Our friendship is one for the books. It’s a friendship that mirrors storybooks and has already stood the test of time and distance. We chose each other as friends so long ago I can’t even remember life without you. Nor would I ever want to. 

We’ve been through so much. We’ve celebrated big. About a decade ago, we each fell in love and got married, standing beside one another on each of our special days. So much celebration. We started our new lives with our new husbands.

Then a few years later, right around the same time, we found out we were both going to be mamas. And what a gift, to experience all of those firsts together. We compared baby registries, suggested baby names, waited anxiously for texts from delivery rooms, and cried when we first held each other’s newest little loves. We have photographs of our tiny newborns propped up next to each other. 

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Now those newborns are about halfway to becoming full-fledged adults. They’re smart and brave and kind and hard-headed and opinionated and all the things newborn babies eventually turn into. They’re learning what kind of humans they want to be.

They’re slowly learning how to navigate life on their own as we slowly lift our hands off the steering wheels.

They’re friends with each other and what an insanely special gift that is. Our kids walking through life together as friends.

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But it’s dawned on me that one of these days, one of these kids is likely going to do something hurtful to the other . . . because kids do that. And the offended will come home and share the story. And it would be really easy to rise up and take sides. But I want to state for the record that I’m not playing that game.

No, our friendship will not be defined by the hormone-crazed years of our children.

I don’t know what is to come. I don’t know what scenarios may take place, but this I do know, I’m not walking away from you. 

Because we’ve already decided we’ve chosen each other. And while we chose them for each other before they ever really had a choice, adolescence is messy. And we signed them up to do it together. One of the things I want these kids of ours to see is what it looks like to be loyal. To fight for a person because of who they are, not because of what they’ve done.

So when they butt heads, they will not see their mothers doing the same. They will not have the power to tear down what we’ve built. 

I want to state it upfront and on the record—your friendship is important enough to me that we’re doing this together. Whatever comes as we raise our kids, it will always make more sense to have you as a voice of reason and wisdom. I want to be in your corner, too. Even if our kids aren’t in each other’s for a while. 

Maybe they will be. Maybe they’ll never squabble or fight even once. They’ll get along and have each other’s backs and none of this will even matter. But likely, there will be hurt. There will be betrayal. There will be drama. 

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Because let’s face it, when they were two, there was drama. There was pushing and taking things and sitting in each other’s chairs. There was that one time when someone pushed the other down the slide and oh, remember how the tears flowed? And we played referees for them and corrected them in the moment, restoring the relationship and guiding them back to kindness. But we’re with them less and less these days. They don’t have us nearby to referee every unkind statement or to reign them in when a joke goes too far. 

But if we hold on, then there’s a much greater chance that they’ll hold on, too. They’ll grow up and maybe grow apart, but they’ll always have each other. A gift from their mothers from before they were even born, a relationship that could never be manufactured or bought or replicated. A lifelong friend who never gave up, who stuck it out, and who is always in their corner in this great big world.