They could have just as easily been dishing dirt over dark chocolate soufflé at Petite Maison, unburdening together with magical Thoachta massages at Aji Spa or snapping champagne-sozzled selfies beneath the aerialists at CAKE.
But for her first serious girls day out, Stacy Holmstedt chose to invite her girlfriends over to an afternoon TED Talk marathon at her friend Val’s place.
“We just got together one day and watched a bunch of TED Talks,” shrugs Holmstedt, who works as a senior Internet marketing director for the ASU Foundation for A New American University. “Somebody put them on the Roku and we just watched our favorites, and discussed them. That was fun!”
Holmstedt is the founder of Geek Girls of the East Valley, a Mesa-based Meetup group that boasts close to 1,200 members. She says she started the group back in 2008 after a couple of disastrous attempts to fit in with other women’s bonding networks.
“I remember distinctly sitting in a Meetup at a wine bar, and this woman across the table from me was just rolling her eyes at everything I said—like I was so weird,” she recalls. After starting Geek Girls, Holmstedt, whose Pinterest page reveals she’s into coding, the Runaways and mosaic Mr. Potato Heads, was able to connect with hundreds of like-minded women who understood her quirky personality. That included a woman who makes and sells sock zombies and another who hosts an online Burmese cooking show where she dresses up as a goddess to teach viewers how to make pickled prawn salad.
“I found there are just a lot of women from different backgrounds who are freelancers, who work independently, and they didn’t have an office to go to every day and socialize,” she says. “So we sort of became that group, where they could talk to other women and bounce ideas off of them. But not so much in a professional environment. They could let their hair down a little, so to speak.”
She’s So Unusual
Geek Girls of the East Valley, now run by another ASU grad and digital marketing specialist, Shauna Stacy, is just one example of sisters doing the whole girlfriend get-together thing for themselves. While lavish girls’ nights out and girlfriend getaways have become a booming niche business over the past few years for party planners, travel agents, nightclub owners and even makeup artists, today’s gal pals are looking for more than the usual spa days and shopping excursions to satisfy their need for sisterhood.
LoziLu, which has put on events in the Valley since 2012, specializes in mud obstacle course races with women-only participants.
Not surprisingly, organizers are catering to the quirky and adventurous now, too. Women-only mud runs, like the national Dirty Girl and LoziLu Women’s Mud Run (both have annual events in Phoenix), invite women to crawl, slide and mosh through muddy, comically themed obstacle courses, then exfoliate in (naturally) a mud bath—all to help fund breast cancer charities. Twisting the pink ribbon a bit further, Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center offers nighttime “Mammo Parties” to groups of 10 to 15 women older than age 35, combining the dreaded screening with camaraderie, spa treatments and refreshments.
Girls-only travel getaways are big, too—and not just to Paris shopping districts (although, if you have the means, that’s still a highly recommended option).
“There are so many companies that put together these girlfriend getaways now,” says Susan Eckert, founder and president of AdventureWomen, a travel company specializing in travel adventures for women only. “But most of them seem to focus on spa getaways and shopping getaways. That’s not an adventure to me!”
Eckert’s Montana-based company, started back in 1982, puts together group travel excursions that take women on rugged outdoor adventures of the type previously designed around men: taking safaris into grizzly bear territory in Alaska; riding fast galloping horses across the highlands of Iceland; hiking the Julian Alps in Slovenia. While she’s had a few women along that weren’t quite up to the physical challenge (“Last year I had somebody on our horseback trip in Iceland who wasn’t the best rider, and she fell off and broke her arm,” Eckert says), most experience a great sense of accomplishment just breaking away from what she calls the “limiting societal expectations” too commonly saddled upon women.
“When you have a physical component to a trip, and a goal, you feel great about yourself when you do it,” Eckert says. “Like when women do our Napal trekking trip, they come back from that on cloud nine. You hear comments like, ‘Wow, I wasn’t sure I could do that, but I did it! I trekked in the Himalayas!’ They feel this new-found sense of confidence, they meet other wonderful like-minded women. And they often come back with their new friends to do another trip together.”
That’s not to say the adventurous women on AdventureWomen trips don’t have their girly moments, too.
“We do shop,” Eckert confesses. “We just came back from Tanzania, and sure, we shopped in the markets and all. But it’s a safari, it’s different. It’s not a shopping trip.”
Mommy First
“Larry is a girl.”
“No, Larry is a boy!”
It was sometime during an argument between her 3-year-old daughter and her 6-year-old son that Tisha Marie Pelletier first began to feel a loss of air pressure.
“We were talking about a friend of mine named Larry, who neither of them had met before,” says Pelletier, a working mom whose Gilbert company, Details Event Management, organizes corporate events, social galas and special dinner parties. “And my daughter was saying Larry’s a girl—because she’s still little, she doesn’t know about names and gender. And my son, who always has to be right, was saying Larry’s a boy. And there was this constant bickering back and forth.”
Finally, Pelletier felt the need to brace for a crash.
Mom Entrepreneur of the Year finalists, past award recipients, 2014 Mom Entrepreneur of the Year Sheryl Robinson of Gilbert and Mom-e Club founder Tisha Marie Pelletier. Photo by ELIZABETH DOUGLAS
“I’m like, ‘I can’t take it anymore! Stop! Just, stop!’” After a pause, she says, her internal voice added, “Mommy’s gonna go in her secret hiding spot!”
At times like these, says travel writer Marybeth Bond, author of the National Geographic book “50 Best Girlfriends Getaways,” mom’s best option is to do the one thing that comes least naturally: put herself first.
“It’s the old adage,” Bond says. “Like on an airplane, when you hear the flight attendant say, ‘In case of an emergency, put the oxygen mask on yourself first.’ Only when you are taken care of can you take care of others around you. And a girlfriend getaway is a way for you to take care of yourself so you are better able to give, to care, to share with those around you.”
For her own stabilizing oxygen, Pelletier also runs a monthly networking group for mom entrepreneurs called The Mom-e Club, a national organization with chapters throughout Arizona and seven other states which holds monthly meetups as well as an annual weekend getaway and a special summer spa day.
“That’s almost like a staycation for these women,” she says. “It really is just getting together, doing a little networking but also enjoying spa treatments, having a nice lunch and cocktails by the pool.” Pelletier’s group has also staged bowling nights and gone to dueling piano bars, just for fun.
“It’s necessary,” she says. “Just to say, ‘Enough work, enough talking about kids’ homework and parent conferences. I really need time for myself.’ If you don’t get around other women who can lift you up and let you vent when you’re feeling crazed, one day you’re just gonna explode. And everyone around you is going to feel that. When mom’s not happy, nobody’s happy!”
As vital as it may be, Pelletier says, a lot of women have trouble allowing themselves a girls’ day or night out.
“I think we’re just wired that way. If you’re not doing something for your family, and you take time to go to a summer spa day or a meeting, you feel guilty. It’s like, ‘Ugh, I should be at home, making dinner and helping with homework.’ It’s sad that we feel that guilt, that we can’t take time for ourselves. But I think it’s important that your family gets onboard with allowing you those getaways.”
Jarrett Ransom runs nonprofit organization ReAwaken for Women which hosts an annual three-day retreat in Prescott.
Her friend Jarrett Ransom agrees. Ransom runs a nonprofit organization called ReAwaken for Women that provides educational and empowerment workshops for women, in partnership with the Fresh Start Women’s Foundation, and also hosts an annual three-day retreat in Prescott. She says the retreat offers women a much-needed escape from the stress of their day-to-day activities.
“What I like to say is it’s really like taking an exfoliating shower, where you can just scrub all the nonsense off of your life and hone in on who you are and what your goals are,” she says. “It’s a great way to reset your life. To refresh and renew your commitments to yourself, whether personal or professional, and be around compassionate, like-minded women who are extremely open to supporting you. That’s something we all need from time to time.”
Spa City
If booking a girls’ day at the spa is considered passé, don’t try telling that to Lisa Kasanicky.
The Scottsdale writer, author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Girlfriend Getaways” and a series of spa and travel guides for the Arizona Office of Tourism and The Arizona Republic, is also the founder of the popular website and blog, Arizona Spa Girls, and remains the industry’s biggest cheerleader.
“Once people get past the snootiness of being at a spa, there really is something healing about the experience,” she says. “When you go to a spa, you get a massage, you get a facial—you get some kind of treatment where somebody is taking care of you. And there’s an appreciation, a gratitude that you feel for that. Even if it’s not the greatest massage in the world, just having somebody touch you and take care of you for a little while—without you having to take care of anybody else—it gives you this feeling of being healed. It’s a healing feeling!”
Lisa Kasanicky has built her career around helping women relax.
Kasanicky says there’s a value to doing a spa day solo. “It’s a great place to go by yourself, and be peaceful and quiet. The quietness, listening to your inner self. If you spend an entire day at a spa, you’ll leave with a whole different appreciation of yourself.”
But the experience takes on an extra dynamic when done as the main event on a girls’ day out.
“When I get together with my girlfriends, the spa is kind of that safe place, where there’s no distractions, so you can have a really great, intense conversation with a friend,” she says. “It’s also a great place to go to reconnect with your close girlfriends, your mother or daughter, just because it creates this really sacred kind of space for meaningful conversations to happen.”
Besides, Kasanicky insists, there’s still nothing more Arizona than doing a girlfriend getaway at a spa.
“There are just so many great spas here,” she says. “The Aji Spa at Wild Horse Pass blows me away. The Hyatt, Well & Being at the Fairmont. I’ve been to spas in Hawaii, Florida, Colorado, and they’re just not anything like what we have here.
“Here, the lifestyle is all about relaxation and rejuvenation,” she notes. “It just feels natural here. There’s hiking and golf and spas. That’s Arizona!”