Friendship > Opinions

Dear Mamas,

I love being alive in 2016. I really do. I know the world is messy and screwed up and confusing. But can we just stop for a second and acknowledge what an amazing thing it is to be alive, right now, today?

We have so many options. So much potential and so many things available, it’s almost overwhelming. Ok, it is.

There are so many contradicting voices telling us what to do with these tiny people in our charge, and so much fear surrounding all of it.

Ok, so it’s hard being a mom. We’ve all made jokes about it. It’s hard being human. It’s hard living in today’s society. But hasn’t it always been hard?

Our ancestors dug in rocky soil to plant crops to nourish the bodies of their children, and graves for those that didn’t make it.

We worry about our food poisoning our kids, the government controlling our families, too much bad changing our way of life.

We post our opinions online and argue about them. We plant our flags in our camps and yell at the other side.

Our grandmothers walked to their neighbors to bring them bread. We de-friend ours when they don’t agree with our stance on vaccines.

We call names and refuse to break gluten-free bread with those who dare to raise their kids differently than we do.

We are outraged that so-and-so won’t shop at Target anymore, or that our church friend doesn’t care that our children will no longer be safe in bathrooms.

We say we love diversity, but deep down it scares us to death. We say we want to live simply, but we spend more time stressing over comments of total strangers and thinking,

“I am glad I am not ignorant like her.”

Can’t you see it’s killing us?

Our opinions shouldn’t matter more than our friendships.

Guess what? Being a mom is hard. Being a human being is hard. I don’t have time for this bullshit.

I will love you and be your friend whether you vaccinate your kids or not. I honestly don’t care whether you vote for Bernie or Trump or nobody. I am not gonna lose sleep over whether you formula-feed your babies or co-sleep.

I will listen to you talk about your protective parenting, your free-range toddler, your home birth or your C-section. I will smile and laugh with you while you feed your kids raw vegan snacks or chicken nuggets.

I will try my best not to judge, even when we don’t see eye-to-eye.

Because we’re all human and we’re all just feeling our way through life with our eyes half-closed.

None of us really know what we’re doing.

When our kids get sick with a fever and cling to us, when we go through the unthinkable tragedy of losing the baby inside of us before they can grow, when jobs and marriages are lost and out futures are vague, and we are overwhelmed with parenthood and just want to go back simpler days,

We are not alone.

We are all faking it. We’re all trying to play the game of adulthood one day at a time. We are all stressed and fearful, trying to love and be patient and let go and not screw up our kids too bad.

We all just want them to be happy. To survive, but also, thrive. To make something in this world. To think for themselves.

How we do this looks as different as fingerprints, yet we all have them.

So dear mamas, let’s strive to just love and do whatever we have to do for our kids. And help each other along the way with gentle, wanted advice but mostly just a listening ear and support.

Let’s drink coffee and wine and tea together and tell funny stories about potty training and admit discipline is hard and agree to have each others backs.

There’s a strength in us moms that roars like that Niagara Falls, a loving force that overcomes the biggest obstacles, causing ourselves and our little people to grow.

Let’s focus on that, instead of our differences in opinions,

and the world will never be the same.