making friends
Mother’s Day has us musing on our mama friends. Friends that laugh, support, challenge, accompany, tease, cook, and somehow know just what we need and are right there by our side. Such friendships have been perfectly captured in our post A Circle of Mothers (get your hanky ready before watching)
Motherhood often brings huge changes in our relationships with friends. Women we are only marginally close to show up at the door with bags of hand-me-down baby clothes. Casseroles appear out of nowhere. Other friends seem to slip away, unsure of how to navigate this new terrain of being friends with a mother and her new best friend (baby). Along with the adjustment to new parenthood comes the opening to a new expanded circle of friends.
In our interview with Peggy O’Mara of Mothering Magazine earlier this spring she commented,
“You don’t find a friend, you make one.”
We have seen this lesson in Mama Renew over and over again - connections formed through reaching out, asking for and offering help, speaking our truth, and being present to one another in both the good and the hard moments. This is how we grow.
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How have your connections with mama friends grown?
What might you do today to help make or deepen a friendship?
[...] Our Mama Renew group has continued meeting beyond our official session, and after 2 years of meeting we know each other so well we are able to settle in right away to what’s most important to us. A core part of self-care for me is connecting and sharing with my women friends. [...]
[...] are a complex thing. We hold them dear as confidants, co-conspirators, and collaborators. There are friends who are simply a wonderful part of our lives, with whom we laugh, go on [...]