Building the Community You Didn't Have: Making Mom Friends As An Adult
- Aug 4
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 23
Nobody tells you that making friends as an adult is basically dating, except worse, because at least on a dating app everyone agrees on why they're there.
Try to make a mom friend and you're both pretending this is casual while silently doing math: does she have time for this, do our kids get along, am I about to invest six months into a friendship that dies the second one of us gets busy.
I wanted a village. The real kind. Not the Pinterest version where everyone shows up with a labeled casserole and perfectly regulated children. I wanted people I could text at 8pm saying "I am losing my mind" and get a reply that isn't a sad-face emoji and nothing else.
Here's what nobody warns you about: building that from scratch, as an adult, in a new city, while working full time and raising a kid alone, is one of the hardest things I've done. Harder than the divorce, some days. At least the divorce had an end point.
What I actually tried
I said yes to things I didn't want to do. A mom group that met at a coffee shop that played music too loud for actual conversation. A "moms' night" that turned into everyone talking about their husbands, which, cool, glad that's working out. A hobby class I signed up for solo, sat through, and left without talking to a single person because everyone already knew each other.
None of that was wasted. It just wasn't it. Building community isn't one big win, it's a pile of misses you have to get through to find the two or three people who actually stick.
What worked when I looked for mom friends
The people who stuck were the ones I met doing something real, not a "networking for moms" event where everyone's performing okay-ness. A woman I met because our kids happened to be at the same park bench three Saturdays in a row. Someone from an old job who I kept in touch with out of stubbornness more than chemistry, and it turned into an actual friendship. A therapist who mentioned a low-key group thing almost as an afterthought, and that offhand mention turned out to matter more than any structured "meet other moms" event I paid to attend.
The common thread: nobody was trying too hard. The friendships that lasted started small and low stakes. Nobody announced they wanted to be best friends. It just built.
The part I had to get honest about
I spent the first year here waiting for community to find me. Like if I just showed up to enough things, it would click into place on its own. It doesn't work that way when you're the one who moved cities, who doesn't have the built-in network of college friends or family down the street. You have to be the one who follows up. The one who suggests a specific day instead of a vague "we should hang out." The one who's a little bit annoying about it, honestly, because the alternative is nobody ever locks anything in and you stay lonely and polite forever.
That's the uncomfortable truth about rebuilding a village as an adult: it takes more effort than it should, and most of that effort is unglamorous. It's the third follow-up text. It's showing up to something you're tired for. It's being willing to be the person who cares more, at least at first, because someone has to go first.
Where I landed
I don't have the village yet. I have the start of one. A few people I trust, a couple of standing plans, one group text that actually gets used. That's not nothing. That's the foundation.
If you're doing this solo in a new city, or even an old one that stopped feeling familiar after a divorce or a move or a life that just changed shape, here's what I'd tell you: stop waiting for it to happen to you. Pick the thing that feels slightly too vulnerable and do it anyway. Follow up when you don't feel like it. Let some things not work out without deciding that means you're bad at this.
You're not bad at this. It's just genuinely hard, and anyone who makes it look easy either got lucky or isn't telling you the whole story.
Tell me the last time you did something in this city completely alone, on purpose.
