The Friendship Load

On making friends as a mom, letting go of the village I imagined, and learning that friendship can take many different forms.

I’ve found there are a lot of phases to friendship as a mom.

When I was pregnant, I mostly had the same friends I’d always had around.

After my son was born, though, time changed. I wasn’t able to keep up with my long-distance friends in the same way.

For the first year of my son’s life, I went to mom-and-baby groups. I actually felt more social than I had in a long time.

It felt easy to make connections because we were all on maternity leave, going through some version of the same thing.

I remember thinking, This is awesome. I’m meeting so many people as a mom.

And it was awesome.

It just wasn’t necessarily long-term.

When I went back to work, I found myself struggling to socialize. When I got home, I wanted to see my son. On the weekends, I wanted to see my son.

And, you know, catch up on the approximately 400 things I’d neglected during the work week.

There also wasn’t as much consistent programming for families on weekends. So, for a while, it was usually just my husband, my son, our dog and me.

We’d have family visit from time to time, but mostly it was the four of us.

I also felt pretty unmotivated to go to larger events. Because, let’s be honest, sometimes it’s a whole production to pack up a small child and take them somewhere. When they’re still napping, it feels like you arrive for half a second before you’re packing everything up again to get home for nap time.

My husband and I also have pretty independent hobbies. He likes to game. I like to write and make things.

So we became fiercely protective of nap time because it was often the only hour when both of us could do something that was entirely our own.

Now my son doesn’t consistently nap, but he has quiet time, and apparently we’ve just transferred our protection of nap time directly onto that.

We’re also not exactly built for late-night plans anymore. We’ve tried.

By 8 p.m., we’re ready for bed.

And most of the time, I’m genuinely happy with that.

But sometimes it’s hard not to compare myself.

I know everyone says not to compare your life to what you see on social media. But when your feed is filled with parents of kids the same age who seem to have these flourishing social lives, it’s hard not to wonder if you’re supposed to have that too.

Some people had a close-knit group of friends nearby before kids and carried those friendships into parenthood. I think that’s wonderful.

But if you’re in a situation like mine—where you moved away from your hometown and then had a baby shortly afterward—building those friendships takes an extra step.

And for the past two years, I haven’t always had the time or energy for that extra step.

Then chronic illness threw another wrench into it.

I was in and out of the hospital during the first year of my son’s life. I still find myself there sometimes, although thankfully much less often now.

When things were really bad, I became anxious about going anywhere.

I was afraid I’d have another accident and someone would ask whose baby pooped, while I sat there knowing it was actually me.

(It’s happened.)

Other times, I could go somewhere but couldn’t stay very long because active disease left me exhausted.

So somewhere along the way, I became more selective.

My capacity for friendship changed after becoming a mom with a chronic illness. Not in a bitter way. It’s just that this chapter of my life has been difficult, and I’ve become more intentional about how I spend the energy I have.

I feel most comfortable around people who understand that sometimes I can only stay for an hour.

People who aren’t horrified by the fact that sometimes I sh*t myself. Yes, UC sucks.

People who are generally of the you do you variety.

I’ve had some pretty unique experiences as a parent, and because of them, I don’t always do things conventionally.

I’m probably more of a “helicopter mom” than some people are. I’ve made peace with that.

And I’ve learned that the friendships that fit most naturally into my life right now are the ones where neither of us feels like we have to justify how we’re navigating this season.

Before having my son, I think I was more open. I didn’t have as much of a friendship filter.

Then life changed, and I adapted.

I also own that I haven’t always been a gold-star friend myself since having a baby. I want to be, but like many parts of my identity after motherhood, I haven’t been able to hold myself to the same standards I did before.

Sometimes I forget to reply to the text. I often mean to ask someone how something is going, then 100 things happen that day and I miss my opportunity. Then a few months go by since I last saw someone and I think to myself, Has it really been that long?

All of this to say: friendship as a mom can be hard.

I think part of the problem was that my original vision of motherhood friendship came from what I saw around me and online.

I pictured mom friends coming over every weekend while we casually raised our kids together and everything was peachy.

I grew up in a neighbourhood myself, which meant we all ran around feral until the street lights came on. Our parents took turns hosting dinners or snacks for the neighbourhood kids.

As an adult, I live more rurally, and it’s just not like that.

I also moved away from my hometown. I developed a chronic disease. My son had health scares that shaped the kind of mother I became. Things got pretty heavy for a while.

Friendship became a little trickier to navigate than I had imagined.

But it did get better.

Over time, I started finding relationships that fit naturally into the life I actually had and not necessarily the version of motherhood friendship I had imagined before becoming a mom.

No, I don’t think most of us have time to hang out every weekend. But we’ve found some really great people to spend time with.

I’ve also realized that I don’t actually want to socialize every weekend.

I like my family time.

I like when it’s just us and the dog sometimes.

I love playing with my son and planning activities with him. I still love writing. I have hobbies and projects I want to squeeze into the weekend, and increasingly I’ve found ways to include my son in some of them.

We like taking little family trips to museums or walking trails.

Sometimes I want other people there.

Sometimes I really like that it’s just us.

I think I’ve finally started to appreciate the balance instead of assuming one of those things has to be better than the other.

There is one part I still miss, though.

Before kids, I could have a wine night with a good girlfriend and we could sit there talking for hours. I’d leave feeling like I’d emptied everything out of my brain.

Most of the women in my life don’t have hours of unclaimed time anymore.

Neither do I.

For a while, I think I tried to fill all of those needs with my husband. That was hard on our relationship because, as it turns out, it’s pretty hard for one person to be your spouse, best friend, therapist, social life, parenting sounding board and every other form of connection you need.

Over the past year, I’ve become much more intentional about what I jokingly think of as sharing the friendship load.

I’ve built out my circle instead of searching for one person who can be everything.

I have friends who like shopping or running errands together.

Some will meet me for coffee for an hour.

Some are more of a texting friendship.

Some of us mostly show up for each other’s milestones.

And there are people I might not see very often at all, but when we do get together, we can still talk about the real stuff.

I think I used to believe that a really close friend should somehow fill all of those spaces.

Maybe that worked at the beginning of my twenties, when we could spontaneously spend an entire evening together without coordinating childcare, work schedules, nap times, illnesses and approximately seventeen other things.

Now, as I enter the last year of my twenties, I think I’m ready to leave that expectation behind.

I’m giving my friendships more grace.

I’m giving myself more grace, too.

I’m becoming more realistic about the season of life we’re all in. I’m learning to find solace in what’s already in front of me. I’m more comfortable enjoying my own company and the company of the little family I made.

And I’m learning that a friendship doesn’t have to look a certain way to be meaningful.

Maybe your people aren’t sitting on your porch every Saturday.

Maybe one is sending you voice notes from her car.

One meets you for coffee every couple of months.

One texts you something ridiculous at the exact moment you need it.

One shows up when life gets heavy.

And maybe, eventually, one does end up sitting on your porch.

Priorities are allowed to shift.

Friendships are allowed to change.

And friendship gets to be defined by the people in it. Not by what it looks like on social media.