I'll Be There For You (as posted on momsasprincipals.wordpress.com)

When I started my journey as principal, I knew it would be lonely at the top. What I wasn’t prepared for was how lonely I was when I got home.  I have wonderful friends, but I inadvertently pushed them away by either talking about my new situation or not saying anything at all. I needed to talk and I needed support, but I didn’t want to burden anyone with the rush of change I was dealing with. Even with my husband, he either gets one-word answers about my day or he ends up listening to me for an hour because I just can’t stop talking. When the floodgates open…watch out.

Fast forward to last Saturday night…

I was at home catching up on Voxes from the Mom Bloggers when the thought occurred to me that these ladies have walked me through the last year and a half of my life. They may know more about my days than my husband does. They know when I’m happy…they know when I’m sad.  We even joke about how we are living parallel lives when we experience similar days or situations.

What is hard to explain to others is how you can be friends with someone you may have only met once or not at all. How do you build a friendship with someone by just dropping voice messages in an app? The only way I can explain this is by sharing some of the things we have encountered as a group:

•      Illness/Surgery
•      Successes and struggles at work
•      Mom fails
•      Wife fails 
•      Our children’s personal struggles that have led to feelings of helplessness
•      Deaths of family or friends

Every day, we go to Voxer to:

•      Check in with each other
•      Cheer each other on
•      Vent, cry, laugh and even talk in hashtags when we are being particularly silly

​These ladies have helped me not feel so alone. They tell me the truth. They challenge my thinking. They make me a better mom, wife, and educator. I will forever be thankful for their support and their friendship.