You're listening to the Water Into Wine podcast hosted by Grace Valentine.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another edition of the Water Into Wine podcast.

I'm your host, Grace Valentine.

And I would say I'm excited about this topic, but this is probably the most annoying thing in my life up to this point of 28 that has always happened to me in different seasons. And it's interesting because we're going to be talking about mean girls. And it's so easy to think of mean girls and to think, oh, that was something that I experienced in middle school. But then it can be the co-worker,

it could be your boss, it could be that girl in your apartment building. It can be that

friend of me in your life who's in your friend group, but sometimes tears you down. Mean Girls

isn't exclusive to middle school drama. And I think so often, especially the advice, almost

reminds us of the middle school drama. The advice is to kill her with

kindness. And although that is true, you should be kind to those who hurt you. That advice

doesn't always help when you feel insecure, you feel dragged down, you have to see that person

consistently. Sometimes you wish you could walk away. And sometimes you don't because of your

own pride or because it's in your friend group, but sometimes you truly can't walk away. I've been don't because of your own pride or because it's in your friend

group, but sometimes you truly can't walk away. I've been in situations where I had like a mean

girl at work. And I couldn't just walk away because if I did, I wouldn't get paid. So it is so hard,

I think, in this era, in this day and time, to manage the mean girl epidemic as silly as that sounds that we have. And first,

before I even begin talking about mean girls, and I'll share some personal stories that are kind of

funny, I want to know why y'all think we have mean girls out there. Why, especially even in our

20s, in our college years, are girls still mean? I was talking to two mentors about this recently,

and we're talking about it

and advice for mothers especially. But I truly believe at the end of the day, we as women sometimes

have the scarcity mindset. And so it goes back to middle school. The reason girls got mean in middle

school, obviously puberty, hormones, things change. People get more insecure. But actually,

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