Connect Magazine | Page 12

Th e D rea m Fri e n dsh i p Do you have a dream for your future? I do, I’ve always been a dreamer; I’ve held this vision of my dream life for so long now, in the beginning it was bigger than me, but now it has become part of me and I know any day now it will become my reality. The path to creating that dream life hasn’t always been smooth and there have been times when I’ve felt like giving up but there is one thing that kept me going and that was friendship. Although I have many friends I only have a handful of very close, true, loyal friends that I know I can rely on fully and they are all that I need. These are the women that I turn to when I need support, encouragement and a shoulder to cry on, these are the women that delight in my highs and hold me up in my lows. These women are my rocks. When the voice inside my head tells me ‘you’re not good enough’ it’s these women that tell me I am. When I start to doubt my dream and wonder if I can ever make it, it’s these women that tell me ‘just keep going; everything happens for a reason’. When things are tough and I need an ear to really listen it’s these women that do so without judgement. For me a true friendship is built on honesty, love, trust and belief in each other. When you have a friend with this kind of connection life is so much easier, especially the journey of motherhood. For most of us, motherhood has been a lifelong dream, but it’s not always that serene, blissful vision that we held. Motherhood tests us in many ways and sometimes it can feel like a never ending battle and it’s these times, these times when we are exhausted from the night waking’s, the early starts, the late nights, the hectic days, it’s these times we need our friendships the most because it’s in those connections that we 12 find hope, comfort and support. It’s in those connections that we realise that we are not alone, our challenges maybe different but we are there for each other. A true friend doesn’t judge or compare, she’s listens and offers her best pearls of wisdom, she whispers ‘you’re good enough’ and sometimes that’s all we need to hear. Throughout my mothering journey and the path to creating my dream life I have had my ups and downs; I have battled post-natal depression, self-loathing and self-doubt, the inner critic in my head became so loud that I couldn’t hear anything else. I’m no longer in that place, I turned the self-loathing into self-love, doubt into belief and learnt to ignore that inner critic and listen to my heart and soul and all along that path of transformation my friends were there, not always physically as some of them live many miles away, but they were there like angels holding me gently on their wings and whispering ‘I am hear for you’ and it was their honesty, their love, their trust and belief in me tha