After giving birth, I became a group person. The more the merrier. The person who had never organized a social gathering in her life (aside from a birthday party or two) was suddenly coordinating a local play-group. And I always showed up. Early.

I used to think that you either came into the world a “group” person, or you didn’t. You were either the sorority-type, or you weren’t. But then after I had my first child, I realized that my days of preferring to ride solo were over. And I don’t just mean that I now had a kid hitched to my hip 24/7. I mean that the “one-on-one- relationship me” had suddenly walked out the door with my 26-inch waist … never  to return.

I have friends who tell a similar story. They simply didn’t enjoy being around large groups of women – until they had a baby. Judging by the proliferation of play-groups in every neighborhood and town and the gazillion online forums out there … I think that it’s rare to find a woman who has a child and then retreats from other mothers. At least I haven’t met one.

Perhaps what makes motherhood so enriching has almost more to do with how we change in relation to the world than how the world changes in relation to us.

Our environment is different. Absolutely. We now have a baby. BIG change. But up until that baby came into our lives, I think it’s safe to say that most of us (even if we were “group” people) felt that we were somehow charging ahead in our own little personal life-experience. And maybe we were.

The day we became mothers, however, that world opened up. We now took comfort in the feeling that we were definitely not alone in our “life pods.” We were truly part of a greater community of women … some moms, some not yet, some maybe never. That commonality doesn’t seem to matter. It’s more about the shared experience of being a woman — and whatever that brings for each of us.