Kimberly Trigo reflects on the informal network of women—friends, neighbors, and new acquaintances—who support her through the years of motherhood, and how that village differs from the one we imagined growing up.
A village is made, not always inherited: friendships formed before and after motherhood combine to create practical and emotional support.
The village’s role is to sustain parents as they raise children, offering companionship, shared errands, and honest presence rather than replacing family.
Adult friendships often form in the thick of parenting—school drop-offs, classes, and playdates—and those relationships can become durable sources of help and encouragement.
# It Takes a Village: Choosing the Women Who Carry You Through Motherhood
Kimberly Trigo wrote this piece as Mother's Day approached, drawing on a decade of parenting to describe how her village developed and why it matters. She lost her mother to cancer in 2012, became a mother soon after, and found that the community of women around her became essential in ways she hadn't expected.
The village Trigo describes isn't a formal support system. It's a patchwork of relationships that grew out of childhood friendships, life transitions, and the routine pressures of parenting. Those early friends who knew her before marriage and children stayed. New women arrived through pregnancy, IVF, school routines, and neighborhood life. Together they formed an informal network that handled the messy, daily demands of family life.
Trigo reframes a familiar saying: it does not take a village to raise children so much as it takes a village to support parents while they raise children. The village's practical work often looks small — coffee in the park, swapping playdate duties, watching kids when errands pile up — but those interactions add up to sustained relief and companionship.
What the village provides is concrete rather than abstract. It offers presence, shared experiences, mutual encouragement, and the capacity to carry small practical loads. The most valuable friendships combine authenticity and longevity: people who knew you before the titles and people who accept you in the current, messy moment.
The essay closes with gratitude. Trigo names her village as a defining part of her experience—women who inspire, motivate, and steady her through parenting. They do not replace family histories or hard losses, but they make daily life more manageable and more shareable.
If you are thinking about your own village, consider where you already have small points of contact that could become durable friendships: local activities, parenting groups, neighbors, and long-standing friends you can invite deeper into your present life.
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