On this week’s episode, we talk about the importance of 'mom friends', and navigating that space: what that actually means, the loneliness that comes when you don’t have mom friends but you’re a new mom, and how the new identity of being a mom changes your current friendships.
Not a mom? Don’t worry, this episode is still for you! We cover how to show up for your mom friends.
Mom Friends
So mom friends are agentic friends! They build bonds quickly because they share common goals or interests. And why is that important? Because 3.7M new babies born every year. Lots of women that need a mom friend!
This space seems simple, but it's so much more complicated and emotionally charged. So we have a guest to help us through it…
Our Guest This Week
Holly Sturdivan shares her story about being a new mom when she went in for a job interview and wasn’t going to share that she had a 4-month old at home with her potential employer. Then discovered that they were launching a new product aimed at babies and as a mom she was going to be the target market. It was a great opportunity to build a brand but also figure out how to be the target market, as well as how to be a new mom while working. Win-win! So she talks about setting boundaries that allowed her to be committed as a mom, but also to show up to work in the best possible way.
Sometimes it takes having the hard conversations ("are you not inviting me to things because now I have a child?") to resolve some of the loneliness that comes with motherhood. Motherhood can be very lonely and isolating, but it can be a shared experience amongst friends to help mitigate the scariness of becoming a mom if friends are open to it.
COVID and Motherhood
And then there's COVID! The silver lining right now for Holly, as she became more isolated from friends and family, is that COVID gave her a chance to pause and think through how she wants to show up to her children, and how she wants to show up in that relationship going forward.
Despite the quality time with their children, Breck and Holly compare notes that their family can't be their everything. They need good friends to get them out of the house and away from parenting.
One big question: is the single common bond of motherhood enough to sustain a friendship with another mom?
Both Holly and Breck think at the end of the day, you still need something more to sustain a friendship: another shared interest, experience, or alchemy between two people. You already have so little time, so you need your mom friends to also have something more in common. You need more substance to move that acquaintance into real friend zone.
Continue to Bask:
* Be a friend by being persistent. Remember it's not personal if your mom friends don't get back to you quickly.
* Check in by showing you're thinking of your mom friends. They just want to hear you're thinking of them.
Holly Sturdivan lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband, Matt, and their kids, Zoe (age 3.5) and Mason (11 months). She is the Director of Marketing for Puffworks, a startup snack company that makes organic peanut butter puffs. Holly was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma and after graduating from the University of Oklahoma in 2010, she moved to Portland sight unseen for a job doing tech-PR. Soon after, she combined her PR experience with her passion for food and transitioned to doing food-PR. After becoming a mom in 2017, she joined Puffworks when her daughter was just four months old as had helped the company grow to nearly $1M in annual revenue. Follow her on Instagram @twistedpint.
If you’re not in on Bask yet, join our waitlist over at GetBask.com. Your future friends will thank you!
