Women supporting other women is exactly what we all need

Being a new mom comes with its set of challenges. There’s the lack of sleep, the indecisiveness, and the complete and total fear that we are somehow messing this parenting thing up. It’s a time when we need our tribe of women; those embattled soldiers who have been there before us. But finding your inner circle can be an intimidating process. One mother recently admitted she didn’t think she needed “mummy friends” – until she had a child of her own.

Gylisa Jayne, a writer and blogger from Cornwall, England, is mom to daughter, Lily, age two. She recently wrote a post on her Facebook page admitting she wasn’t so sure about how to make “mom friends” and even more, that she didn’t think she needed them at all.

“I never wanted Mummy Friends,” she wrote.” I didn’t want to sit in noisy soft plays, or talk about different coloured shit.” She admits to thinking mom groups were “vicious cliques” and never had any intention of seeking one out.

Image via Facebook/Gylisa Jayne

Gylisa believed she could get what she needed from her partner and thought, “He would be there for everything. I didn’t need anyone else.” Then she had the baby and realized he was busy navigating his own new role as a dad. “He didn’t understand why I was crying about putting the kettle in the fridge,” she explains. “He didn’t know why I’d forgotten to take the parcels to the post office. He didn’t know why I had no love left over for him.”

That’s when she knew she needed women who had “been there, done that.” And the ones who were “fumbling through for the first time” – just like her.

Image via Facebook/Gylisa Jayne

It can be hard in the beginning, with our first child. We see other mothers in various stages and ages of parenting their children and they can seem intimidating. And yes, there are those moms who are judgmental and catty and unwelcoming. Maybe that’s just the way they are built. Or perhaps they are just as scared as we are and are too afraid to admit it.

Gylisa told Scary Mommy when she found these women, it categorically changed her because she realized she wasn’t alone. She admits was these women who “dragged me back out of post-natal depression and showed me that there are thousands of other women doing it too. That sense of solidarity reminded me that ‘I could do this.’”

Image via Facebook/Gylisa Jayne

Gylisa admitted she was surprised to find a group of loving women, not a clique as she’d first assumed. She “made them laugh, and they made (her) howl with our observations of this bizarrely fabulous and horrendous journey.” She finally had a group of people who understood exactly what she was going through, which allowed her to have love left over for her partner again.

And the best advice she received? “Ignore anyone else’s opinion on your kid, parenting, hair, house, or life.”

Amen to that.