The Friendship One - Time to be honest

In this episode the focus is on maintaining friendships and building connections as a busy mom. Amanda starts by acknowledging the challenges faced by moms in finding time for socializing and maintaining relationships once they become mothers.

She reflects on her own experiences and the shift that occurs when friends transition from the pre-child era to the world of parenting. The freedom and spontaneity of meeting up with friends and enjoying various activities become limited due to the responsibilities of motherhood.

Amanda shares her insights and practical tips for keeping friendships alive and forming new connections:

1. **Plan Meetups**: Despite busy schedules, Amanda encourages moms to make an effort to plan meetups with friends, even if it's only once a year. Smaller gatherings can be more manageable and enjoyable.

2. **Use Technology**: Amanda suggests creating joint WhatsApp groups with old friends to stay connected and share memories, experiences, and support.

3. **Explore In-Person Meetups**: She emphasizes that real-world meetups can strengthen friendships and make online connections more meaningful. These gatherings provide opportunities to bond and have a good time.

4. **Overcome Challenges**: Amanda acknowledges the challenges of forming new friendships as a mom, such as social anxiety, body image issues, and financial constraints. She offers suggestions like inviting friends over when kids are asleep or planning fitness activities together.

5. **Stay Open and Brave**: Amanda encourages moms to remain open to forming new friendships and to take the initiative in social situations, like suggesting a walk in the park or offering a friendly smile during the school run.

In conclusion, Amanda reassures moms that friendships may change and evolve with motherhood, but by remaining open, adaptable, and proactive, they can find joy and connection in various ways. She reminds listeners that many other moms are also seeking companionship and encourages them to reach out, stay connected, and be brave in making new connections.

This episode provides valuable insights and practical strategies for moms seeking to navigate the challenges of motherhood while maintaining and building meaningful friendships.

Transcript

Hello.

Welcome to this week's episode where I'm going to be talking about the struggles, wins and ways that you can keep, maintain and find friends while being a super busy mum. When we're meeting our partners, getting engaged and then actually planning our weddings, we are often surrounded by what can feel like a huge web of support. I know this isn't the case for everyone, but even for myself, as someone who moved around a lot with different jobs and living in different cities and so I'd created distances from friends and loved ones, I still felt like I had a large circle of friends. I was lucky enough I lived in really cool cities like Prague and Dublin and Manchester and Edinburgh. And so I guess it was desirable to come visit me. But I think the truth is it was more about the fact that all my friends were a similar life stage. They were dating or engaged or even married. But it was BC before children.

We had that luxury of cheap budget airline flights and no real responsibilities maybe except our jobs. And so we had that freedom. We could plan connections, meetups reunions, weekend breaks. It's only now with the children that reality hits home. We have true responsibility and this can extend to a menagerie of pets as well. Okay, we can't just pop out for drinks after work if we're working mums. Or we can't just meet for brunch or dinner on the weekend even. We used to have Sunday roasts followed by a movie session that we hosted in our London home.

We can't even do that now. The fact even watching a movie after roast dinner on a Sunday is not always an option. The kids have the TV. Suddenly everything needs to run through the filter of who's going to watch the kids? Is it a kid friendly place? How much is that going to cost? And so it's easy to see why friendships that we've always thought of as constant while they are still there and real, we aren't benefiting from the connection. We're all just super busy in our own lives and in our own bubbles. And it's hard to mix. We try to plan, meetups, but everyone's schedules are so busy. It's months before a date can be agreed and everyone even then life often gets in the way, doesn't it? It's super hard because those are friends we've often shared major life experiences with.

Maybe childhood or school friends, university friends, work buddies that we used to see every day. The bonds formed at the time were very real and special and there is often a lot of love there. So this can feel a bit like a loss or a grief. Not just that you've lost that person from your life but like a part of you is lost that that person you were when you hung out with that friend has gone. I know that when I do catch up with my longer term childhood school or university friends it's like we were never apart. That bit of myself is still there and the fun and laughter is very real but I really miss it now in my current daily life. In the days now I would really could do with those laughs with those people that just get me and know me and have always known me and that person that I was then, that part of myself, that identity that I had then I missed that part of me. So how can we solve this? Well we can try to plan, meetups with them.

This is really hard to do but it is worth it. Even if it's only once a year that you meet up, it's better than nothing at all. Don't try to do it all together. The whole family is all getting together. That can be really hard. Maybe it's just the girls without the partners and kids. And even if it's just two of you it's enough to call it a girls weekend. In fact the smaller the group is the probably easier it's going to be to organize.

And if you feel you need to get permission for this maybe use your birthday or their birthday or another excuse is that it's Christmas so you have a Christmas catch up. That's a good one. I recently went into London to catch up with two friends from Uni. My friend actually organized it. She booked us foot massages at this amazing place beside her. We came to her in London. We had a lovely lunch then we went for the foot massages and then we had a walk and a chat while we were looking around the shops. It was lovely and I was home in time to do bedtime.

So you can find a way to make it work if you have to but don't think it has to be a huge weekend trip away and it has to cost a lot of money. It doesn't. Okay? It just has to be what you find works for you and what you can make happen. The other thing you can do is have a joint WhatsApp group? Okay, this is just a way of connecting with those friends that are from your past and that you know this is something my sister actually shared with me. She does it with her university know, they're all very smart. They have a university shared WhatsApp group and so they regularly post and comment and share about all sorts of things. It's someone's birthday. They might share all photos and have a laugh about how young they used to look and how silly some of the pictures are.

Or if something's happening in their life, they can give encouragement and advice and support. This will work for any friendship group, childhood, school, uni work, friends. It also works for new mum groups and new friends as well. The only thing I've found with the new groups is that they need a few members to be quite engaging. Otherwise they go quiet and they aren't really a useful connection. I've been in a few groups that have gone quiet and it's really hard. If there are real world meetups happening, then this can really improve the situation that builds the stronger friendship bonds. And so then the online WhatsApp group is more meaningful and people will engage in it more, although it's hard to do.

Okay, there's a number of reasons. When we're trying to form new mum friends, we're also trying to figure out who we are now as a mum. This new identity isn't always known to us and yet we feel unsure and anxious in social situations. We might be shy or feel nervous about meeting new people. It's almost like we're back at school, isn't it? Or back starting uni at the first day of a new job. Or these kind of feelings, all these thoughts of will I fit in? Will I like them? Will they like me? Will we have anything in common? What will we talk about? These are all really real and valid questions. And it's only now you're not only dealing with those situations, those thoughts and feelings, there's the extra thoughts and feelings. Maybe you're not comfortable with your new mum body and shape.

Maybe you're tired from this new sleeping schedule where you're only surviving on little or broken sleep. Your hormones that are making you feel super sensitive and emotional. Let's face it, we can start blubbering over our toast getting burnt or our cup of tea going cold. It's a lot going on and you're trying to get to know not only this new version of you, but this amazing new human that you've just created. There's also the added financial costs that are now part of being social. If you want to go out, you need a babysitter or even a local teenage person adds up quite quickly. I've solved this by using family and the going rate for Auntie Lindsay is a bottle of wine and I trust her completely to handle my four monkeys. I'm not sure I would even get someone who would agree to babysit my four monkeys for me if I asked.

So I'm very lucky. And I know not everyone is lucky enough to have grandparents or aunties close by. That can help. So the cost is an added barrier. One way I've managed to get around this is to have friends come to me when the kids are in bed. It started with my neighbor and a few mum friends coming over to watch the sewing bee on a Wednesday and then through the sewing bee it all finished. We just kept up with our Wednesday mum date and it's lovely just to chat and catch up on that Wednesday evening. I appreciate this only works if friends are local and dads and partners are willing to listen out for the kids.

But since they are meant to be in bed and sleeping, I find this to be a win. He can watch what he wants on TV, listen out for the kids and I get to relax and talk with my friends, knowing that I'm not needed anywhere else and that they've come to me too. So that's a nice convenience. Maybe this is something that could work for you. It's definitely worth giving it a try, even just once a month. And if evenings are too unpredictable because kids are still very young or your partner works late, maybe you're too tired to hold a conversation past 08:00 p.m.. And so a coffee morning date after the school run is a better way to connect for you. The other way is if you have goals like getting healthier or fitter.

Then you could make a gym date or a walking date with a friend. There are lots of groups already out there you could join. But if you also go with a friend, then you keep each other accountable. Because you've made that date and time, you stick to it. And because you have the added benefit of friend time, you're even more motivated to go. It's like a double whammy effect. You hit a fitness or a health goal and you get the social connection and buz from chatting and hanging out with your friend. Ultimately, the honest truth about friendship is that as with most things in motherhood, it changes.

We have to accept that we can't be as free and available for each other as we were before and that we have to be flexible and adaptable if we're going to maintain those special friendships that we made in our younger years before we had children. But if we remain open throughout the different phases of motherhood, from baby to toddler to schoolgoers and so on, I honestly think that we can find and connect with new friends who will also become special to us. So it's not all doom and gloom. There is many different levels of friendship and ways to connect and find joy in that social connection. And it may not be what you first think and the friendships may not come for where you think they're going to come from. So being open would be my biggest bit of advice. You never know where your next friend might be. And there's a lot of other mums out there who are feeling lonely and isolated just like you.

And so they are looking for the same connection. So maybe giving a smile when you're doing the school run, or if you're in the coffee shop and you see another mum with the pram and you can say, oh, do you want to go for a walk in the park as well? Be open to making suggestions. Don't be afraid. Being brave is really important, actually, and something that when we're mums, we tend to lack that bravery because we're just so overwhelmed with what we're doing, but it can change things. Thank you so much for joining me this week. I really hope that you enjoyed this episode and I'll be back next Friday with another episode for you. Have a lovely weekend.