Girls' Club by Sarah, Sally & Joy Clarkson

Cultivating Lasting Friendship in a Lonely World

Are you looking for close-knit friendships, for that bosom friend that Anne of Green Gables longed for and found in Diana? Are you just hoping it will drop in your lap with no effort on your part? Well, you are in for a real surprise, but this book will help you learn to cultivate the qualities of friendship in your own life so you can be that friend that you want someone to be in your own life. It will also help you to reach out and take the initiative to make friends.

In full disclosure, I started to read this book with a bit of bias. I struggle to fully connect with Sally--she seems so idealistic and so perfect in her motherhood that in my struggling, bumbling attempt at motherhood, I feel pretty imperfect and unqualified. But I thought adding in her daughters, this might be a good book. And I was right. I did appreciate this book. There were a lot of good thoughts and good ideas that I would like to incorporate into my own life. Yes, there was still some idealism, but in some ways it felt more real than I expected.

Sally has done a very good job of cultivating friendships with her daughters and that is a trait that I admire and want to emulate. No, we won't be sneaking off to coffee shops every Saturday and likely we won't be going globe-trotting, etc as a mother/daughter team, but I do want to cultivate a real and deep friendship with my daughter. I also want to have good deep friendships with the people in my community as well.

"Mothers (and fathers) are often the ones who can give their children a strong foundation in relationships that will enable them to build deep and lasting friendships for their whole lives...Mothers become the conduit for God's love to be felt through all stages of life. "

"The profound role of mothers, uniquely ordained by God, has significant influence on generations of future adults."

Along with the role of mothers in establishing the groundwork for relationships, there were five actions to the powerful cultivation of friendship that really stuck out to me in this book. The first is to invite, it means being the initiator and working to create friendships instead of waiting for them to happen. Second is to plan, good friendships rarely happen, it takes intention. Third, we need to provide, to open up our house and have it be comfortable for the friends we want to invite in. The fourth action is to stay, which is a commitment to friendship. And finally, to pray and I think I way underestimate the necessity of this in friendship.

I did really enjoy this book and I want to keep it to reread as a reminder of what I need to do to be a good friend. One final thing that stuck out to me is that to be a good friend, a queenly friend is to have a deep and abiding relationship with God and a daily commitment to be in His Word.

I received this book from Tyndale Momentum and NetGalley and was not required to write a positive review.