Holistic Moms Network Open House!

I so wanted everything to go smoothly and everyone to feel welcome and have fun. I was sleepless for days with excitement over this, both before and last night - I wish I could switch my brain off on demand. =) It was such a success, with about twenty six holistic families represented by my count, two membership forms turned in that night and more promising to online! I was so excited I couldn't eat any of the yummy treats we had - I baked all day and others brought goodies too. We tried to stay low-eco impact with only napkins, asked people to bring their own beverage, and I brought my tablet pc for people to sign in on (I'm trying to stay as paperless as possible). As I looked around the room during the intros and saw so many faces of mommas I'd met in the past few months at one of the fifteen the informal meetups that I'd created leading up to that point I wanted to hug every one and share each one with the others that I'd met. I feel an unconditional love and acceptance for every one, and was so excited to see new faces of people I hadn't met yet. Isn't that neat? I'm so thrilled and looking forward to really getting to know everyone and forge deep friendships. I feel so strongly that this is possible with us going through such similar experiences with similar values and feelings, and it made me emotional at one point last night when I felt that realization of a dream coming true. The dream of creating a community of women who feel empathy for each other, share our knowledge freely, are passionate about making informed choices and supportive in our holistic motherhood journey.

I told my husband when we first met that I'd always had this desire to change the world for the better, but until this point I didn't know how I could do it. I realized last night that I was helping to do just that. Being able to meet and connect and help other women meet and connect with each other is just huge! Every day as time goes on I am really seeing the power of the word "Network" and why that is in our name. One mom was saying to me today on our weekly "Walk-N-Play" meetup that she really needed last night's meeting b/c she was able to talk to another mom about preschool frustrations. An acupuncturist momma told us she'll be working a few days at our meeting host's upcoming Holistic Healing center. I could hear by the level and tone of the conversation before and after the formal part of the meeting how excited people were and that the connections were being made last night. None of that would have happened if we didn't get this group going!

My co-Leaders Andrea and Michelle were wonderful and I was so proud to stand by their sides and lead the meeting! Michelle printed us name tags with the HMN logo on lanyards so we looked official. We had about a dozen raffle prizes and I brought in 15 of my treasured books to share, many leaving that night so the lending library was a hit! The vertical HMN banners with the nursing momma on it outside and inside were gorgeous and the room so cozy with toys for the little ones to play in the middle of our circle. We had a professional photographer mom who took photos and we had a volunteer greeter and helping with name tags for everyone. I couldn't have done all this without them helping to create this wonderful experience for us all. But I wanted to especially thank the HMN national leaders for making this organization happen and thank Katherine and Lauren b/c if I had not gone to their Tri-Vally OH last summer, I would not have been so inspired to do this, and it's becoming a life changing experience!