I used to hate the expression “mom tribe.”
In my head, I always pictured a group of five or six moms who were best friends. They would get together to let their kids play, share stories, and encourage each other. Sometimes they’d go out to dinner and a movie. On occasion, they’d even take girls’ trips together. It looked fun and sounded great, but as an introverted person, I just never felt like I had that. I almost felt left out because I didn’t have the mom tribe I pictured in my head.
When my oldest was a baby seven years ago, I spent a lot of time feeling isolated and disconnected from other moms, as new moms frequently do. It’s part of why I started my blog. Being a mom can be lonely. You can often feel like the only adult interaction you get is with the cashier at the store or your spouse right before bed. I had a few friends, but I still didn’t feel like I had the traditional mom tribe. It made me feel like I was missing out on some special part of motherhood.
My second baby was born eighteen months later, and we moved to a new state six months after that. I felt like I had to start making mom friends all over again, and it was rough. A year later we moved to another new state, and then six months after that, our third baby was born. And yes, you guessed it, six months later we moved to Minnesota, another new state. As if making mom friends wasn’t hard enough already, I had to keep doing it over and over again! How was I supposed to build my tribe if I was never around for more than a year?
As I’ve gotten deeper into motherhood, I’ve realized there is no “one-size-fits-all” format for your mom tribe. A mom tribe can be anything we want or need it to be. Your tribe will look different from someone else’s tribe because we are all different and we all need different things. Your tribe probably won’t even have the same people in it as your best friend’s tribe, and that’s totally okay. (And it’s totally okay if it does have the same people, too!)
You may have a few close mom friends or some on social media and you all support each other, but you don’t do things all together, or you may do things in small groups, or they may not even know each other, or you may not even have ever met in person. Your mom tribe may consist of two best friends you’d tell anything. Or it could be ten best friends who always have your back. It can be as big or as small as you need.
Now that I’ve redefined what a mom tribe is for myself, I feel a lot more connected and satisfied with the tribe that I have. I don’t feel like I’m missing out. There’s my best friend, who I met seven years ago when we were both in the first trimester of our first pregnancies, my sister, who lives in Utah but I FaceTime every day, and my mom, who I can always count on to support me in anything I do. My mom tribe also includes a few moms I’ve been following for years on social media who I talk to every few days, some moms from church, and a mom I met in Texas who I met literally right after we moved into our house.
These are the moms I trust with my most embarrassing mom fails and my most exciting successes, to have my back when I need someone to watch my kids last minute or to give me advice without judgment when my instincts have failed me and I need parenting tips. We lift each other up, support each other, and give no judgment when one of us loses her cool or voices a differing opinion.
Your mom tribe is probably different than mine. It might include moms from a Facebook group, preschool, your birth support group, the PTA, or your child’s soccer team. The important thing is that you recognize that no matter what your mom tribe looks like, you have one. You’re not missing out on anything if you don’t have a super tight-knit circle of friends you go get manicures with every month. And if you do, that’s awesome, too.
Whatever your mom tribe looks like, own it, embrace it, and love it. You should never feel like you’re missing out on the traditional mom tribe because there really is no such thing. We can’t make it through motherhood unless we support each other. We need one another, just like we need caffeine and guilty pleasure TV shows to watch after the kids go to bed. Yes, we’re raising our kids, but we’re also raising each other.
