The E! Channel just started re-running Sex and the City, one of my all-time favorite television series. When SATC came out, I was living in New York and working as an  account executive at a big PR agency.  The story of four working women pursuing successful careers, romance and the ultimate pair of shoes, resonated deeply with me at the time. What I especially loved was the deep friendship among Miranda, Carrie, Samantha and Charlotte.  Those friendships mirrored my own experience of having a group of girlfriends with whom I spent many a night drinking cocktails, celebrating career promotions and challenges, shopping and sharing relationship advice. Last night I re-watched a particularly poignant episode that got me thinking again about friendships and how they evolve as our lives evolve.  In that episode, the four friends are invited to the baby shower of a former party-girl friend, known for her wild antics, turned Connecticut housewife. They grudgingly go to the baby shower which is filled with, to their dismay, highly-educated, formerly high-powered career women who traded in their Manolos and Coach brief cases for strollers and play dates. At a post-shower debrief at a local bar the four friends wonder if giving up one's identity and lifestyle comes with having children. Later the former party girl-turned housewife calls Carrie to express how much she misses "the old days" and how much she wants to reconnect with Carrie and the girls. Carrie makes a half-hearted promise to "definitely" call her. Ouch.

That episode got me thinking about how my own life has changed so dramatically over the last few years: I got married, quit my agency PR job in Chicago, moved to the South, started a new career and had baby.  Just a few weeks ago Dr. D. and I celebrated our five year wedding anniversary. More after the jump:  http://www.bossmomonline.com/bosslady/2011/03/grown-up-friendship/