when mums gather (and actually let their guard down)
by Simone Mazloumian founder, Eklektik Mama | the community for mothers in Abu Dhabi & the UAE
Picture the scene. A table of women, somewhere between a long lunch that started at noon and a night out that nobody wanted to end. The kids are covered. The phones are face-down. And somewhere between the first drink and the thing someone said that made everyone simultaneously howl and recognise themselves — there is an incredible shift.
A problem gets named out loud for the first time. Someone admits she's been struggling. Someone else says me too, and the relief on the first woman's face is something you can't manufacture. A recommendation gets passed around the table. A perspective lands that changes how someone sees her marriage, her toddler, herself. Someone laughs so hard she cries - and it turns out she really needed to cry.
None of this is frivolous. And yet somehow we've ended up in a world where a mother who spends an afternoon with her friends feels like she owes someone an apology for it.
I'd like to formally end that.
what the science says
The Harvard Nurses' Health Study found that not having a close friend or confidante was as detrimental to a woman's health as smoking or carrying extra weight.* Not marginally worse. As bad as. Decades of data. Tens of thousands of women.
The same study showed that the more friends women have, the less likely they are to develop physical impairments as they age.* And women with friends are 26 percent less likely to develop dementia, according to research published in the American Journal of Public Health.*
The biology behind it is genuinely interesting. A 2000 UCLA study found that unlike men, women don't just react with fight-or-flight under stress. Women's stress response includes the release of oxytocin — the bonding hormone — which encourages women to protect their children and seek out other women. As they connect with others, more oxytocin is released, further reducing stress and creating calm.* Our bodies are literally wired to gather. We just keep putting it off because someone needs a snack.
Female friendships also tend to be higher in self-disclosure and more frequently relied on for social support — and women are more effective at providing that support, which amplifies the benefits further.*
The girls' trip, the Wednesday lunch, the spontaneous night out that runs two hours longer than planned - while they might look like an indulgence, on the health evidence, they're closer to a prescription.
showing up properly
Gathering is one thing. Actually showing up — really showing up, not the version where you're fine and everything's great and you've got it all together — is another thing entirely.
We live in a culture that rewards the highlight reel. And in the UAE, where expat life can feel like one long performance of how well you're doing — the school, the apartment, the activities, the Instagram grid — the pressure to look like you are absolutely nailing it is relentless. So we show up to things and we perform okay-ness. We laugh in the right places, we're vague about the hard bits, we skirt around the actual feelings. And we go home having had a nice time, but without the thing we actually needed.
The shift happens when someone is brave enough to go first. To say honestly, it's been really hard lately. To admit that they shouted at their kids and only felt a little bit terrible about it, or that their marriage feels flat right now (ps. maybe someone needs to read our guide to not being a useless partner), or that they're lonely in a city full of people, or that they haven't recognised themselves in months. To drop the face and say: this is hard, and I'm not okay.
And then — every time, without fail — someone else at the table breathes out and says oh thank goodness, me too.
Every family has its crazy. Every marriage has its difficult season. Every mother has the thoughts she doesn't say out loud. And the single most relieving moment in human social experience is finding out that the thing you assumed was uniquely, embarrassingly yours — is completely, boringly, reassuringly shared.
Researchers studying female friendship have noted that at the heart of women's connections is a sentence that gets repeated over and over: I know just what you mean.* Six words. No less powerful for it.
A problem shared genuinely is a problem halved. The anxiety that spirals at 3am looks completely different when it's been aired in daylight to someone who gets it. And the cackle — the proper, ugly, helpless laugh at the absolute chaos of it all — is one of the most regulating things in existence. You cannot laugh like that and stay wound up. It's physiologically impossible.
the story we need to retire
We have built up, over generations, a very particular idea of what a good mother looks like. She is selfless. She pours herself entirely into her family. She has no needs outside of her children's happiness. She is always available, always patient, always there.
And we hold this woman up and say: what a great mum.
Great for whom, exactly?
Women are not service providers. We did not arrive on this earth waiting for children to give us purpose. We had whole selves before we had kids — friendships, ambitions, interior lives, things that made us laugh, things that made us furious, opinions that had nothing to do with anyone's school schedule. Choosing to have a family is not the same as choosing to disappear into it.
The idea that a mother who needs nothing is a better mother teaches our children something quietly damaging about what it means to be a woman. They are watching us. They are learning whether women's needs matter, whether asking for help is acceptable, whether you're allowed to have a life that is also yours.
A mother who is genuinely well — connected, seen, laughing properly, regulated — is not less present for her family. She is better present. A full cup is the whole point.
which is why we gather
Not just for the fun, although the fun is genuinely important and chronically underrated as something worth protecting. But because the table, the group chat, the boat day, the night out that runs too late — these are where we drop the performance and find out that while we may not all be in the same boat, we are in those same choppy seas.
We trade real information at these gatherings. Recommendations that actually help. Perspectives that shift something. The knowledge that the toddler chaos, the marriage friction, the identity wobble, the 3am spiral — none of it is unique to you. All of it is survivable. And there is something specifically, powerfully regulating about sitting across from another woman who gets it, cackling at the chaos together, and feeling a little less alone in it.
For mums in Abu Dhabi and across the UAE — particularly expat mothers navigating life far from their own families and long-term friends — building this circle matters more than most people admit. We don't always have the traditional support system here. So let us help you build the one right for you.
Come as you are. Bring the chaos. Leave the performance at the door.
✌🏽😎 #rebelmum
Simone Mazloumian is the founder of Eklektik Mama, an Abu Dhabi-based community platform for mothers that runs events, a weekly newsletter, and a members community across the UAE. Eklektik Mama hosts regular BYOBaby® gatherings and nights out for exactly the reasons described above — because mum fun, and mum honesty, are both pretty radical.
Want in? Join the community here.
References
Medindia, Women AdvaNCe, Sharp HealthCare, For The Lover Girls, PubMed, HealthScope
