Meeting of the Mom Minds, Part II

Here's how our village works together ease into the school year (+ grab my FREE discussion Qs for your own Mom Minds!)

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It’s that time again — time for our Annual Meeting of the Mom Minds! We’re getting our date on the calendar, but the timing was perfect for me to bring a part two to this topic to our Substack!

Every year around the beginning of August, my three best local friends and I gather around my kitchen table to set up our lives for the school year ahead (with a “girl dinner” of charcuterie, of course!).

We put important dates into the calendar: games, practices, school breaks, holidays, birthdays, and other big days we need to remember. We share ideas for easy breakfasts, what we put in our kids’ lunches, after-school snacks, and simple weeknight dinners.

And we all agree: this meeting is the single-best thing to help us set up the school year. And we love this village we have together, where we can go for help and ideas on just about everything.

❤️ Why this village matters to me

In many ways, my life as a parent in 2024 looks different those who were parents in 1984. Or 1944. Or 1844.  Over the years, the way our world has viewed community and our individual role in it has shifted quite a lot. Today many of us live far away from our parents and extended families, who sprinkle wisdom and fun to the lives of our kids (and the free babysitting doesn’t hurt, either!). Today I don’t hear as much about teens who babysit for kids in their neighborhood, or even parents who hire babysitters as much as our parents did in the 80s and 90s.

Today we’re raising our kids in a much more siloed way. The villages we used to have, ones that viewed raising kids as a responsibility of the collective whole, seems to have been replaced by the myth of the “woman who can do it all.” We expect one woman, one mother, to do what an entire village used to provide in wisdom and care.

In so many ways, I think it’s made our lives as parents much harder. But it wasn’t always like this. It truly “took a village,” between sharing ideas for helping families survive and thrive, to the actual physical load of caring for children.

That’s what these women are to me: they are my village.

I can call them for anything. If I’m stuck in a meeting, I call and ask them to pick up my kids. If I’m away from my house longer than I’d like, they let out my dog. When they make an ALDI run to pick up salmon for dinner, they grab some for our family too because they know we love it. They’ve shown up for me in the busy seasons, and I’ve done the same for them. Having a partner like Bryan eases my mental load too, of course, but there’s something about having friends and other moms I can rely on too for help, whether that’s physical help or sharing ideas like we do at the beginning of every school year.

And hear me when I say that this: carrying the mental load of coordinating all things school-related is a job for every parent involved in a child’s life, not just moms. In our village, it just so happens that the moms are the ones who enjoy organizing the school information. The way you share the load with your parenting partner and village might look different than ours. And that’s okay! And so normal! Anyway, just wanted to give you that thought. :)

🤝 How I found this village

I talked a bit about this last year, but we met because we each have 13-year-olds who are buddies. And our other kids happen to be similar ages and involved in similar things. Between us we have two high school sophomores, four 8th graders, and three 4th graders. Three out of four families go to the same church. And all four of us moms are even business owners! Not surprisingly, there are many levels where we can relate to each other. It’s awesome.