To the dozens of young women writing about how their moms are their best friends:
I'm genuinely happy for you! That you have such great relationships with your moms is wonderful, especially when I've heard from so many of my friends that their relationships with their mothers are pretty strained. It's great to have a best friend built right into your family. But my situation is quite different.
While not, in fact, true for me, I was scrolling through pictures and this made me laugh.
I'm lucky enough to have more than one "best friend," but I don't count my mom among them. That probably sounds a little sad initially, but I'll tell you why: I talk to my best friends about things I wouldn't talk to my mom about (e.g., things that would be weird to talk to my mom about, like "Look at [insert actor's name here]'s butt in that movie scene! WOW!" or something she wouldn't get, like video games. Also other things, but you know. Those). Sometimes my mom gets on my nerves (sorry, Mom, but I know I get on yours, too), and I talk to my friends about it. They not only help me sort through my feelings so I can approach the subject with a level head, but they give me the courage to actually bring it up with my mom if it's something that really needs to be addressed.
This isn't to say that my mom and I don't have a special relationship, because we absolutely do: she confides in me often, and trusts me with a lot. I think in many ways she sees me as an equal, at least on a mental and emotional level, and that means a great deal to me, especially since a lot of people still look down on me just because I'm younger than they are. But my mother is still my mother and will still do many of the things one might expect a mother to do (and that best friends generally don't): she makes sure I'm on top of my schoolwork (I usually am, and I tell her when I'm not, but she still does, even though I'm in college), she reminds me to eat dinner because she knows I forget sometimes, and she calls me to make sure I'm safe. Even if I've spent the whole day at my student apartment. Inside. Catching up on sleep and TV shows I've missed.
My mom is my mom. When I was growing up, she scolded me like a mom does. I bet she still would (if she had cause to, which generally she doesn't). We had our differences then and we have our differences now. I don't look at her as my "best friend," I look at her as my mom, because that's what she is. But I don't have to look at her as my best friend to love her, and I don't know what I would do without her.
