Earlier this week I came across this article understanding where moms' time goes when I was on Facebook. It was written 3+ years ago but for whatever recently started making its way through Facebook now. I have been reading the comments about the article with interest and thinking about all of it. At the end of the day, the crux of this article gets to for me is not about being a mom and what that specifically entails, but it is about being empathic to a friend. It is about empathy when a best friend's life circumstances change.
I have thought about the many different situations that I have heard the basic same complain, either from the "friend" or from the person with the circumstance. I have heard and read things of how others are less than understanding when a person with rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, Crohn's disease, chronic pain, can not work or go out and do other activities. I have listened/read how these individuals list out the steps that they personally need to do just to do basic functions. Steps that are different than common, and frequently more time consuming and complicated. Yes, one person with RA might be able to do X, but that doesn't mean another person with RA can do X as well. One mom might have the time to do Y with her friends like she used to, but another mom might not. One person isn't better than another, we all have different life circumstance and deal with things differently.
When Jet has had a long or stressful day at work (or time period at work), he doesn't interact much with others. He comes home, eats, then works on something mechanical alone, then gets ready for bed and sleeps until it is time to go to work again. In a study of contrast, if things are hard at work, I'll talking a mile a minute to Jet (or on the phone to a non-work friend) the second I walk through the door. I will be making plans of something to do with somebody that evening before I go to bed. Neither reaction is "wrong", just different.
I had separately been thinking about a post my high school age niece made on her blog a week or so ago. She was lamenting how her friends don't understand why she can not "just hang out" that much in the school year because of her dance classes. The confusion she was expressing over her relationships with her friends changing because of her lack of time made me sad for her. I wanted to tell her, or really have her figure out, that a relationship is going to change if you used to spend 20 hours a week together, and now you spend 2. All relationships change. While she loves to dance and spend a lot of time at the dance studio, it does have consequences that some are not positive. She might be a better dancer but she won't have as much time for outside relationships and activities. How to say that you need to find balance in your life, a balance that you are happy with living.
So all of these things started to fall together in my mind. Life always means changes. Time and activities and the frequency we do them changes.
The friend in the article isn't particularly someone I would want as a friend. She doesn't show much empathy, and she makes some sweeping generalizations. I have child-free friends who understand when I don't call or do things as much as I used to. They are the same friends (as well as friends with children), who understood when I didn't call and do things when I was busy being the primary care giver for my great aunt in her last days, or when I was dealing with Jet and his problems finishing school, or when I was helping with my dad when he was dealing with cancer. Life circumstances changes, activities change, we change. Our lifelong friends are those people where the relationship also changes to reflect the people that are in it. A friend tries to see the situation from my shoes. And at the end of the day, she shows me some empathy.
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