"Since becoming a new mom, I have deeply missed my girlfriends. It’s easy to get lost in the vortex of change, and as we swirl in the consuming waters of motherhood, friendship deepens from a distance. Here is my letter to all the friends I haven’t seen, miss, and still adore from afar. I see you.
Dear friends,
It has come to my attention that I miss you. Worse, I don’t know how to miss you properly. Some of you are mothers. Some of you are not mothers. Some of you are lawyers and working moms and stay-at-home moms and ECFE teachers and widows and divorcees and newlyweds. We are everything (as they say), all at once.
I don’t want this to be an apology letter. I’m merely checking in. I want to share some things I don’t know how to say in person. I read somewhere that good writing is all about answering a question. And today, I’m going to answer this one: Why do I miss my friends in motherhood? Maybe this is a love letter. A thank you letter.
I miss you. And here are all the ways.
I had a baby a year ago. And in that year, most of you, I have seen once or twice. We were at a brunch with everyone’s homemade (State Fair award-winning!!) dishes of carbs. I didn’t bring anything to that brunch. That morning, I cried in my lap. I didn’t cry about the apple cake. The apple cake was so delicious that I wanted to cry again. On walks the week before our brunch, I couldn’t stop thinking about being mentally split in half. I used to be a woman who would take an entire afternoon to try an old recipe from my mother. It’s a finicky recipe. One that calls for you to place chopped dill inside a disposable coffee filter or cheesecloth and tie it closed with kitchen twine to make the sachet. One that requires time.
And now, I’m grateful to merrily show up. I miss myself, so I miss you. I miss who you saw in me in college, after college, throughout the early buds of my career. I even miss who you saw in me when I could pay attention to clothed dill.
Some of you have met my baby. And when she’s with me, I can’t focus on anything else. If she’s in the room, she is a gravitational pull. I can’t heave my head out of her vortex. I hear your words, your stories. But I can’t connect them to any of mine. Mine is climbing the stairs, reaching for my arms, thirsty, hungry, strong-willed.
“Some of you have met my baby. And when she’s with me… I hear your words, your stories. But I can’t connect them to any of mine. Mine is climbing the stairs, reaching for my arms, thirsty, hungry, strong-willed.”
“Oh my gosh, she’s so darling!” You tell me while she climbs on my hips and tips backward onto the floor. I think, no, you don’t have to say that. She’s the center of attention in my life, but something about her being the center of attention in everyone else’s makes me feel self-conscious. I feel like I’m sucking the life out of everybody, and they are all expected to thank me for it. It’s a strange feeling like I’m both the source of joy and a burden.
Do you know what? My first love story started with you.
We were 13, and I fell in love with a dozen girls. My world was full of Ashleys and Abbys and Laurens who loved each other adolescently, deeply. We walked down school aisles, forearm to forearm, carrying each other through the tangled mass of puberty and boys and first kisses and everything else. We wrote love letters to one another daily in notebooks decorated with magazine clip-outs. We’d sign them with our swirly pen names, replicating each other’s handwriting like some unwritten love language between teenagers. “Shaving is SO annoying,” we’d write hastily like we’d been shaving for decades. We’d get 12 hours of sleep every night and write, “That’s like two whole school days!” We measured everything. We had high standards. We dissected every conversation.
At some point, we went to college and found new love stories, which brought us where we are today, in all the forms we are, unable to text each other back or make plans, unable to love each other so outrightly, so vibrantly.
I would love to have that space for you, that time we had in high school and college. So many versions of ourselves sit at the metaphorical dinner table of persons: world traveler, college graduate, homeowner, sister, podcaster, wife, and perhaps, mother. And mother, as it turns out, takes up a lot of space. Space I couldn’t understand right away.
I’m still figuring out how to be myself and a mother.
Many people told me before my little girl was born, “The minute they lay her on your chest, everything will be perfect.” And it was. But there was something else no one was telling me. And it was: “If you don’t feel like a mother right away, that’s OK.” I struggled for a long time to associate with motherhood. It didn’t get set softly on my lap to nurse me, feed me the vitamins of maternity, and swaddle me into comforting oblivion. For a long time, I didn’t know who I was.
Friends, you helped me become who I am for a long time. In those late-night conversations and breakups and mistakes we made together, we became our own. When I was 28, I got on an airplane with my best friend because she ended her engagement. We flew to New York, and she cried with me at the top of a building, a rooftop bar. We gazed down at the big city and saw as far as the light reached. Together, we didn’t know who we were yet.
I want to be there for you.
And now, in writing this to you… I am becoming another version of myself. One of you texted me a week ago, but I haven’t replied. I bailed from another happy hour and forgot someone’s 30th birthday. I didn’t reach out when your grandma died or reply to the book club text thread. I don’t even reply a lot to the mom group text I’m a part of. The guilt looms over me all the time.
I want to send you handwritten cards. I want to bake you a dish. I want to “love” every message and reply with a detailed account of your feelings. I want to run away with you to New York. I want to run through empty mall hallways with you. I want to love you feverishly; get jealous when you get a boyfriend. I want to tan in the driveway and scoff at our bodies, even if we’re beautiful.
I want to be there for you. At this time of my life, I struggle with showing up for you. But I am here, in the depths of motherhood, preparing to emerge anew.
I am so new. I don’t pay attention to myself as poignantly as I used to. But I will get back to a version of myself that will. I am certain. And when I do, I know you’ll be there, too. Changed. The same. We can be both. We are everything.
Sincerely,
A mother, a friend, a sister, a wife (and everything else)
Brittany Chaffee, Contributing Writer
Brittany Chaffee is an avid storyteller, professional empath, and author. On the daily, she gets paid to strategize and create content for brands. Off work hours, it’s all about a well-lit place, warm bread, and some words. She lives in St.Paul with her husband, little girl, and two brother cats, Rami and Monkey.