My latest essay over at Raising Mothers reflects on the importance of female friendships and their evolution. I only touch on mother sister friends in the essay briefly, saying:

“While all my friends are wonderfully supportive of my parenting choices, there are just some things that you need to talk about with those who have been through, or are going through, the same. My son is highly sensitive, spirited and until he was almost two, he was a terrible sleeper (that reads like it’s a bad thing. It’s not, it’s just who he was. He didn’t sleep well. Neither did I until I had him). So I gravitated towards women with similar children, who also prefer a gentler parenting approach. In my circle I have a wide range of friends who use different parenting methods, all of which I respect but during the messier moments of motherhood, it’s those with the most similar approach I reach out to first. That’s just how it is.”

This doesn’t begin to describe the ways in which mother sister friends provide a specific sort of friendship often in both an emotional and practical way.

These friends:

  • Listen without judgement to the messier parenting stuff, that we may be reluctant to share with some
  • Offer their own experiences up as reminders that none of us are perfect
  • Don’t mind if we talk about our children all the time, but also (especially when the children are very young),
  • Remind us of who we are as individuals, rather than extensions of our children
  • And more. Much, much more.

As I mention in my essay, my sister friends are often taken for granted – I don’t thank them for being there often enough, because that’s sort of part of the deal… But I wanted to thank them all with these words.

And as for you, reading this… I hope you find all the sister friends you need in your life, just when you need them, and I wish you a wonderful Mother’s Day!

MummyduckandchicksMD_MotheringMushroom

Now I’m off to wish all my mother sister friends the same. 🙂