There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes with being a mother in a WhatsApp group of two hundred people.
You read everybody’s news. You laugh at everybody’s jokes. You type “congrats, mummy!” under announcements from women whose faces you’ve never seen. And at 11pm, when the baby finally sleeps and you’re lying there in the quiet, you realize you know everything about everyone — and no one knows where you are.
That’s not community. That’s audience.
Real friendship needs a body in the room. It needs the woman who notices your voice sounds off before you’ve said anything is wrong. It needs somebody who has seen you without small chops and Saturday energy — just you, tired, in your house clothes — and still shows up next week.
This is the shift more Nigerian mothers are making now: from the group chat to the gathering. From typing “we should hang out sometime” to actually hanging out. It starts small. One mom from the group says she’ll be at a meetup on Saturday. You almost don’t go. You go. And somewhere between the first awkward hug and the third laugh, the screen between you dissolves and she becomes real — a person, not a profile.
Offline is where it deepens. The voice chat friend who knows your birth story. The meetup regular who saves you a seat. The fitness morning crew. The paint & sip table that becomes a standing appointment. None of this can happen in a comment thread.
Because here’s the thing about motherhood: it is lived in the body — feeds, tiredness, hands, holding. And a friendship that only exists in text can’t hold that weight. A woman in the room can.
If you’ve been “meaning to find your village” since your first was born, this is your nudge. Search it on MomCircleNG and see where mamas near you are actually meeting — the meetups, the brunches, the fitness mornings, and this December, Detty December: Moms Only in Victoria Island, Lagos. Come as you are. The women in that room are looking for their village too — some of them are just waiting for one person to show up first.
Go first, mama.
You’re not meant to do this alone.
Community • Support • Growth
