Friendships in Motherhood
The challenge of making new friends. The sadness of letting old ones go.
Hello Restless Ones,
I hope you’re having a fine old week,
I’m feeling excited today because we are off on HOLIDAY. Wahoooo!
Yes our first full-fam trip ever. It’s to the Canary Islands and a sports resort that my family have been going to for decades.
It’ll be Rocky and Jupiter’s first time abroad (cuttttee!). I am planning for chaos. And then anything less than chaos will surely be a bonus.
So a heads up, because of the holly bobs, that there won’t be a post next week. I ummed and arred about doing one but in the spirit of self care, I want to be as present as possible on this first fam trip abroad.
Now, to this post… Friendships.
It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. I’ve been considering who I want in my life, who I give energy to, who gives me energy — all of that stuff.
I’d love to know where you’re at with your friendships - let me know in the comments and let’s have a good old natter about it.
Until next time - big love,
Anna xx
On Friendships in Motherhood
It was the autumn of 2010. I was 26 years old and suffering from a broken heart after a five-year relationship had ended. And it didn’t end well.
I did at least have good friends. Many of which were helping me steadily pick up the pieces of my life and put them back together.
During a dinnertime conversation with one of those good friends, Ed, he mentioned he was looking to buy a home, but couldn’t afford it on his own.
I had some money that my grandparents had left me when they’d passed away — a pot of change that matched Ed’s — so in a bold move that neither of us saw coming; we clubbed our funds together, got a mortgage and bought a crumbling two-bed, Victorian terrace house in southwest London.
I say house; it was more like a flat, really. Tiny London homes and all that.
I bought a giant red sofa which only just about fitted in the living room (which I loved but Ed thought was ridiculous); we converted the downstairs front room into a third bedroom to rent out for extra cash and we moved in.
The plan, as far as I can remember, was to ‘get on the ladder’. To do the house up and be sensible and grown up homeowners.





The first step in the renovations was to spruce up the kitchen because the existing one was verging on feral and seemed to be an open invitation to all the mice in the area to come on in and set up home.
So we got ourselves down to the Magnet Kitchens showroom and splashed the cash on a brand spanking new kitchen.
I remember that buying that new kitchen made me feel quite suffocated. Itchy even. So, in order to make the purchase more exciting, I convinced my mum to show me how to DO tiling (she is queen of tiling among many other D.I.Y things).
Together, we tiled the kitchen. It was a lovely mother-daughter bonding experience and (despite all my tiles being on the wonk) we had soon created a white, fully grouted work of art that would stand for decades to come.
Three months later, Ed called while I was at work.
‘Fanny…’ (this is Ed’s nickname for me) ‘You’re not going to be happy with me.’ he said.
‘What have you done?’ I asked.
‘The kitchen burned down.’ He said, as if it had just happened, spontaneously by some mystical external force.
‘What?!’
‘The kitchen.’
‘How?!’
‘Well, I put some sausages on the grill…’
‘Yes?’
‘And then…’ he paused.
‘Yes… Ed, what did you do?’
‘I fell asleep.’
‘Of course you did.’
I returned home to find our beautiful new kitchen worktop burned and bubbled; blackened tiles hanging off and smoke marks covering the once white walls and ceiling.
Some of it was salvageable. Most of it was not. In the end, the renovation was an expensive exercise evicting the mice.
And yet, Ed and I didn’t fall out over the kitchen inferno.
We never even fell out over the red sofa.
One year into our attempt at being home owners, we were still going strong as grown-ups.
Then I quit my job to cycle 11,000 miles through every state of America, and Ed decided he wanted to ride a motorbike from London to Australia.
It seemed like our attempts to be extra responsible had completely backfired. We both realised that we were allergic to adulting and have been even better friends ever since.
I tell you all of this because I’ve been thinking a lot recently about friendships.
The ones, like Ed’s, that I hold dear, the ones I’ve lost over the years. Those I cling to, those I have let go and those who have let me go.