I’m sitting here this morning with so many emotions running through my mind. Not ‘bad’ emotions, just… emotions.  I’m fully aware that friendships change over the course of years, life changes, personal decisions, etc. But what I’m having a hard time with today, is the thought of losing a friendship that I’ve had for many, many years because of an addition to my life. Because of a blessing to my life. Nobody likes ‘losing’ friends or drifting apart — there’s nothing fun about that.

When you get married, you’ll notice some of your friendships may change. Mostly because if your unmarried friends can’t relate to this new partnership in your life, or the feeling of being a team with somebody else and making life decisions together, they’ll distance themselves from you without even knowing it. Because the thought of being married and being a team with another person is so foreign to them that they can’t stand to be around others who believe in such an amazing concept.

When you have children, you’ll notice some of your friendships will change. Mostly because your friends that don’t have children (usually) can’t understand the immense love and deep connection you have to this new addition to your life. They’ll get upset that you don’t have the same amount of time to spend with them, and they’ll distance themselves from you, again, without even knowing it.

When Kyle and I got married we lost a friendship with another couple. Mostly because they were extremely selfish people and right before our wedding we noticed it BIG TIME and with me being 3 months pregnant, we were quickly making decisions that made more sense.  We knew we had to choose friends that were going to be good in our daughters life — people that we could trust — people that our daughter could look up to. This couple wasn’t any of these things and the decision for us to remove them from our lives became easier because we were expecting a child. Had we not have been expecting, we probably would have remained friends with them and ended up getting hurt later by their selfish acts. For some reason when big life changes are being made (like getting married and having a child), you see yourself changing and making decisions in a more adult way. The glasses of life that you wear suddenly get clearer lenses. Man — what I would’ve done for those ‘clear lenses’ YEARS ago ;-)

When Kyle and I brought Aubree into this world 5 months ago, we definitely noticed a change in our friendships. We talk about it often and we get sad that some of our friends distanced themselves from us because they don’t have children and don’t have any idea what its like. All they see is the fact that we have less time to spend with them and that we’ve changed in some ‘weird’ way. This makes me sad to my core. Aubree is our purpose, our gift from God, our LIFE!

In the past year I have realized who my true friends are. They’re the ones that have stuck by my side in literally thick and thin and have never strayed from me. Their loyalty lays with me and my family and I feel blessed to have them in both me and Kyle’s life, and in Aubree’s life as well. When you have kids, you’ll find that you only want people in their life that will enrich their lives, make them want to be good human beings, and will devote a part of their life and a part of their heart to you and your family. I’m blessed to say I have friends like this. I have friends that will step in and help me with Aubree when my husband can’t be here. I’m lucky to have friends that I think of as family and whether that number of friends is 2 or 22, it really doesn’t matter to me. QUALITY is what I look for — not quantity…ever.

There are friends that I’ve drifted away from because they can’t understand my love for this little human being in my life. And that literally shakes me to my core. As I grow older and understand this life more, understand my purpose for being here on this earth, things like losing people that I used to call ‘friends’ become so far from my mind, so much less important. I’ve come to the conclusion that the people that want to be in my life will stay and the people that don’t, will leave. And we’re better off without those people. If you don’t inspire, motivate, move, push, enrich, or add to my life in a positive way, there is no room for you.

I guess I wrote this blog so I could get my feelings out in a positive way and to hopefully allow some of you to feel that it IS okay to let go of friendships that are no longer adding to your life in a positive way. It doesn’t matter how long we had those friendships — what matters at the end of the day is how those friendships make us feel and how they’ll add to our future. Our future with our life partners and children — because my family is my purpose.  What’s yours?