The End of SVMoms Group as We Know It

Yesterday afternoon the momosphere/blogosphere was rocked by the announcement that the Silicon Valley Moms Group will be posting its last new posts on June 30th on its 14 regional blogs. For various personal reasons, the three founders of the SV Moms Group, Jill Asher, Tekla Nee, and Beth Blecherman, decided to pull the plug on the five-year old community that now represents 400 writers across North America, clustered around geographic regions such as New York, Chicago, DC, Silicon Valley, and even, thanks to my efforts, Ohio.

Twitter exploded into angry and sad tweets, as both current and past contributors mourned the loss of this community that brought together so many powerful voices to speak about both local and national issues. The Silicon Valley Moms Group blogs were influential, having proven time and time again their reach and power to bring about change from forcing local schools to adopt cyberbullying policies to chastising state legislators about cuts in education financing.

I felt the shock of the closing as keenly as everybody else, if not more so. I joined the SV Moms Group as a NJ contributor three years ago, just 6 months into my blogging journey, and learned so much from the seasoned writers in the group, women who'd been blogging before it was even called blogging. After writing for New Jersey Moms Blog for two years, I became the editor of the 14 blogs, along with Akemi Bourgeois, spending countless hours every week reading and editing every post that went live on the blogs, feeling the pulse of the zeitgeist, knowing and conversing about key events as soon as they happened. A few months ago, Akemi and I became the recruitors for SV Moms as well, getting to know new writers through their blogs and via phone, forging new relationships and discovering new voices across the country. And through it all, time and time again, I have been blown away by the caliber of the writing and the depth of the thinking of our contributors.

Thanks to the organization, I have met many countless inspirational women who have shown me that I could combine the joys of being a stay at home mom with a rewarding career as a freelance writer and editor. I've made lifelong friends though SV Moms, women with whom I've shared my dreams, and who have pushed me to make them bigger. Women like Jane Maynard, Jennifer Perillo, Jill Asher, Linsey Krolik, Samantha Fein, Beth Blecherman, Akemi Bourgeois, Kim Modolfsky, Beth Feldman, Amy Oztan, Anne Marie Nichols, Melissa Chapman, and Gina Von Esmarch, just to name a few.

Like everybody else, I'm mourning the end of the SVMoms Group as we know it. Change is scary, especially when it leaves behind such an important void. However, I sincerely believe that a community this connected and this influential will not simply disappear into the ether.

So for now, instead of dwelling on the negative, I'm simply giving thanks to all the opportunities I've had thanks to SV Moms, to all the friends I've made, all the amazing events I've gone to, and to all I've learned. And for the next two weeks, I'll continue staying up way too late, reading and editing the last posts submitted by our writers.