I remember reading an article about friendship that says : the easiest stages to make friends are high school, college and motherhood. I looked back and traced my “friendship timeline”. True enough, I met lots of friends and the most treasured ones during the first two stages. In my almost 3 years as a mother, I have met new friends and hopeful that I will still find more in the years to come.
High school and college life, how exciting, kay saya!
It was the time of solving the simplest to the most complicated problems in life. I got all the help I could get from closest friends, from solving Calculus and Chemistry problems to walking and counting the stars with me during my saddest nights. I found my “friends for life” while planning creative forms of actions against budget cuts in state universities and celebrating in the streets with the whole nation when a corrupt president was forced to resign.
Those were the days when friends were my family away from home. As we grow older (ouch!), our time spent together lessened. My “friends for life” suddenly became busy with their respective lives. Setting chika dates became a challenge. Missing a special barkada event sometimes was necessary to take care of our children’s need first.
My friends became mothers way earlier than I did. They exchanged notes on pre-school choices, summer lessons for their kids while hubby and I were still struggling to conceive our first baby. When I finally became a mom, of course my friends were the happiest and helped me cope with my new role in life.
My first few months as a new mom were spent taking care of our son Rio. I was taong-bahay/bantay-bata/ulirang ina and my precious rest time was spent online. This meant lesser or totally zero time for chika dates with friends. It was then that I decidede to start a blog mainly to chronicle my breastfeeding journey and my son’s milestones. I read a lot of mommy blogs and was able to interact with the bloggers through different online platforms (twitter, instagram, FB).
I missed my “friends for life” but I felt happy sharing my nanay journey with my new online mommy friends. I felt happy because these NFF (new found friends) were also my mommy batchmates, we have almost the same experiences and deal with similar problems.
Motherhood also inspired me to explore new passions and advocacies. I met a lot of “mommy passionistas” who believe that breastmilk is the best for our babies, find bliss in blogging and achieve fulfillment in working from home. These shared passions, experiences and happiness created new friendships that I plan to nurture and keep for a long time.
I am glad that I had the chance to personally meet some of my new found mommy friends in the workshops and seminars I attended. I am looking forward to meeting more mommy batchmates and passionistas in my nanay journey.
To my NFF’s, cheers to motherhood and friendship for keeps!
Nanays, if you want to learn the ins and outs of Wordpress and meet new found friends at the same time, who share the same passion you have ( writing, business, etc), this workshop is perfect for you! Attending this workshop was one of my 2013 highlights. Read here to know why.
NFF! Salamat for the mention! Hope to see u soon!