Motherhood can be a lonely endeavor. However fulfilled we are with our children and jobs and families, we are often without meaningful adult conversation for hours or days at a time. The most common complaint I hear from fellow moms is how hard it is to make new and genuine friends—the ones that allow and encourage you to really open up. These moms can be hard to identify at first, but they are around. So when you start to hang around the baristas at Starbucks, asking how they really feel about the new mocha-caramel-peppermint-pumpkin latte, it’s time to work on finding new mom friends with whom you can relate, rejoice, commiserate, and be your frazzled, cranky, delightful self.
These seven tips may not be fool-proof, but at least you’ll be interacting with people who are not paid to have to talk to you. All you have to lose is a little pride and possibly a lot of bottled up confessions about this crazy thing called motherhood.
1. Determine your most important criteria for your new mom friends. Remember that nobody is perfect, so you may have to compromise. Here are my list tops: Did you see last night’s Dateline? and, Is that a bottle of wine stashed in the bottom of your stroller?
2. Approach all potential new mom friends with an intriguing opening line. I have found that “#$@% I was close to putting the kids out on the street with nothing but a bag of Oreos this morning,” weeds out the women who can’t stomach cursing or hyperbole. (This also weeds out moms who will judge your breakfast food choices.)
3. Know how to interpret responses: Is she dialing 911? Best to keep moving. Silence. Don’t give up. She may be recalling the last time she locked herself in the bathroom with a pint of mint chocolate chip. Nervous laugh. This can be a good sign. She hasn’t met anyone like you. (Just ease up now on listing all the places you’d be happy to leave your children.) *&%^ yes, me too! Congratulations, you met your soul mate.
4. Bond over clothing or accessories you have in common. “I have those SAME yoga pants,” works for me. This is similar to recognizing gang colors, I am told. (Hair scrunchies, head bands, and cardigans with pockets are also easy items to spot; you are likely wearing two of these items at any time.) Approach one potential friend at a time. In other words, separate your prey from the pack. Groups of moms are difficult to crack. Wait until one is left behind at the playground. She won’t see you coming.
5. If you are lucky enough to have a child melting down in public, gauge the reactions of the moms around you. The one extending a fist-bump is your gal.
6. Be persistent. If your first attempt leaves you disheartened, try again. Try with ten or twenty women until you find one mom who, like you, is waiting for someone to share embarrassing stories and frustrations and laughs that accompany raising little beings.
7. Give someone an opening to tell you how she dosed the kids with Benadryl after the third sleepless night. Nod if someone tells you she often pretends that tantruming child in the grocery store aisle is not hers. In the meanwhile, enjoy your status as the weird mom who makes everyone a little uncomfortable. Know that all the other moms secretly envy your courage to be honest (and probably your yoga pants).
Mama One to Three 
Love #5! I’m past the point of seeking new “mommy” friends; however, as a grandmother of two young girls I’m always on the outlook for new “granny” friends.
ha thank you Judy. and yes, granny friends are just as important!!
this is so good!! Love. Laughing out loud at the fist bump xoxo
thank you, love! we all need laughs and fist bumps.
I always feel kind of like a grapefruit spoon around other sugar spoon moms. This is brilliant.
mmmm. totally. still and always. finding the others that admit the same is golden! xo to you.
Okay but this means that I actually have to TALK to other people. Not sure how to go about this….
when there is wine, the talking comes easier! xo
My new problem is I am that weird mom with the blog, because I am getting recognized more and more lately.
that too can be a great opener!!
My daughters are now 20 and 22 and two of my best friends are women I met when my oldest daughter was three. Wine was a common bond. Being older moms was another one. We were the quirky, loose, less uptight mothers. Our kids ran around playing while we shared wine and potluck suppers. It was hard to find each other, we had to feel each other out. But the awesome thing is, once you find each other, you are friends for life and you know the back story. When your kid walks away from a college scholarship and a D-1 sports team halfway through sophomore year to be a ski bum and your friend’s son gets a 1.5 GPA his freshman year and flunks out, you hug and laugh and pour another glass of wine and don’t have to pretend to be perfect. You remember that day in pre-school when they took off across the playing fields of Phillips Exeter Academy and the teacher had a fit and you knew somewhere in your heart your kids were as quirky as you and they wouldn’t be going to PEA for high school, which seemed to be the dream of every other mother on that playground that day, and they’d be okay. And so would you. Mom friends like that are priceless and friends for life. Motherhood is a bumpy, winding road and we all need friends. Trust me.
love this. thank you. we all need friends with whom the laughter and tears flow comfortably. And the wine when needed, of course. thank you.
Ha ha! I love #5. No one has ever fist-bumped me during a kid tantrum. What is wrong with people?!?
right Elaine?!
Love it Wendy, as always. Been there. xo
thank you so much Amy love.
I love this! I am that mom trying to chat up the coffee ladies, sigh. I’m in dire need for friends, ones that I can relate to and enjoy, not simply endure because of play dates.
So glad to have found your blog through that wonderful article you wrote on What to Expect about wanting to be softer (found via twitter). I have a rather similar problem. Lately, I’ve been trying to follow my own advice about using “a loving voice” that I am near constantly saying to my daughter who barks out commands not unlike her mother…
Thank you so much Dana! Please don’t lose hope- you’ll find your forever tribe. So many women are looking for laughs and brutal honesty. Keep putting yourself out there.
I’m totally fist bumping the next mom whose child has a meltdown in my vicinity. Love this.
I love this! True about the group being hard to crack.
So funny!