You know the classic rom-com trope where a huge, loud, loving, but sometimes over-meddling family all lives nearby and is involved in each other’s day-to-day activities? That was my family growing up. Our village was family. On any given day, a grandparent, aunt, uncle, or cousin might be the one picking me up from school.
I always assumed motherhood would come with that same built-in village — until life moved us 700 miles away from ours.
One year into motherhood, we moved our family from North Carolina to Fairfield County. A few years later, pregnant with my second child and chasing a toddler, the weight of doing life so far from family really hit me. Where does one find friends? How does a casual park conversation actually turn into friendship? It seemed like everyone around me had found their people, but I was floundering.
I wish I could write the perfect “how to make friends you actually like” guide, but truth be told, it’s taken a long time to build our village. We’ve been in Connecticut for over ten years now, and it’s home in every sense of the word. But in that time, we’ve tried on friendships that didn’t quite fit long-term, watched some drift apart through different seasons of life, and said goodbye to a few we thought would last forever. Still, right now, I can honestly say we’ve found our people.
Just recently, I had the opportunity to sneak away for a night with my husband and a few friends, which meant arranging rides for my kids. When I asked one friend to drive my middle daughter to softball, she not only responded enthusiastically, but told me she was proud of us for taking the time away to invest in our marriage and happy to help make it happen. Her response caught me off guard and made me unexpectedly emotional. Ten years ago, I wondered if motherhood would always feel lonely. That one simple text message reminded me just how far we’ve come.
Your village doesn’t always look the way you expect it to. Sometimes it’s your family of origin. Sometimes it’s the friend who answers your SOS text without hesitation, the mom who adds your child to her carpool route, or the person cheering for your kid from the sidelines when you can’t be there yourself.
For a long time, I thought everyone around me had already found their people while I was still trying to figure it out. But what I know now is that friendship in motherhood often grows slowly and quietly. A village isn’t always inherited. Sometimes it’s built over years of showing up, asking for help, and learning to let other people show up for you too.
And somewhere along the way, those people start to feel like family.
