Why Making Friends as a Mom Feels So Hard (and How to Change It)

[00:00:17] Hi everyone, welcome back to the Christian Moms Café. I'm Demetria, your host, and I'd love for you to just pull up a chair and grab your coffee today. Just get cozy because we're going to have that conversation today. That conversation. The one that a lot of us think about but just don't say out loud. That's the one we carry quietly in the back of our hearts while we're folding laundry or driving carpool or lying awake at night wondering why life feels just a little lonelier than we expected it to.

[00:00:45] So today we're talking about friendship. And before I go any further, I just want to say thank you for being here. Whether this is your first time joining me or you've been with me since day one, I don't take your time for granted. You could be doing a hundred other things right now. But the fact that you chose to sit with me in this virtual cafe today means everything. And if you haven't listened to my last episode, my very first interview since the rebrand of this podcast with the incredible Sylvia Lidon, please go back and take a listen.

[00:01:15] We talked about hearing the voice of God in the ordinary, just everyday moments of your life. And it was a conversation that moved me really deeply. And I think it'll bless you too. But today is just you and me. And I want to talk about something that I believe is one of the most quietly painful experiences of motherhood that nobody really prepares you for. And that is friendship or more specifically, why friendship can feel so hard once you become a mom.

[00:01:43] Now, I want you to hear me when I say this, that this is not a conversation for just one type of mom, but this is for the brand new mom who's still adjusting to her entire world shifting overnight or for the mom in the thick of homeschooling who barely has a moment to herself or for the mom raising teenagers who slowly watching her kids need her less. While at the same time feeling like our friendships are slipping away somewhere where she can't identify it.

[00:02:08] This is also for the mom, like myself, whose kids are grown, who woke up one day and realized that the season of busy motherhood is behind her. But the friendships that she thought would still be there aren't quite the same. So this is for all of you, because the loneliness of motherhood can be real. And it's time that we talked about it honestly, without shame and with the grace of God covering every single bit of this. So I'm going to name something for you right now that I think a lot of podcasts that you might listen to may skip over too quickly.

[00:02:38] So we're going to name it here. There are moms listening right now who feel profoundly disconnected. Moms who scroll through social media and see other women laughing together, having brunch together, and just feeling a quiet ache in their chest. And if that's you, I get it because I've been there. Sometimes I still am there. Moms who are surrounded by people every single day, by their kids, their husbands, their neighbors, maybe even church community members, and they still feel invisible.

[00:03:07] Moms who haven't had a truly deep conversation with a friend in months, maybe even years. And the internal dialogue can sound something like this. Like, what happened to my friendships? Why does this feel so hard now? Am I the problem? Did I do something wrong? Is everyone else thriving and going about their lives? And I'm the only one who's struggling. So can I tell you something, my friend? You're not the only one. You're not the only one going through this.

[00:03:36] And you're not doing friendship wrong. It's just that your life has changed in ways that are profound and irreversible. Let's just be honest. You're not the same person you were before you had kids. Your time is not your own the way it used to be. And your emotional energy is being poured out in directions that previous versions of you can never have anticipated. Your priorities have been rearranged by necessity, by love, and even by the calling of motherhood. So of course, friendship is going to look different for you now.

[00:04:06] So the question is not why can't I make friends the way I used to? Why can't I make friendships work the way they used to work? But the question is, what does healthy, meaningful friendship look like for who I am right now in this season of my life? And that's the conversation that we're having today. So before we go further, I want to plant us firmly in the Word of God, because I believe that is the answer to all of our problems.

[00:04:30] So let's tune in to Ecclesiastes 3 and 1, chapter 3, verse 1. And it says, to everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. So I'm highlighting that word season. Even friendships move through seasons. And some of us are grieving friendships from a past season. Friendships that were beautiful. They were real. They were genuine. They fed our souls.

[00:04:57] And while at the same time, we're feeling guilty that those same relationships feel so different today. But here's what I want you to hold on to. That a friendship changing doesn't mean a friendship actually failed. Because seasons change. Gardens look different in spring than they do in winter. That doesn't mean the winter garden is broken. It just means it's resting. It's being prepared for something new.

[00:05:21] And sometimes God is using the quiet, somewhat lonely winters of our friendships to prepare us and prepare the space around us for exactly the kind of community that our hearts actually need. So I want to give you four deep, honest truths about navigating friendship in this season of motherhood. And this is not surface level advice or a listicle. It's real truth. It's the kind that gets under your skin in the best way possible

[00:05:49] and kind of slowly changes the way you may look at things. And the first truth is that you don't have the same capacity anymore. And that doesn't mean it's failure. I like to start here because this is something that I'm currently working through. I have a YouTube video about this that I recently uploaded. And I'll leave a link in the show notes, of course. And it's about my midlife journey. But I talked about friendship capacities and what I don't have anymore. And my life has changed so much.

[00:06:17] And so I just believe that you don't have to have the same emotional or physical or mental or even relational capacity that you had before you became a mom. So I need you to hear that this is not a criticism, okay? It's a fact. It's grace. This is something that deserves to be honored rather than fought against. Because before kids or BK or whatever we want to call that, you might have been the friend who texted back instantly, who showed up to every single event you were invited to.

[00:06:46] You remembered every birthday. Maybe you were always available for that late night phone call. And now you're just not, right? You don't have the same time and space to do this. Somewhere along the way, you started measuring yourself against the version of you that used to be able to do these things. And you're coming up short every single time, which means you feel like you're failing at friendship. Really though, you're just navigating a completely different life. There's a scripture that revolutionized how I think about this.

[00:07:14] So Jesus, the most relationally perfect human who ever lived, did not give everyone the same access to himself when he was here on earth. He ministered to the crowds of people, thousands of people at a time. He discipled 12 people of the thousands. And then he even had a smaller, more intentional circle. And then even within that circle, he had his inner circle, inner, inner circle.

[00:07:40] He had three, Peter, James, and John, who went with him to the Mount of Transfiguration. And they were the ones who were close to him in the Garden of Gethsemane. And John was his, what he called his beloved, his beloved John. And he seemed to hold a place of particular closeness with the Lord because the Bible describes him. The scripture says he is the disciple whom Jesus loved. So even Jesus had tears of friendship. Even Jesus didn't give everyone the same depth of relationship.

[00:08:09] And then if you look over on John chapter 15, verse 15, he called his disciples friends, not servants, but friends. And that was a radical declaration for that time and even for now. But even within friendship, there were levels. So I'm going to ask you to really think through this. Why are you expecting yourself to maintain every single relationship at the same depth simultaneously?

[00:08:37] And why are you carrying the guilt of not being equally available to everyone in your life? The truth is that having limited capacity doesn't make you a bad friend. It makes you a human being and a human friend. And part of growing into wise and healthy friendship is learning to steward your relational energy with intentionality rather than spreading yourself so thin that no one gets the real version of you. Because you're carrying more now.

[00:09:05] You have your kids, you have your spouse, you have your family, you have your career, your business, your whatever you're doing to check all the boxes that have to be checked through life. Life goes on. So you have to give yourself grace. And these friendships that you want in your life, they have to naturally shift to reflect where you are. And also the people in your life will have things going on in their lives where they need to also be shifting their lives around what works for them as well.

[00:09:32] But here's truth number two, that not every friendship is meant to continue into every season. And that's also okay. It's very tender. And I say it carefully because I know it might land on some sore places. Some of the friendships you've been holding on to were never meant to carry you into this season. Some friendships were built around proximity because you went to the same school or you worked at the same job or you attended the same church.

[00:10:00] But when the proximity changes and you move to a different city or your kids change schools and things start to shift, that friendship slowly became something that you're just maintaining out of loyalty or nostalgia more so than genuine connection and mutual feelings toward each other. Some friendships were just built around a shared season of life. Young and single, newlyweds, young moms with babies the same age. And as the seasons diverge, so did the friendship.

[00:10:30] And even if nobody formally decided to let it go, it did change. And you can feel that. And then there are some friendships, and this is the hardest one to say, but they may have shifted because you changed. Because the work that God did in you, the convictions that grew strong in your own heart, the values that got clearer for you, the version of yourself that emerged through motherhood and through faith, that version doesn't fit as naturally into every relationship that the old you had.

[00:10:59] So instead of acknowledging that shift with honesty and with grace, many of us do a couple of things. We're either going to force the friendship and keep it going year after year after year, showing up and trying to manufacture closeness that just doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't flow naturally and we exhaust ourselves in the process. Or we ghost. We slowly withdraw without ever having an honest conversation. We carry that low-grade guilt about it for years to come.

[00:11:30] And those are things that we all go through and that I have been through, maybe even still going through right now. Scripture gives us a different model. As I study the Word, I realize that there are things in my life right now that just, I need to come clean about. And I have to just reconcile with myself as my season has changed. I look at Paul and Barnabas in the Bible, who were one of the most powerful ministry partners in the New Testament. They traveled together. They planted churches together.

[00:11:58] And they also faced persecution together. So they had a lot of togetherness, right? And they were friends. But then they had a really sharp disagreement over John Mark. They were so entrenched in their disagreement that they parted ways. And that's in the Bible in Acts chapter 15 verse 39. And what happened after that? Paul went in one direction and Barnabas went in another.

[00:12:23] And both of them continued to bear fruit for the kingdom and reach souls for the kingdom of God. But their relationship changed and didn't destroy either one of them. So there is a posture that we can take toward friendships that have shifted. One that's neither forced or abandoned, but just you got to hold it with open hands loosely. And that posture sounds like, God, what is this relationship right now? And what is it not? And not what do I wish it was?

[00:12:52] But what is it really? And how do you want me to honor it from here on out? And so I believe that's a prayer that's worth sitting in. And truth number three that I have today is that intentionality is not optional anymore. Friendship just won't happen, right? This one is practical. I think it's the one most of us need to take action on because we're not in school anymore. Okay. We're not in a dorm. We're not working in an office where proximity and routine just organically create opportunities for connection.

[00:13:19] Some of us might be, but our lives as moms are structured around everyone else's needs. And if we don't carve out space for our own relational health, it's simply not going to happen. And here's where many of us get stuck in a very specific pattern. It's that we want more connection. We ache for deeper friendships, but we're waiting.

[00:13:38] We're waiting to be invited in the circle, waiting to be pursued, waiting for someone to notice that we're lonely and come to us and come talk to us, you know. And we interpret every single week that passes without an invitation as evidence that we're not valued, that we're not wanted or not seen. But Proverbs chapter 18 verse 24 says it plainly. It says a person who has friends must first show themselves friendly.

[00:14:08] So there's some kind of initiative we have to have there. Friendship requires that we take initiative. It requires risk and the willingness to send the text first, to be the first one to make that invitation, to be the one that follows up and says, hey, I've been thinking about you. Can we grab coffee? Even when it feels vulnerable, even when we're, we've got that part of us that might be afraid of rejection. I'm not saying you need to be the social director of your entire community. I'm not saying pour out of an empty cup or overextend yourself into exhaustion.

[00:14:37] But I am saying start small, like just take one step. Maybe this week it's one text. Maybe it's one invitation. Maybe it's sitting next to someone at church that you've been meaning to talk to for months or just being honest with a current friend and just say, hey, I miss you. Can we be more intentional about connecting? And if they're not in a place where they're able to, that's OK. Just give them time because maybe they just need a little space. Maybe they need a couple more months. Maybe their life needs to settle in, settle down before they can connect with you again.

[00:15:07] Don't take it as rejection. You don't need to have 10 deep friendships, but most of us don't have the capacity for that anyway. But you just need one authentic, life-giving, mutual friendship where you can be fully yourself, even awkward. And I think that vulnerability takes just really trusting God for guiding our steps so that we can just, you know, find the right people, bring them into our lives, be OK with what happens after. Hold it loosely.

[00:15:37] You know, let God be in control of even our selecting friendships. And truth number four, God really cares about your loneliness much more than you think he does. And this is what I want you to carry out of this virtual cafe today, that some of us have spiritualized our loneliness in a way that keeps us stuck. We say things like, well, God is enough or I shouldn't need people because I have Jesus.

[00:16:00] And while there is a beautiful kernel of truth in that we have Jesus, we sometimes use it to avoid dealing with a very real, very human need for connection and for community. From the very first pages of scripture, God makes a declaration that stops me every single time I read it. And it's Genesis chapter 2 verse 18. And it says, it is not good for man to be alone.

[00:16:25] OK, and so I know he was referring to Adam and Eve in that particular instance. But I think that really could be applied to all of us humankind, that it is not good for us to be alone. This is said before the fall, before sin even entered the world, God said so. In the perfect garden, unbroken fellowship with God himself. It still was not good for the human being to be alone.

[00:16:51] And God, who is in perfect relationship within the Trinity, created us for this horizontal connection with each other, in addition to that vertical connection with him. So your loneliness is not spiritual weakness. It's not a sign that you're weak and it's not a lack of faith that you have. I believe it's the ache of your soul designed for community that's not yet found its people in the season that you're in. And God sees that.

[00:17:19] So instead of asking God to simply remove the ache of loneliness, I want to encourage you to ask him to guide you through it and ask him, who should I be drawing closer to in this season? And where should I be showing up consistently enough just to let the roots grow, right? Just showing up and letting myself be planted in relationships.

[00:17:42] And then ask yourself, is there anything inside of me, any walls that I have up, any wounds, any patterns that's making it hard for people to get close to me? Because sometimes God's not just trying to bring the right people into your life. Sometimes he's working in you first, healing those old hurts, dismantling those walls of self-protection that you might have and teaching you how to receive love and not just give it. Because it goes both ways.

[00:18:11] You can't be someone that allows everyone to run over you and take advantage of your time and energy. But at the same time, you should be healed enough where you can give love in addition to receiving love. So it's a two-way street. And let the Lord show you where you've been performing in your friendships instead of just being present. Because performance is exhausting and it takes a lot out of you and you shouldn't have to do that to have a friend.

[00:18:37] The loneliness that you might be feeling right now is not punishment, but it might just be an invitation. So before we close, I want us to slow down together and take a deep breath. Everything we've talked about today, I hope that you'll sit with this and take it to the Lord and ask yourself honestly, are you holding on to friendships that have genuinely shifted from you? Are you trying to continue to force something back to the way it was if it's no longer meant to be?

[00:19:03] Are you waiting to be pursued when God is calling you to be the one who initiates? Or are you avoiding connection because of your past hurt or fear of rejection or just being simply exhausted? And then the most important question, you want to ask God and say, God, what does healthy, meaningful friendship look like for me right now in this specific season of my life?

[00:19:27] Not what life was like in my 20s, not before I had kids, not in the season that I'm dreaming of next, but right now. So I want to speak directly to your heart before I let you go that you are not forgotten, my friend. You're not invisible. You're not too much and you are not too little. There are women right now in your city, maybe even your neighborhood, craving the exact kind of friendship that you're craving. And I'm speaking to myself right now.

[00:19:56] Okay, so this is for all of us. There are women who want depth over surface. There are women who want conversations that go beyond schedules and logistics and just get into the real stuff. Faith and fear and dreams and the hard days and the good ones. There are women who would treasure a friend like you if they only had the chance to know you. You finding your people starts with you becoming open again. Not naive, and we'll talk about that probably in another episode.

[00:20:25] Not reckless, but wise and yet open. Willing to try again, even if you've been hurt before. Willing to reach out, even if it feels awkward. Willing to believe that God has community for you in this season. Not the community of a past season, but something new. Something he's building and something worth showing up for. My closing scripture for you today is Galatians 6 and 9. And it says, let us not grow weary in doing good. For in due season, we will reap if we do not give up.

[00:20:53] And I just believe that building real friendship is an act of doing good. It's an act of faith. And it takes time and consistency and vulnerability. And it rarely happens overnight, but it is worth it. So I just want to invite you to keep showing up for the availability of yourself in being in friendship. And like I said, I'm right here with you guys. I'm open to the right friendships. Not every friendship is the right one. Not every opportunity is the right one.

[00:21:20] So it's about using wisdom and seeking God for direction to lead us to the right people. But this is about, you know, we keep doing what's right. Keep showing up. Keep being kind. Keep being open and praying and reaching out and choosing people even when it's hard. And God sees your longing for that connection. He placed it there in your heart. He's not indifferent to your feelings and what you need. He knows exactly what kind of community our hearts needs. And I believe he's trustworthy enough to lead us there.

[00:21:51] So thank you so much for spending this time with me in Cafe today. This conversation really felt deeply personal to me because, again, I've lived so much of what I'm talking about right now. And I hope that something you heard today encouraged you, challenged you even, maybe something softened inside of you. And I hope that you're reminded that you're not alone in this. And if this episode blessed you, just will you please take 60 seconds or so to share it with another person? Like pass this podcast on to someone else and let them know about it.

[00:22:20] Share it with a mom who might need it. You never know who's quietly carrying this right now in their soul. You're sharing this might be the exact thing that reaches her. And if you haven't already, follow the podcast so you never miss a new episode. There's so much more good conversation coming to this cafe. And as always, my sweet friend, take a moment to slow down and breathe and invite God into your everyday, ordinary, beautiful life. He's already there. He's already speaking.

[00:22:48] And I'll see you next time here at the Christian Moms Cafe.