Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Mom Friends with Haley Wiggers and Mallory Redmond
142 Plays1 year ago
Whether you're a mom or not, this frank and hilarious episode is for you. Haley and Mallory dive deep as they put words to how big and scary the longing inside of us for friends can get. Together, they talk about small, brave steps of connection with the people we find alongside us in similar seasons and places. Whether on the playground, or a college campus, or in the office, we are all longing for a troop to come alongside us in the trenches and to remind us--Yes! You are doing good enough.
Join us for a wonderful dose of compassion and putting yourself out there just a little bit to remind another woman, even a stranger, that she is doing a good job!
For more stories from brave, ordinary women, join us at Red Tent Living.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Theme
00:00:00
Speaker
I'm Tracy Johnson, and this is the Red Tent Living Podcast, where brave women host honest conversations about our beautiful and hard ordinary. This season, we tackle the messy truths of friendship. I'm excited for you to join us. Welcome to our table. This week, we're talking about mom friends, and you get to listen in to a conversation between Mallory Redmond and Hailey Wiggers.
00:00:26
Speaker
I want to just tell you that if you are not a mom or your kids are out of the house and you don't think that maybe this week is going to apply to you, I really want to encourage you to continue to listen because while the conversation is certainly tied to mothering children, the themes and the things that they touch on definitely apply to all of us. So settle in and listen to Mallory and Haley.
00:00:56
Speaker
Hi Mallory. Good morning. How's it going? Good. Good. So we're talking about mom friends today, which I feel like I could have written.
00:01:08
Speaker
50 to 60 very different pieces on this topic. And I was kind of surprised with the direction that mine took. So out of 50 to 60, this is the one that I landed on.
Struggles and Vulnerabilities of Mom Friendships
00:01:19
Speaker
My friendships are long distance because we have moved here and then had kids and I have not connected with very many in-person friends here. And that feels relevant for the direction that I took my piece. So I just wanted to preface it by saying that.
00:01:38
Speaker
My oldest daughter started kindergarten a few weeks ago. On the first day, she hesitantly walked up the steps of the school bus and sat in the front seat, her wide eyes looking out the window at us like a deer in headlights. A mere 24 hours later, on day two, she smiled as she ran up the steps of the bus and sat next to an older student and they started chatting immediately. Both the deer and the headlights were gone. Our girl knew exactly what she was doing.
00:02:05
Speaker
Several days after those initial bus rides, my two daughters made a new friend at the park, as they usually do, and her mom and I briefly made eye contact while the three girls all ran off together. I immediately panicked and before I knew it, had picked up my phone to avoid a conversation with her. We didn't make eye contact again until we were leaving, going our separate ways as our kids hugged goodbye. I still wish I would have had the courage of my kindergartner to approach that fellow mom and begin a conversation.
00:02:33
Speaker
Somewhere between taking my own school bus rides and waving my kid off on hers, making friends has become challenging. Here's my quandary in this stage of motherhood. I'm lonely, but I'm tired. I'm lonely, but I'm scared. I'm lonely, but I'm overwhelmed. I'm lonely, but oftentimes I want to be alone. An auntie was raised for me once I had kids, making it all the more difficult to cultivate friendships.
00:02:58
Speaker
I can pretty much handle big opinions and judgments being made about me, but my kids and how I'm raising them, that's a different story. And there are just so many hot topics that could potentially trigger a fracture in the friendship. Maybe it's one of the sad impacts of being exposed to heated threads on social media. But frankly, I'm scared of what a potential new friend might say regarding what I feed my kids, whether or not I vaccinate them, how I discipline them. The list goes on.
00:03:24
Speaker
The truth is, unlike my daughter cloaked with confidence by her second bus ride, I have very little clue as to what I'm doing raising children. I'm not sure many of us do, which might be why those keyboard warriors go so hard. They want everyone to believe their way is the best way. But regardless, it intimidates me. Parenting is so exposing, and I know that not all of my ways are the best ways. What I need are people in my corner who will tell me that my ways are good enough ways. But how do I find those people when I'm lonely but
00:03:54
Speaker
When I was a bit younger than my brave kindergartner, I was being bold in my own sort of way. I stuck a raisin so far up my nose, my parents had to take me to the hospital for help extracting it. Obviously not wanting to endure the process, I tried to distract the doctors by aggressively kicking and screaming. Eventually they outsmarted me and put me in a straight jacket, slightly different than my daughter's cloak of confidence, and removed the raisin.
Embracing Vulnerability and Longing for Deep Connections
00:04:19
Speaker
When it comes to making and sustaining friendships, I've been doing the opposite of what I'd advise my few friends to do. I back away rather than take the risk and lean in. I don't kick and scream to avoid what's needed, but picking up my phone is just as effective and causing a distraction. I choose what feels safe, loneliness, over what would feel full, friendship, because I don't know that I have the emotional capacity for the hope, effort, and potential loss that relationships call for.
00:04:47
Speaker
But in order to get what I ultimately want, I need to take notes from my raisin extraction. Stay put, be patient, embrace vulnerability, let people in, accept there will be some pain, and be open to looking like a fool. So many of us are lonely, tired, scared, overwhelmed, and without much of a confident idea as to what we're doing in raising these humans.
00:05:09
Speaker
Maybe if I remember that, I can dust off my cloak of confidence, knowing that I may not have everything all figured out. But the more I move towards other moms' corners, affirming their good enough ways and laughing with them as their kids inevitably stick things up their noses, the more my corner may populate with some of the same encouragement and solidarity. Here's to being as brave as kindergartners. That was so good, thank you. Yeah, thank you. I feel like I wrote,
00:05:38
Speaker
so many things down that looks like, yep, yep, that tracks. I feel like what I notice is your capacity to name, like, this is sort of what we're all longing for, but these truly are the real things that get in the way, and they're not bad, but sometimes we have to be aware of them. Like, it's actually a lot harder than it looks, just take the risk, just do the thing. Sometimes it feels like making friends,
00:06:07
Speaker
should just be a plus b equals c and your piece just brought out the nuances that is trying to make friends.
00:06:16
Speaker
It was interesting because as I was writing it and went in this particular direction or found myself going in this direction, I had this like moment where I kind of removed myself from my body and was watching myself and what I was writing and I was like, why is it so hard? Like this seems so simple. In theory, it shouldn't be this hard and in practice, it feels really hard to have the kind of like needy friendships, you know, where you like really get into it with other people and really like share in
00:06:46
Speaker
hardships in your struggles and you know like the real kind of vulnerable relationships because there is something about you know meeting a mom at the park and sitting with them and drinking coffee and talking about whatever but I think what I crave and what many of us really are wanting is the kind of soul friendships and that is so much easier said than done especially in this season of life with you know we both have younger kids mine are
00:07:13
Speaker
almost four and then I have a five-year-old and just like really keeping my head above water over here. It requires a lot and I know every stage of parenting requires a lot in its own way but you know I think most of us would look back and call these like the real trenches and it's so lonely and sometimes that feels like the only option for me. Yeah, you said you had 50 or 60 different versions of what you wanted to write.
00:07:43
Speaker
and that the piece that you ended up sharing, what did it feel like to
Motherhood as a Battleground: Finding Camaraderie
00:07:48
Speaker
read that for you? I actually, to be quite honest, I finished it about 20 minutes before we got on here. I knew the general idea that was coming to me about the difficulty is there's especially something for me. And I have a particular fragility about what people will say about my parenting and my decisions.
00:08:11
Speaker
And I don't know exactly why that is, except there is like this lack of confidence. I don't know. I'm just doing the best that I can. I don't have like a ton of defenses for my decisions. I'm just in some ways kind of winging it. You know, I'm making somewhat educated guesses here, but I am pretty fragile when it comes.
00:08:28
Speaker
to that and so as I was finishing it up and you know that story there was something in me that was like okay I am capable of making friends like I do have the strength in me to put myself out there and to do the work to cultivate friendships and it lit a fire in me writing this and hearing myself read it to like go out there and get the thing that I want. Yeah and it was such a permission for it all to be true and valid
00:08:57
Speaker
you to say like this feels hard because it is hard. Making friends with moms is hard and it feels hard rightfully so and you have the ability to lean in to that even though it's really risky. I loved when you talked about the honest truth that you have very little clue what you're doing when raising children. There have been so many times
00:09:20
Speaker
I have asked that too. I'm like, am I just supposed to know what to do in this scenario? They just send you home with these children. It's wild. Yes. And it's true for every stage. So while your piece truly was about the ache and the hardness of making my own friends, there was so many things you said about parenting that invite others to like, I feel that too. So thank you for that.
00:09:50
Speaker
I feel like I have needed in my own motherhood journey someone to say, I also don't know what I'm doing. Right. Yes. So we can kind of panic together a little bit. I love to just, we're at the park, we make eye contact with another mom where our kids go off and play too. Sort of the unspoken question is like, should we also, like, do we try this? Right. Do we do this? Yeah.
00:10:19
Speaker
Yeah, so that was so good. And then just, I just turned on my phone anyway because it feels safe. That I feel like I'll be processing for a while. That's a really true thing that you named. Yeah, just all of the like emotions. There's joy, there's laughter, there's like some really ridiculous truth that you named. But then there's a lot of that is named for all mothers, I think everywhere. Yeah.
00:10:49
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you so much of motherhood, especially, I mean, human, you know, just the human experience, but particularly in motherhood. It's like, I just want someone to say like, yeah, me too.
00:11:03
Speaker
I mean, I'm not that crazy. I'm not behind. There are people that understand and are in it with me. And so even hearing you say that you resonate, it feels like, okay, there's some solidarity with other women here that I can access if I put myself out there. And that is the work for me right now. Yeah, I hear that.
00:11:34
Speaker
Okay, let's hear what direction you took yours. Okay, I will preface this too. So this piece I was like, I don't know how I super feel about this, but I think in a season of life that has felt pretty heavy and hard and painful for the last like six months, I feel like I need something light. And so this was sort of an attempt at like allowing that to be true for this piece. So there is a battle raging.
00:12:04
Speaker
Every moment of every day a war is taking place. Sometimes there's victory all around. Sometimes a white flag is waved. Sometimes it's the truth. Other times
The Role of Supportive Communities
00:12:16
Speaker
there are no survivors. This battle is not against the powers and principalities of darkness. No. This battle is indeed against flesh and blood. Our flesh and blood. Our children.
00:12:30
Speaker
Moms everywhere, whether by draft or in lifting, get added to the roster. Each morning they close themselves with joggers and a sports bra or no bra at all. Others sift through their closet as quickly as they can so as to get as much sleep as possible. Some wear babies attached to their chest, whether by carrier or by zoo. When their toddlers wake up choosing violence, they break out the reserve, the fruit snacks, the jelly beans, the juice boxes,
00:12:59
Speaker
in order to minimize the chaos and destruction. Their armor consists of solutions for worst case scenarios and some mental army crawling in order to dodge a toddler tantrum that is aiming straight for the heart. Throughout the day, their armor increases with pockets full of goldfish crackers, a used light and spit up on their sleeve, somewhere the armor of sarcasm and humor while dressed in the helmet of anxiety as they think of all the things they need to do while answering emails at work. They take the night watch.
00:13:30
Speaker
and in many cases the day too. On the lookout for middle of the night bathroom trips, or signs of sickness, intrusion, or a stuffy that slipped through the crib cracks. They rolled their sleeves up to take on explosions of all kinds, and believe me, they have seen every type of carnage. Bodily fluids off the wall, day-old milk spilled beneath the car seat, eruptions that left toys and books and Lego parts scattered in every nook and cranny.
00:13:58
Speaker
They wipe snot like five-star generals and are fueled by the scraps of their opponent's lunches. What keeps them going, you ask? Well, on occasion, they get to return to their troop. No, I'm not talking about their spouses or partners. I'm talking about their friends. They meet with their troop and exchange war stories over margaritas or coffee or both.
00:14:24
Speaker
They relive their time on the battleground, sharing combat tips and tricks of the trade. Have you tried Mylacon? Elderberry syrup really helps. Life hacks, smoothies are the best. They patch up each other's wounds and tend to any injuries or broken limbs. My little one was like that too. I'm sorry he's got an ear infection again. You're doing a good job. I'm sorry this feels hard. I'm here for you.
00:14:54
Speaker
They provide encouragement within the battle, a guiding light in the darkest nights, and solace when the days feel unrelenting. They offer freezer meals when you can't go on, laughter when you've been too exhausted to have fun, and play dates so our little opponents can be friends. The amount of times I have returned to my armed and ready mom friends after a really hard parenting day or days, waving my white flag has felt bad.
00:15:22
Speaker
In every season so far of my mothering journey, my friends have helped me navigate what has felt like a battleground with my now three-year-old. They've also helped me see that victory can look different than I expected. And in fact, coming out bruised and broken from the mothering experience is actually normal. My mom friends have helped me lay down my own weapons that I use against myself and my child. The narratives about me as a mom that are unhelpful
00:15:49
Speaker
and the pressure I put on my little one to be the perfect kid. Maybe it's too violent to compare mothering to a war, but it certainly feels appropriate at times. But there is something to our troops, our mom friends, who truly carry us on our gurneys, hold us up when we are weak, and even for a few moments every couple of weeks, offer us a ceasefire for our souls. Oh my goodness, what imagery.
00:16:19
Speaker
I was so with you every single word that you just shared. And you know what? The imagery was coming to me in a Pixar movie. I feel like you just wrote a little Pixar film. My kids were watching Toy Story last night, and so that is fresh in my mind. And so the imagery that you brought to life was a movie.
00:16:44
Speaker
So real. So, so real. There is nothing fictional about this movie. I'm so glad that I went first because I feel like I spoke to the longing and then you are sharing like, this is what it can look like. This is like the beauty and like the horror of the whole experience.
00:17:08
Speaker
can i move there and be a part of your little warrior mom friends group that's what i'm after that is what i need and that's what so many i think that's what so many of us are that don't have that are desiring that and hopefully the ones that do you have it realize how incredibly precious it is because it's.
Authenticity and Connection in Parenting
00:17:29
Speaker
very difficult to do it without the coffee and margaritas. What a gift. Yeah, I feel very deeply, I think, your piece too, like that is a longing. But I think I was writing this too, and my experience into motherhood was whoa, there's this vast pool of people that know. Totally.
00:17:59
Speaker
And while we might not be the spiritual friends, there's an understanding, I think, between all different kinds of moms that is like, oh yeah, that is a lot. Or, yep, I know that, I know that reality very closely. Right. And there's like wisdom there and there's laughter because moms have been there and seen the ridiculousness of parenting.
00:18:29
Speaker
And so it's this like sort of invitation into this army of people everywhere that like, yeah, me too. Right. Right.
00:18:40
Speaker
I've talked about this in previous pieces I've done, just about the authenticity of this is what my life looks like. There's no filters here. This is it. I am in my joggers and there's not a bra today and there's not a shower today or yesterday. This is my life. And being with people who not only will say, okay, you do you, but will be like, yeah, me too.
00:19:03
Speaker
This is my life too or this has been my life or I understand why this is this is your life and just feeling like feeling the freedom to Show up as you are to have people over to your house as it is to let people see your kids Not beyond their best behavior. I mean that's really it's hard to get to that place because we all Subconsciously at least want to look like we have it all together. I was at Target the other night and
00:19:33
Speaker
saw a kind of an acquaintance of mine who has a kid similar age as my youngest and I mean her kid just looks like such an angel on social media and I haven't seen them in a while and I was leaving Target and I heard this like
00:19:52
Speaker
Shrieking and it was the kid and the mom was like dragging the kid to the car and the kid was all sorts and I Wanted to go up to him be like I get it. Whatever we want to show on social media I know that that's just a piece. Yeah, I am with you I have been the mom dragging their kid to the car while they were shrieking like get it and I think so many of us are afraid to be seen by especially people we know but even people we don't know when our kids are acting like that and and so to have the
00:20:20
Speaker
the warrior group of moms around you that say like, let it be, let them scream, let them feel their feelings, be where you need to be, feel how you need to feel, just like the spaciousness that is allowed for in that kind of community is kind of earth shattering. I feel my shoulders dropping as I say that and like an exhale, just that level of freedom to be a mess.
00:20:50
Speaker
freedom
Shared Struggles and Universal Connections
00:20:51
Speaker
to be a mess. I love that story about what you said at Target too. I remember this was I think when Theo was really like a baby sister who's a stay-at-home mom, my older sister, she's visiting and she has two boys and we were in Target also and I just remember we passed a mom who was by herself with her kids in the like not the normal cart, the like bus riding cart that's literally like 10 miles long
00:21:20
Speaker
And her kids were screaming, just kind of like you said, and then she just snapped. And she said something where like, you need to sit down and be quiet. Otherwise we are not blah, blah, blah, something. And they just like stopped. And she walked by us and my sister high fived her. She's like, you go mama. And I was like, what is this?
00:21:43
Speaker
I don't think I quite understood it at the time with a newborn, but as you shared that story, I remember that and I get it now. Yeah. Yeah. So first of all, a couple of things taking away here. Target has seen it all. We know that Target has seen it all. Bless the Isles of Target.
00:22:03
Speaker
moving through the world like your sister where it's like I can reach out even to a perfect stranger and be like I see you because that's what I want. I want to be seen and like affirmed even when my kids especially when my kids are losing it in the middle of target. There is like a level of solidarity amongst moms and it's just whether or not we're going to access it or utilize it. I feel like in both of our stories even though they were
00:22:31
Speaker
different and hit on different minds and desires and realities, there's still a layer of I might not be alone in this. As you read, to hear you name a thing that feels hard, not just for myself, for a lot of people, this is the war that's that rage in all of our lives. So yeah, I like what you said about like leaning into vulnerability and risk and
00:23:00
Speaker
Even if it's not going to be a lifelong friend, just staying like been there, you're doing good, moving into the world in the sense of we're in this together. I think there's a level of like awareness that I want to maintain as I'm moving through the world now to not only like not reach for my phone right away when my kids make a friend at the park, but also walking through the world with the imagery that you
00:23:28
Speaker
There's like this team or like these warriors of mothers that are more connected than we might like to think. That imagery is going to kind of guide me throughout my days as I see other moms be like, okay, we're on the same team. We're on the same team. We're trying to keep kids alive. We're trying to raise decent human beings. We're doing the same thing. We're in the
Loneliness, Judgement, and Seeking Solidarity
00:23:50
Speaker
same mess. We're in the same trench.
00:23:53
Speaker
I can reach out and honor that. I'm reminded, too, I think I do have in-person connections. And sometimes I'm really guilty of thinking, I don't need any more friends, or I don't really want to go the extra mile because I feel like I have enough. But I think being reminded of how can I also invite others into that? Hailey, you're doing good enough. You, too.
00:24:19
Speaker
Good enough for her. Keep it up. Good enough. Thank you. Yes, thank you, Hailey.
00:24:27
Speaker
I just loved this episode. And while I found myself taken back to the years when I was mothering young kids, I found myself very much up in the here and now in my life today. I really resonated with Mallory's words at the beginning when she talked about being lonely but tired, lonely but scared, lonely but overwhelmed, lonely but I just want to be alone. I thought,
00:24:56
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of us have known that kind of space. And also, I found myself resonating just with the theme of judgment. And while she was talking about judgment around how she's mothering, I think we all know what it feels like to be at the receiving end of just the myriad of places of what I'm going to call toxic judgment that are out there for all of us about how we're
00:25:26
Speaker
living our lives and where maybe we're doing the best we can, but it just feels like it's falling so short. I loved the theme and they both brought it up of just this desire and need to have friendship that comes with the message of, yeah, me too, and maybe I also don't know what I'm doing. And there's some sort of freedom to be a mess in the middle of that.
00:25:55
Speaker
I think that soul friendships are what we long for and Mallory and Hailey talked about that. And I think we long for havens, places of respite and belonging. And I think that's what we want to find in friendship. And I found myself thinking that I want to be so mindful of how I'm not just looking for that, but that I'm bringing it to the women that I am in relationship with.
00:26:21
Speaker
And then the last thing that I'm taking away is solidarity. It feels like such a good and important word. And I want to be thinking about how can I be cultivating solidarity? How am I offering it to the women around me? How am I inviting it?
Conclusion and Community Engagement
00:26:38
Speaker
And what would it mean if we begin to bring more of that to one another? So those are my takeaways for this week. I'm sure you have your own. Again, it felt like such a rich episode.
00:26:53
Speaker
The Red Tent Living podcast is produced by Katie Stafford. Our cover art is designed by Libby Johnson and our guests are all part of the Red Tent Living community. You can find us all at redtentliving.com as well as on Facebook and Instagram. If you love the stories shared here, we would be thrilled if you left us a review. Until next week, love to you, dear ones.