I’m a 30-something mama with four kids and a busy life. I spend much of my time picking up and shuttling kids from dance to soccer to after-school clubs. I probably fit the soccer mom stereotype in a lot of ways, with my mini-van driving, dog walking, kid-hauling lifestyle. Managing the homework, clubs, birthday parties, play dates, and evening activities often has me wondering which way is up. It’s the culture we live in, right?
My oldest is nine and one of the things that has been high on my priority list with her is fostering healthy friendships. From the time she was very young, we organized play dates and made sacrifices to attend birthday parties and talked often about how to know a friend and be a friend. As a woman and as her mom, I understand how important it is for her to have girlfriends. I want her to experience healthy friendships because I know that they are a gift.
I know it because I’ve experienced it.
I grew up in a neighborhood where all the kids went out to play sometime mid-morning and came home sometime before dinner. Other than the mandatory “check in” times, we were out all day. I have lots of great memories of riding bikes on our man-made trails and playing capture the flag with 15 neighbors, several of whom I am still in touch with today. I have college friends of nearly 20 years that I talk to on a regular basis and I travel with annually. I have dear friends that I made during the “young mama” years when I was at home with my baby and we all needed adults to communicate with and worry over all of those “young mama” types of things with.
I have known friends that were fun during a short season and others that have spanned many years. But, along the way I think I got caught up in my busy lifestyle and thought of friendships mostly to be those things that were important for my kids now. I valued those old friends dearly but it felt like friends were those things you make when you’re young and have plenty of time on your hands. If you’re lucky, they’ll last forever, and if not, hopefully you’ll have good memories. In an age of social media, I can get my fix with my “old friends” and stay connected to the college and 20-something friends that were there when I had less going on in my life. As I quickly approach the season where we celebrate 40th birthdays, most of the new people in my life have fallen into the category of “acquaintance.” We interact on social media, text a little bit, and occasionally have the “we must get together!” conversation. We are friendly, but we are busy, and a little interaction here and there is fun and feels like enough.
But in my attempts to teach my daughter about friendships, to be empathetic to her struggles, and to help her to appreciate the value of good friends, I realized that I was mostly talking about past-tense stuff. “Two decades ago when I got to know Mrs. Megan…” or “twelve years ago when Mrs. Ashley and I first met…”
It felt like maybe friendship-making had become a thing of the past for me. I deeply valued all of the friends I made before my 30s, but 30 is still pretty young. Would every new person in my life from here on out have to fall into the acquaintance category? Would I always have to reminisce with those old friends about the “good old days” when we lived close enough that we could just meet for coffee when one of us was having a bad day? Or was it possible for me to teach my daughter the value of friendships, not just from my past experiences, but from my now experiences?
The wise motherly advice I have told my daughter is that even though she has new classmates from year to year, she always has room to make new friends. She can keep the old ones and make new ones. Her BFF from first grade doesn’t have to be the only friend she ever has. She’ll always have room for new friends.
So when life dropped a new friend in my lap as a not-so-young-anymore mom, what I learned is that I actually still had a lot to learn about friendship myself. Because the thing is, even though wisdom comes with age, being stuck in my ways has also come with age. The older I get, the more desire I have to do things the way I’ve always done them. Age has also given me a lot more time to develop stereotypes and judgments and be quick to dismiss a person as not being someone I would be close friends with because of x, y, and z.
This new-ish friend of mine, she and I don’t really have a whole lot in common. I love college football and she thinks that’s weird. She loves outdoor camping and I don’t even like nice cabins. Our interests are different, our backgrounds are different, our idea of fun is different, and our love languages are very different. And as such, we don’t always know how to be a good friend to the other.
But, we gelled enough that I decided it was worth the effort to look beyond those things, take the time to get to know her, and have honest and heartfelt conversations in spite of our differences. I recognized that I needed a here and now friend, and that a heart-buddy didn’t have to only be someone that I made a long time ago. As I’m teaching my daughter to show grace to someone who hurts her feelings or be true to herself when it’s easier to just pretend to like whatever the new kid in class likes, I’m having to practice those same things all over again.
Making a friend at my age has taken more effort than it did when I was little. I have a million excuses about why I don’t have the time and energy to invest in getting to know someone on a deeper level in the season I’m in now: time, my kids, a husband, work, responsibilities, and comparison are at the top. But what I’ve found is that I need girlfriends today just as badly as my daughter does.
I’m not talking about co-workers, moms at the ball field, neighbors, or parents in the classroom. These are all good relationships to have, but I’m talking about the closer-than-arms-length people. The I see you and know you are having a bad week people. The we can laugh, cry, and be ourselves together people. The it’s time for a girls-only night because it’s been a really stressful season people. The you’re allowed to see the good, bad, and ugly of me because you have earned the right kind of people.
The busy and stress of life that make working on friendships difficult is precisely why they are important right now. Because life is hard. And parenting is hard. And the weight of it feels heavy sometimes. And even though a lot of us might struggle to trust women, the truth is that we need each other. No matter how much I love my husband, he can’t fill the role that a girlfriend can.
But these kind of friendships, they don’t come without work. They require grace, humility, and a willingness to get to know someone and what makes them click. It means I have to get over myself sometimes. It means I have to be vulnerable and put myself out there, not knowing if I can trust this person enough to receive all of me. And I’m not sure that vulnerability gets any easier at my age than it is for my nine year-old, but I think it’s worth the blessing of what comes out on the other side. When I dropped my assumptions and frustrations, and was willing to put in the effort, what I gained was a heart friend. It turns out that she’s not actually a jerk and I’m not really a snob. I learned that we react to things based on our own insecurities, and we speak different languages a lot of times because we are wired differently. And that it’s okay. Beautiful relationships can still come out of those differences. Heart friends can still be made when you’re older and busier.
My real-life experience of making friends in a new season of life has proven to be way more effective than just saying words to my daughter about her friendships. It requires me to actively practice the grace that I want her to show. It means I choose to go directly to my friend when something hurts me instead of whispering about it to someone else. What I model in how I speak about the friends in my life that she sees regularly goes a lot farther than my advice. But it has given me empathy for her when she is in a new school year with new people and new relationships to make. The comfortable thing is to let the friends of old be enough. But if we let that be enough, we miss a blessing in the now.
There is nothing like an old friend, but there is something special about a new one as well. And mamas, you need those friends too.