Enter baby, exit buddy. In the musical chairs of new motherhood it’s usually the best friend who loses her seat first. But how about friends who cross that threshold together? Isn’t their relationship cemented by induction into the secret sorority of maternity? Well, not when Big Mother chews them up and spit them out in opposite directions. Parenting differences can stir up self-doubt and fear of criticism, turning best friends into strangers.  But is this motherhood gap really impassable? 
         Not if you look a little deeper. Under the surface disparities every mother experiences the same central conflict. A subliminal Clash of the Titans between Personhood and Parenthood: the battle between who she’s “supposed to be” and who she really is. Once friends discover this common ground, they can close the gap. 

     So how do you hold onto friendship when motherhood’s tearing you apart?

1. Break the taboo that forbids negative feelings about motherhood. Even denial can't keep "unaccepatble feelings" from erutping. The more you can accept your darker feelings as normal and harmless, the less your friend's choices will stir up your anxiety.

2. Trust the common ground beneath your differences. Your parenting styles may be polar opposites, but at a deeper level you probably both want the same thing: to be understood and accepted as you really are.

3. Don't blalme yourself for having negative feelings toward her. Feelings don't hurt people. You're entitled to all the feelings motherhood brings up --those involving your child, your spouse, your friend. Parenting differences can cause friction--and feeling distant from a close friend can be unnerving. We may pull away out of fear of condemnation. The key to reunion is not so much her acceptance of your parenting, but your own self-acceptance (sometimes harder to obtain). Because opposites attract, one of you will probably do the lion's share of fence-mending. That's not really unfair. It's natural.

4. Nonjudgmental validation supports her quest for self-awareness and reinforces it for you. We rarely want advice no matter how confused we seem. In fact, the more confused we are, the less useful extrenal advice will be.

5. Follow the Prime Directive form Star Trek: Don't let your value system interfere in the self-determination of another planet's culture. Now that you've become parents, you don't live on the same planet anymore. You're each contending with  different gravities, geological activity, atmospheric pressures and life forms. One gal's dilithium crystal is another gal's kryptonite.

6. Relax in the knowledge that she has her story and you have yours. Long complicated, fascinating stories brought you each to this specific moment. Srories with so many factors, causes, consequences and interconnecting effects, they defy complete understanding. The dicomfort you feel about her choices is more a resource for your own enlightenment than hers.

7. Remember every friendship wasn't meant to last a lifetime. Sometimes the crucible of motherhood transforms us so dramatically we don't fit into previous relationships anymore. Sometimes it reveals core differences between old friends that were camouflaged or overlooked. Only we know whether to choose to let go of thsoe relationships or work to transcend the differences.

Like marriage and parenthood, friendship is bigger than the individuals involved. We enrich our humanity when we rise to the challenge of reconciliation. But there's also value in owning the darker feelings we're not so proud of. It takes both to make a friendship whole.

B R I D G I N G   T H E   M O T H E R H O O D         G       A       P

The strange Ro-Sham-Bo of

Parenthood, Personhood and Sisterhood

     They're seething in the audience and growling on Dr. Phil's stage. Next door on Oprah a panel of sobbing sinners endures a stoning by self-righteous traditionalists. And Dr. Laura divides and conquers It's heart-pounding domestic drama that rivals any episode of All My Children. Smackdown action in the steamy ring of parental correctness as dogmas duke it out. And outraged viewers play the at-home version.  It sizzles. It smokes. And it sells.  But what does it really signify?

     Is there really a Motherhood Gap between parents of disparate ideology, circumstance or children? And if there is, is the division really so impassable?

     Personalized Parenting originators Linda Cohen and Joan Bechtel chant a harmonious "No!" Yet ten years ago they might have whimpered a defeatist: "Absolutely!" That was when motherhood was tearing them apart.  Their 180 degree opposition in parenting philosophy and family style, their diametrically opposed social and cultural environments, even their childrens dramatically different personalities were quickly loosing the ties that bind. 

     By the time their children were two and four, their friendship was all but over-- simply because they had become mothers. Wasn't Motherhood supposed to unite women in a secret sisterhood?

     More often than not, it drives them apart.

     Different mothering choices seem to fracture common ground and alienate friends on either side of a motherhood gap. She breast feeds, you bottle feed, she goes back to work in three weeks, you stay home for fourteen years. But is diversity really at fault? If motherhood actually delivered the hardy self-confidence glorified in popular mythology, there might be no motherhood gap. Because it's not differences that alienate, but fear of those differences. Big Mother Is Watching!

     That fear begins in a deeper chasm. The psychological rift inside every mother. The gap between who she thinks shes "supposed to be" and who she really is. The personhood/parenthood gap.

     "I'm not sure," is not the answer we want when were responsible for another life. Self-doubt can be interpreted as weakness or failure rather than a vital key to personal truth. When mothers disagree, fear of being wrong creates anxiety and the need to judge. If I'm doing it one way and she's doing it the other, one of us has to be wrong.

     And the self-doubt that could be our guiding light to what we really believe becomes a weapon against ourselves and others.

     For Cohen and Bechtel, motherhood brought on an assault of conflicting mandates and an avalanche of self-condemnation. During those early years both mothers floundered. In very different ways. Both sure that what they were doing or even feeling and thinking was probably wrong. Perhaps even blasphemous. (There are so many feelings were not supposed to have about pregnancy and parenthood!) So they struggled to squeeze themselves into their separate but equally painful Procrustean beds of proper parenting. Joan seemed to require some lopping off of excessive over-protection, while Linda felt she deserved a little elongation of her undersized maternal guilt.

     And they might have continued to try to fix themselves if they hadn't realized what was happening to their friendship.  "We were talking less and less, and not just because Joan couldn't put her baby down or because I was off at one of my frequent girls' nights out," Cohen remembers. "We had such different points of view, different perspectives, different circumstances. We both felt inadequate as mothers and even more inadequate as friends because we just didn't get each other's parenting.  We became afraid to talk to each other. Afraid of admitting things to someone who might disapprove and whose approval we desperately needed." 

     It was only when they began to see how this was affecting their deep friendship that they took a risk.

     "We discovered that underneath all the disparate issues that seemed to separate us, there was something bigger that united us," explains Cohen. "And that was our common ground. The real conflict we were both dealing with was the one every mother faces. The one between who we think were supposed to be and who we really are.

     "As long as we strive for some external model of perfection we continue the cycle of failure, low self-worth and judgmentalism. It's like trying to squeeze yourself into a tiny Perfection Suit. What do you do with all the parts of you that dont fit? How do you shed all those ugly pounds of wisdom, awareness and self-actualization you've gained over the years?  Well, that's where psychological liposuction comes in. Repression, displacement, denial, projection. The old stand-bys for coping with undesirable psychological elements. "

     Once we recognized that we were both miserable trying to wear the Perfection Suit, we could really start hearing each other. Until then, when Joan talked about homeschooling or her dependent child, I just wondered what I had to offer her. I didn't get it and I wasn't even sure I approved. I'm sure she felt the same way about my choice to go back to work when Jack was three weeks old. But now we had a starting point."

     "Linda could never feel guilty like mothers are supposed to," explains Bechtel, "so she used to say she felt she was from another planet, and I realized the truth is-- we all are. No one else can really understand the dynamics you're dealing with, internal or external. That's where the Star Trek Prime Directive fits in:  Don't impose your value system on another world. Don't interfere in another culture's self-determination. Only Linda knows what's best for her and her child. She doesn't need my advice, but she can use my support in her struggle to distinguish between who she's "supposed to be" and who she really is.

     If one size really does not fit all, then women may not be as divided as the media might portray. It's just that when women are divided against themselves they appear divided against each other.  Good for the talk show circuit. Not so good for our slowly evolving humanity.

     Maybe parenthood and personhood are not as volatile a combo as matter and anti-matter. In fact they're part of the same organic whole--the individual. Rather than a top-down system, authentic parenting comes from the inside. And if there's one thing that unites all those so-called opposing motherhood factions it's that they are all made up of individuals with unique needs and circumstances.

     Here's where judging, defensiveness, and shame get off, and self-acceptance, validation and compassion get on.