Mom-baby play groups and a woman’s book group saved my sanity and made me a better mother.
I loved the Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues Book Group. We met one Friday night a month and tried to talk about the book in between comparing kids and men, and supporting each other through life’s passages.
We came together to read other people’s tales, and ended up sharing our own. My friends reminded me I was “normal” and normalized my expectations. Some stories made me grateful to have my husband.
We Wild Women went away annually for the weekend and left the kids home with dad. We rented waterfront , stayed up late drinking wine, told stories and occasionally talked about the book.
Those weekends were like therapy to remind us of US, the non-mom person. We got up late, went on walkabouts with no agenda, no children or men to feed or drive somewhere. We skinny-dipped and cooked for each other. New members were regaled with Wild Women adventures to initiate them into our clan.
Even though conversation drifted towards those we had abandoned for the night or weekend, we celebrated the freedom of gathering in a circle of women to nourish our souls.
With great sadness, as our children graduated from high school, women began dropping out of Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues Book Group. They stopped prioritizing our Friday night meetings. We were lucky to get a few women to our once sacred meetings. Some women said goodbye, moved and got divorced. Some disappeared without a goodbye.
When we finally dissolved the group, we had a meta-meeting and invited everyone who had been a member over its 15 years tenure, sat in a circle and had a bittersweet reunion.
Other groups have filled the hole left by the Wild Women, which I had envisioned belonging to until I died. I will cherish the memories of our meetings and weekend jaunts. They introduced me to many good books and cultivated the art of friendship and conversation.
I’ve coached moms who have forgotten about THEM. They’ve sacrificed everything for their families and get depressed. Motherhood is like that. It’s easy to get swallowed up by the Great Mother archetype, taking care of everyone else, and forgetting about our own needs.
As all archetypes do, they will drop us, and the drop is HARD. Children grow up. Mothers and marriages need to remember who they were before children invaded.










