There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes with watching your closest friends become mothers.
Over the past year, as I’ve begun gathering with women on trips, retreats, and local events, I’ve discovered just how many of us know some version of this. For some, it’s grief. For others, it’s simply the ache of a changed rhythm, or the strange feeling of being both deeply loved and slightly on the outside.
Not long ago, a longtime friend asked me what had inspired me to start Our Sister•Ship. I stumbled over my answer for a moment, because in large part, it was the friendships I’d cherished most.
Years ago, my closest friends and I said yes to almost anything: a last-minute dinner, a daylong hike that turned into dancing that night and Sunday brunch the morning after.
As we celebrated them becoming mothers, the rhythm of our friendships changed. Spontaneous walks and dinners slowly gave way to plans charted on calendars months in advance.
Looking back, I can see how adept I became at making myself flexible, almost “need-less,” to hold onto rare time with my friends. I’d drive hours each way, or give up a whole weekend, to fit a visit between nap schedules and birthday parties.
To be clear, no one asked me to bend over backwards. My friends were appreciative, and they said so often.
But lately, I’ve been looking at those years through a new lens. Beneath my willingness to overextend and flex like Gumby was a fear that if I didn’t fit into their lives, our friendships might quietly disappear.
And beneath that fear, a quieter belief: that the women in my life who were mothers had needs more worthy of consideration than my own.
Many of these realizations have surfaced as I’ve brought other women without children together. It’s been humbling to see how often I dismissed my own feelings, or reasoned that “of course” the demands of raising small children meant I should be the one to adjust. In doing so, I never gave my own sadness, or the grief I felt for the earlier days of our friendships, the same legitimacy.
Now that some of those friends are entering a new season, with more room for the spontaneity we once shared, I’ve noticed something unexpected stir in me. Alongside the excitement, there’s tenderness for all the years I spent missing it.
Recently, I gathered my courage and named some of this to a friend. She listened with curiosity and compassion. And I found myself saying something I’d only begun to understand: as painful as the distance had been, what hurt most was how little I’d valued my own needs along the way.
Though the conversation was difficult, in the days after I noticed how much closer I’d felt to her than I had in years. Not because of anything she’d done, but because I’d finally found the courage to stop leaving part of myself out.
One of the reasons I started Our Sister•Ship was so women without children would have more ways to find community with others who share this shape of life. What I hadn’t anticipated is how these conversations are teaching me to bring my whole self, needs and all, back to the friendships I’ve cherished for years.
If any part of this feels familiar, I’d love to hear from you.
🧡 Erin