There was a period — about three years into having two children and one miscarriage — where my entire social world had collapsed to: my husband, my kids, my mother on the phone, and the parents at school pickup I smiled at but did not actually know.

I told myself I was fine. I was busy. Friendships are hard to maintain with small children. Everyone understands. Everyone is in the same boat.

What I did not acknowledge was how lonely I actually was. Not the dramatic, obviously suffering kind of lonely. The quiet kind. The kind where you are surrounded by people who need you and still feel, at the end of the day, completely unseen.

‍ ‍What Happens to Friendships When You Become a Mother

Some friendships survive the transition into motherhood easily — usually the ones with other mothers, who are also in the trenches and understand implicitly why you cancelled twice in a row and showed up to the third attempt looking like you dressed in the dark.

Others drift. Slowly, without drama. The single friends whose life runs on a different clock. The friends back in India you always mean to call and somehow never do because the time difference and the exhaustion conspire against you. The friendships that required proximity and spontaneity and you have neither anymore.

And then there is the friendship with yourself — with the version of you that existed before you became someone's mother. That one drifts too. You stop doing the things you did for pleasure. You stop thinking of yourself as someone with preferences and passions and a point of view that has nothing to do with school schedules and nap times. Slowly, quietly, you become more role than person.

"Slowly, quietly, you become more role than person. The friendship with yourself drifts too."

The Hobbies I Quietly Abandoned

I used to read. Really read — a book a week, sometimes more, staying up too late because the story would not let me go. I used to write, not for any purpose, just because it made me feel like myself. I used to dance, nothing formal, just in the kitchen when a good song came on, unself-consciously.

These things did not disappear dramatically. They just got pushed back, one busy day at a time, until I looked up one day and realised it had been a year since I had done any of them. And the loss felt bigger than I expected — because those things were not hobbies. They were how I knew who I was.

I think this happens to so many mothers and we don't talk about it honestly because admitting it feels like saying you are not grateful enough for your children, which is not what it means at all. You can love your children deeply and also grieve the parts of yourself that have gone quiet. Both are true.

Coming Back to Yourself

The way back is not dramatic. It is small and it is slow and it requires the same consistency you would give anything that matters.

I started reading again ten pages at a time before bed. Ten pages is nothing. Ten pages is everything when you have not read in a year. I remembered, within three nights, why it mattered to me. The part of my brain that goes quiet when I read — the planning, worrying, managing part — exhaled. I had missed that.

I started writing again. Nothing publishable, just the thinking-on-paper kind. It reminded me that I had thoughts that were mine, not tasks or concerns or things that needed to be done. Just thoughts. That felt important.

I called a friend I had been meaning to call for months. We talked for two hours. I laughed — actually laughed, not the polite kind — at something she said. I realized I had not done that in a while. Real laughter, the kind that comes from being known.

What Friendships Require Now

Adult friendships in this season require intentionality in a way they did not when you were twenty-three and lived near each other and could just show up. You have to schedule the coffee. You have to send the voice note even when you do not have a specific reason to. You have to sometimes push through the inertia of a full week and show up anyway.

But when you do — when you are sitting across from someone who knew you before you were a mother, or who knows you now in all your complexity, and they are looking at you like you are a whole person rather than a function — something in you settles.

That settling is not a luxury. It is medicine.

The Woman Under the Mother

She is still there. The one who had taste and opinions and a laugh that happened easily and things she cared about that had nothing to do with anyone else.

She does not need to be recovered all at once. She just needs a few minutes a day, a few hours a week, to remember she exists. A book. A call. A song played loudly in the kitchen. A small act that says: I am still here. I still matter to myself.

That is where it starts. That is enough.

thecozydesimom.com | Self Care Love Corner