It’s the only time my friend Tara has been properly pissed off with me. ‘Your “mum friend”,’ she said scathingly, ‘What does THAT mean?’ At the time, I was in my mid-twenties, and it meant exactly what it said. She was my “mum friend”; the only one of my close friends to have had a baby. The first canary down the mine of motherhood. Being a mum was her defining quality. Or so I carelessly thought.
I’d referred to her as my 'mum friend' in conversation and she was unhappy about it. She thought it was twee, annoying, reductive. I thought she was overreacting. We didn’t fall out, but it created a fissure in our love. I’d like to say that I pressed Tara for stories from the brave new world of motherhood but, the truth is, I just saw her less. A lot less. I was still going out a lot and, apart from one memorable occasion where I turned up at a first birthday party after having been up all night, and commando-rolled through a pile of balloons, I didn’t really get to know her son.
The latter part is something I regret now. (The commando roll I stand by.) Because as the years went by and more of my friends had children, I started to lose intimacy with them and I couldn’t put my finger on why. It wasn’t just about going out or not going out. It was a fissure at a more fundamental level. I felt like they’d all joined a cult. But why? When I became a mother, in 2016, I felt as though I had a new role to slip on and off, but I was still me inside. I still needed my friends. I was in a WhatsApp group with some lovely, supportive women from my NCT classes, but we didn’t share a history.
Motherhood is not a strange new land. Let’s not exile ourselves or our friends that way.
I realised that, years ago, I’d blamed Tara for taking offence; for being oversensitive and having no real sense of where she was at. And why had I had no sense of it? Because I wasn’t a mother? No. But because society told me that I couldn’t possibly understand motherhood if I wasn’t a mother.
But I could have. There is no mystery about shitty nappies and nipple scabs. They are as common and as unremarkable as any hangover. Motherhood is not a strange new land. Let’s not exile ourselves or our friends that way. There is a dangerous binary system that puts women into two categories: mothers and non-mothers; suggesting that when you become a mother your friends who aren’t mothers suddenly aren’t as relevant in certain contexts.
But there are many ways to be maternal – it’s not just about biological procreation. And motherhood does not – as myth would have it – transform women into golden new creatures. Mums need their old mates just as much. I see now Tara needed me and I didn’t know it. I wish we’d talked it through – had a dialogue rather than going off on our own mum-ologues. Sure, different life experiences create distance between friends, but navigating that distance is part of a healthy growing relationship; not at odds with it.
READ MORE: Friendeavours: When Your Friend Tries To Divorce - And You Fight Back
READ MORE: How Emma Jane Unsworth Turned Her Friendship Breakup Into The Film Of The Summer