of it.

I can't explain the bond I share with my women friends from law school. There are at least four of us in particular that can hardly bear the thought that we live so far apart from each other. I sat at a bar in Washington, D.C. a few nights ago with one of those women and discussed this over a few glasses of wine. My flight had been cancelled that evening and I couldn't wait to get home to my husband and children the next morning, but in that moment, at that bar, my heart literally hurt thinking about not having these women near me. We talked about everything from marriage to children to religion to war to the rights of homosexuals. And we talked about how much we missed those talks and the other girls and how hard it is to find that bond with women where we live in the middle of work, marriage and motherhood.

I think of one or all of these women every day. I find myself asking what one of them would do in almost every difficult situation I encounter. I remember a funny or touching, or even hurtful, experience with at least one of them on a regular basis. I am reminded of a lesson one of them taught me or of a favorite saying or a funny quirk more often than I could count. And my heart often breaks that I don't have those women with me every day, but most of the time, I am just overwhelmingly grateful for the gift of them.