Socially Speaking

I have been reading The Kept Woman's accounts of her lousy mom's group for awhile. And since my mom's group is now taking up a huge portion of my day, I thought I'd say a little something about it.

I am an organizer at heart. I like to schedule events and get everyone together. As a matter of fact, I tend to introduce my friends in hopes of them getting along - often times this has led to me fading into the background by my own fault because I like when people are all getting along.

Back in July I joined Meetup.com in an attempt to find mom friends. You have no idea how truly isolating motherhood can be until you experience it, and I was in shock from the loneliness. I went to parks, the mall, wherever we could find a couple people to go, we went.

It was slow going at first. We met five or six moms and kids. Great women, but scheduling was still difficult. I took over organizing groups, I posted on the message board, I became the incredibly perky recruiter that got 22 of the most active members into my college society.

It turns out I'm good at getting people who don't know each other talking and involved, committed to a group.

My little moms group has a cap on it's size at 75 now. And I have people contacting me weekly because they've HEARD about our group, not just randomly through the internet the way most of us found the group. These are great women. These are fun women. They're finding their niches, they're suggesting events and things to do and ways to bond that I wouldn't have thought of or couldn't pull off. We have Mom's Night, Couples Night, Poker Night, Scrapbooking, Book Club, and Playgroups within our one mom's group. My calendar is full, and it's full of fun things.

It's not like it was easy to find them, and it's work to maintain the site, but I don't know what I'd do without it.