Making Time for Friendship in a Full Life

It has been on my mind to write about female friendships for quite a while now but I found I had an unidentifiable block that kept me from starting – I really just couldn’t place where or how to anchor my thoughts. Perhaps I should listen to this and take it to mean that topics as grand and fruitful as friendship deserve recurring posts whenever the inspiration strikes.

Let’s start here today: making time for friends…

When my mom, sister, and I recently planned one of our beloved mother daughter trips to London, I couldn’t wait. The trip was short, just two nights in London – very doable from the East Coast but short nonetheless – so a little bee buzzed in my head. How can I turn this fun weekend into a fun bender? I texted one of my nearest and dearest who spends the whole summers back home in England with her kids and her family. I asked if she could meet me in London for a night, to which she said, “Yes absolutely yes!” and then asked if I’d be up for going somewhere that was within two hours from London instead. I said, “Yes absolutely yes!”

“Just take the trip!” buzzed through my head. We quickly settled on Mallorca, as I had never been, and the trip took shape - two nights in Mallorca just us girls! We shared a room, drank lots of bubbles, swam in the sea, fell asleep by the pool, talked for hours, ate lots of Spanish food, missed our kids, loved the time together, explored little villages, and thanked each other for saying yes to the trip! London + Mallorca, it was a fun-bender! The happy, positive, glowy, way we made each other feel by creating dedicated time for our friendship became the anchor I was looking for for this post (the same can be said for the dedicated time with my mom and my sister!) -

People want to feel like love is looking for them.

I think about this regularly as a north star sentiment in my marriage. Even years into marriage, we want to feel like love is looking for us through the little, precious ways of showing each other we care. Well, I think the same is true in friendship; people want to feel like love is looking for them through the love and attention of their friends.

On our two nights in Mallorca, Lucy and I kept remarking about how special and meant-to-be this trip was. I couldn’t stop exclaiming my disbelief at my good fortune that in the whole big, beautiful world, I was in such a spectacular place. But it wasn’t just the beautiful location making me feel so grateful. The other week, I got a massage and lunch back home in Charleston with two other girlfriends. Mid-lunch one of them blurted out, “This is the best! Isn’t this the best? I’m having the best time!” because it was true, we were having the best time together just making time for each other.

Love is looking for us in big ways, like with a magical trip, and in small ways, like with a shared lunch. Wherever we are in the world, my friends and I are simply celebrating the effort put into the time together.

I love summer because of the breaks it provides from everything for our kids and for us as adults. As a social person, I even love the breaks from my social calendar. I really like to retreat into my family and to watch everyone get to do the same thing. I really like to go to California for a few weeks, to tap into our friends and family there and feel like I’m living a different life that feels equally natural and right. I really like to go on summer trips with Edwin, another family or two, a girlfriend, or my mom + sister and give whoever I am with all my attention. To be able to truly focus on others without the distractions of what is happening later in the day or where we have to be first thing the following morning is a summertime gift.

But, then! Summer ends, school starts, and my focus turns toward my family in a whole new way – schedules, bedtimes and morning alarms, sports, activities, playdates, fall birthdays. Then again, it’s the rush to Christmas and the busiest time of the year for me work-wise.

How do we, modern women, make time for friends?

As I get more into my 30s, I see clearly that I have less time. My boys are not of the ages to all be in school full days, yet their activities outside of school have picked up. They want to try new things and I want to make myself available and attentive to them to be able to make their curiosities come to fruition.