Amplify: Connecting the dots of my many female friendships

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A few weeks ago, my 12-year-old and I were travelling home from his soccer game. We cover a lot of miles making our way from field to field all around Metro Vancouver, but I can’t complain because we often have the most amazing conversations while we’re on the road. This Saturday was one of those times.

The conversation started with my son asking me a question. “Mum, who’s your best friend? Who do you go to when you really need advice or help?”

You’d think that would be a simple question to answer. But it’s not.

I’m Alexis Cameron and I’m the general manager for Western Canada at The Globe and Mail. Like many women, I don’t have just one best friend. I’m lucky to have a handful of them, including my sister and mum. I find that I reach out to different women within this core group depending on the situation, the kind of advice I need or what I’m ready to hear. Dr. Robert Wicks touches on this idea that different friends take different roles, and explains in Psychology Today that you need four types of pals in life: the prophet, the cheerleader, the harasser and the inspirer.

There’s such truth in that. My friends don’t always play the same role, but each of them has particular qualities that fall into these categories. For example, I have one friend who I’d describe as the prophet. She’s miraculously able to see the patterns in my life even before I do. Her insights have given me the “ah-ha” moments that have helped me to correct my course. Meanwhile, my core friends all seem to play the role of cheerleader from time to time. In those dicey moments when I’m feeling unsure of myself, they chime in and say, “You’re smart, you’re strong and most importantly, you’ve got this.”

As my son and I talked, I realized how important my friends are to me and how truly incredible they are. They have been there for me through infertility, pivotal career decisions, and the complexities of parenting, divorce, dating and home ownership. These women are smart and savvy. They don’t judge but will give me a kick in the pants when I need it. In conjunction with my family, they help me make brave choices.

The more I thought about this, the more I realized I’m not alone. Women are embracing the power of their female connections through their close friends, broader networks and even on a global level. “Our buoying of one another has been lifted out of our internal networks and catapulted to the national news cycle,” writes Kayleen Schaefer, author of Text Me When You Get Home. The title of her book struck me because my friends and I often say this phrase to each other, and Schaefer is right that what we’re really communicating is: I’m there for you.

We add richness to our lives when we seek out women who inspire us, lift us up and, as writer Ann Friedman describes in her shine theory, “make us better.” I especially like this advice of hers: “When you meet a woman who is intimidatingly witty, stylish, beautiful, and professionally accomplished, befriend her.”

And such women are everywhere. Check out Tavia Grant’s list of 16 amazing accomplishments from women around the world for just a taste of inspiration. It makes you realize that if we put our minds and collective strength to an issue, any issue, we can change our world.

For me, this concept of connection and support starts out small and personal – in my living room with my girlfriends, drinking wine, eating take out and talking through the details of our lives. But its result is big – with hundreds of thousands marching to support each other and to further the progress we make for ourselves and the women to come.

This long weekend while the BBQ is fired up, the kids are playing and the sixteenth load of laundry is in the dryer, take a moment to reach out to the prophets, cheerleaders, harassers and inspirers in your life. Thank these women for the roles they play in making you brave and bold and better. You might even have the chance to conspire with them to change the future.

What else we’re reading:

I found this piece by Rachel Giese in The Walrus on isolation among men fascinating. With such strong friendships in my own life, it’s interesting to think about this issue from a male perspective. Giese’s article discusses the impact societal pressures have on boys from an early age and how that plays a role in their perception and development of friendships through their lives. She writes that, “Given the importance of friendship for health and, more simply, happiness and pleasure, this unease with deep, loving male friendships has serious consequences. If we want to improve the outcomes for adults, we need to intervene where this disconnect begins – with boys.” As a parent, I found myself reading this carefully so I can support my son as he develops the unique mix of confidence and vulnerability needed to see him through a friendship-filled life. – AC

Inspiring us:

Her grandfather was born in an igloo and lived off the land, hunting and fishing, in the northern tundra. Donna May Kimmaliardjuk was raised in Ottawa, but still has ties to that community in Chesterfield Inlet, Nunavut, where most of her extended family lives.

At the age six, she asked her dad why she never got to meet her grandad. He died from ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) when her father was a young boy. He explained how the disease progressed, and that there was no cure. She remembers feeling sad, hoping that that would never happen to her parents – and wanting find a way to save lives when she grew up.

Today, Kimmaliardjuk, 28, is Canada’s first Inuit heart surgeon.

She’s blazing trails and she has no plans to stop: Her long-term goal is to improve the health of Inuit people in Canada’s north.

It wasn’t until she “fell in love with the heart” at medical school that she realized what type of medicine she wanted to pursue. “It was so interesting to me, its physiology made sense and it just felt like a really good fit,” she says.

Now in the fourth year of a six-year residency at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, she typically logs 14-hour days operating and seeing patients.

She believes it is crucial to see more Inuit in positions of leadership.

“If you look at the history of colonization, and the history of abuse and residential schools, and how First Nations, Inuit and Métis were seen as a ‘problem,’ or seen as stereotypes … these really terrible images that exist out there about us,” she says. “For Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians, to see people like me in these positions of leadership, doing things that haven’t been done or highlighted before, is so, so important – at the very minimum to help people break down these stereotypes.”

As for future plans, she wants to keep “looking at overall wellness of Indigenous communities, and what can be done to really improve health and, for me specifically, heart health, in Indigenous and Inuit communities. So I’m really hoping to develop some programs or research that can really better the health of our people.” – Tavia Grant

Inspired by something in this newsletter? If so, we hope you’ll amplify it by passing it on. And if there’s a woman you think our readers should know about, tell us about her. Send us an e-mail at amplify@globeandmail.com.