My friends acknowledge me as “the mom friend.” The one who has snacks in her purse, check for fevers, and makes everyone text her once they’re safely home. I love being the mom friend, because my friends mean the world to me. Yet, like real moms, mom friends need to take sometime for themselves. I’m starting to realize this myself.

Mom friends deal with a lot of drama. Bullying, friendships breaking up, friends arguing, social media sub-posts, etc. We often play peacekeeper, mediator, guidance counselor, and therapist for all of our friends at once. Mom friends are also very selfless. They put the needs, wants, and feelings of everyone in their friend group before themselves, and doing this makes life harder and harder on the mom friends out there. You start dancing around everyone’s feelings so no one gets hurt, yet you don’t want to recognize there is sometimes no solution to make everyone happy. It is nothing but stressful.

Recently, I was attempting to fix a situation with my entire friend group. I was doing the same things; dancing around everyone else feelings and wants, trying to put the pieces together so everyone could be happy. My Phoebe finally told me to snap out of it and asked me what I wanted. I didn’t even know how to answer the question.

I thought about it. Eventually, I came up with what I wanted and told the group. It is not selfish to want in return. I used to think it was really selfish to ask for what I wanted. Yet, if you take care of your friends and care about your friends the way I do with mine, putting your opinion in and insisting on it is not selfish. It’s time they recognized you for moming them for so long, and start caring about you as their friend.

If you are a mom friend dancing around feelings, taking care of everyone, and somehow putting all the drama pieces together day after day, I applaud you. I am also here to tell you that you also matter. Being the mom friend sometimes means being the only glue holding together the group of your rambunctious, dramatic, lovable children-friends. You work too hard for your friends for them not to recognize you, and if you have to make them realize, so be it. I wish you luck, and don’t forget you’re low on snacks.

This Sunday is also my mom's birthday. This one's dedicated to her, for teaching me how to be a good mom friend, too.