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Best friends

Posted by on May 6, 2013 in Children, confidence, humour, life, Parenting, single mothers, strength, Uncategorized, women | 5 Comments

Best FriendsEmelia’s birthday party was on Saturday.  My daughter skipped excitedly to her house bearing gifts and hand-made cards.  Emelia is her very best friend, hence her desire to get there early and help get the party started.

When I arrived to collect my daughter up at 6pm, I was expecting to find a gleefully exhausted, face painted child (it was a make-up party).  But what I got was quite different.  A deflated little girl came running into my arms and with tearful eyes and asked to leave immediately.   I recognised that look in her eyes, it was one that I was very familiar with from my own childhood, and even certain times in my adult life.   I wonder if any of you, yes YOU who is reading this blog, would have recognised it as well??

You see, Emelia was allowed to choose 1 friend to sleep over after her Birthday party, and she choose her best friend……………..Lara.  It was only then that my daughter realised that even though she considered Emelia her best friend, Emelia did not feel the same.

That is a slap in the face at any age.  But to see it happen for the first time to my sweet and precious baby girl completely broke my heart. Even now as I write the story, I have tears in my eyes, (which is a bit embarrassing because I am sitting in a coffee shop in Wimbledon).

As a mother, what do you do?

The only thing that I possibly can do….I told her that I was her best friend in the whole wide world, and she would always be mine no matter how much trouble that she will cause in her teenage years.

Not surprisingly, that didn’t seem to help.

She needed someone her own age, a wing-man (girl), a special best friend.  Someone to be by her side as she goes through the hardest parts of growing up, a friend to be silly with and share her secrets.  I am her mother and obviously can never fill that role.

Being a single mom is so rewarding in so many ways, but as my daughter has now experienced, my best friends don’t see me as their best friends.  Namely because they are married and have their husbands to walk through life with them.  As important as I know that I am to my friends, I can never expect otherwise.  I have therefore filled my life in a way that I don’t feel slighted or even upset about this reality.  But my daughter is 8, and she does not yet have the tools ready to protect herself.

I know that she will learn them because I will be her teacher, but in the meanwhile, it is very difficult to go through, and as a mom, so hard to watch.

Thanks for reading,

BTW:  Below is a 3 minute diary log of my journey to quitting smoking.  I am posting this simply to put pressure on myself to actually do it!  Please click to share my suffering  :))

JT