Ask Neha: ‘Help! I’ve Lost My Two Best Friends Since Taking a Career Pause for Motherhood’

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Dear Neha: Losing my two best friends has been isolating since taking a career pause, as they don’t find me relatable anymore. I’ve found my (new) village, but it’s still sad to think they ended a lifelong friendship over the best decision for my family. I’m wondering if anyone has experienced this or has advice.

Navigating a friendship drift is always challenging, especially when it hinges on deeply personal decisions. I emphasize the magic word *personal* because as I’ll explain, it’s crucial for understanding your friends’ reactions and might help us all with mutual respect in supporting each other’s choices as our lives evolve.

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Let me also say that in polling our community at Mother Untitled, this topic does not discriminate, and women, whether they work full-time out of the home, are on a career pause, or exist in between, have experienced a version of this. 

Sometimes, it’s simply a matter of logistical hurdles. For instance, Lily, a mom of two outside of Chicago, shared how her child-free friends in the city continued with their lives, creating barriers of time and distance in their relationship. However, proactive efforts like scheduling even quarterly meetups or maintaining communication through text threads can help bridge these gaps. It’s also natural for friendships to ebb and flow, potentially rekindling when circumstances align. Danielle Bayard Jackson, author of Fighting For Our Friendships, told me that the typical lifespan of a friendship is around seven years. I can get nostalgic about friendships from different eras, so knowing it’s normal helped ease that weight.

Sometimes, though, it’s deeper layers of judgment or jealousy, which might have been in your experience with your two friends. I assign credit (blame?) to the outdated narrative of “the mommy wars” that have for too long pitted women against each other and had us absorb the flawed belief that one choice is better than the other — and worse, that a woman choosing to do it her way threatens our way. 

We know now that there is no one right choice in work and family besides what keeps the primary caregiver whole and fulfilled. Research shows that a parent can achieve optimal presence regardless of how many hours they spend with their child each day and optimal fulfillment irrespective of how many hours they spend independently on work or other activities (Friedman). Research aside, this decision is deeply personal to us and our families based on unique children’s needs, parents’ wants, family systems, career demands, finances, and more. Unfortunately, ingrained societal conditioning may lead some women, your friends included, to feel more separate in their choices. 

If these friendships are important to you — and there haven’t been any judgemental remarks but rather a lingering tension — you might consider arranging a gathering for the three of you and share how you’re feeling and how much you admire and support their decision and own your own choices as well.  However, if the relationship feels more laden with judgment at the time, know that motherhood and work bring up many intense feelings that don’t reflect on you but rather your friends’ discomfort. In time, as they get more comfortable, you may just find your way back to one another.

Hopefully, the chasm between your friends may be a sense of simply not understanding one another’s day-to-day. Even in the last eight years of motherhood, I’ve gone from part-time work to full-time at-home to running my own business. I’ve had varying degrees of help, from my husband taking over the mornings to part-time babysitting to full-time school. And it was all immense, fulfilling, and taxing, and it was all right for me and my family in those seasons. Our generation of women is the most likely to be ever-evolving and ever-shifting. A woman may be pausing her career, returning to her job, or shifting into flexible work or entrepreneurship. We all benefit from learning from one another and embracing a new narrative that work and family are long, fluid games, that we are all doing our best, and that there is no one right way.  

So if a friend is making a different choice than you in the work, family, and support equation, I challenge you to ask about her day. We all have a lot to learn; we are all mothering, working, and evolving, hopefully, more together than apart. 

Every Mother Works is a new monthly column by Mother Untitled founder and The Power Pause author Neha Ruch that examines — and reframes — the working mom v. stay-at-home-mom dynamic.

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