Looking for a Little Support?
I probably don’t need to tell you that MoCAA offers monthly support meetings for all our members. And I know I’ve mentioned more than once that they are facilitated by two fantastic licensed professional counselors.
But what you probably don’t know, if you haven’t been able to attend one yet, is that these are anything but typical support meetings!
I hesitate even calling them meetings, because it feels more like a Saturday morning coffee chat. Our fantastic counselors, Lavelda and Amy, keep the flow of conversation moving and select topics which always get the gears turning in our brains. You can literally see the lightbulbs turn on over our head when we realize “Oh, that’s why they said that when I said that…” (Okay, maybe not literally, but you catch my drift).
And the laughs at our meetings far outweigh the tears, hands down! Anyone who has walked in our shoes knows that there are a lot of tears with this job. They are bound to leak out when you spend a few hours in the company of women who “get it”. There’s no judgment, you can let it all out in a safe environment. But if don’t laugh out loud in one of our meetings at least once, then you may have gone to the wrong address!
I know how hard it is to get yourself out of the house on a Saturday morning when you are leaving behind a family that needs (on some days, it seems like they will fall apart the moment you step out the door). When my children were younger (way before MoCAA began), I believed it was going to be more work and less reward to try to find a way to get out of the house and talk to other moms about my challenges. In hindsight, I really wish I had made more of an effort. My mental and physical health definitely suffered as a result. And they did not improve until I started to insist I needed to do a better job caring for myself. Attending a MoCAA support meeting can be a great first step on this journey. But we can’t take it for you. It requires you to say: “I’m worth it!” When you are less stressed, the whole family benefits. Are you committed to helping yourself? This commitment takes work, but it will be worth effort.
Just 2 hours a month, can help make a positive change in your life. You are definitely worth it. And besides, we have free coffee and snacks at our meetings. 😉