My “little” Facebook Group

This last year has not been too hard for me; I work as an administrator and was working from home when things shut down. Not much changed for me, I did get another “part of the time” office where I can go and work when I choose.

What I did notice is last March, the 28th to be exact, is a lot of women on Facebook had started struggling. They were struggling with anxiety, frustration, fear, and felt alone. I had a prompting to start a group for just women. I thought about it and decided not to do it. I told myself, I work full time, have a home business (which in the last year made $0.00), am in school full time and then just the busyness of life. I decided I didn’t have time to facilitate a group.

On March 29th, the prompting to start this group was overwhelming. So, I thought about it, seriously. I asked myself what could happen? How much time would a group really take? Either no one will join OR I will have a “little” group of 50 women at max. I even made it hard to join, I made the group private which meant women would have to be invited by women in the group.

I made the rules, no talk of masks, pandemic, politics, be nice, be supportive, be encouraging, and no cursing. Who would want to join a group like that? I gave the group a name that spoke about feeling alone but really, we aren’t alone.

I invited some ladies and they joined. I set up a simple layout, I scheduled a couple questions to post during the day, some funny little games, asked for pictures of their pets and maybe one reflective deep question once a day.

Here are just a few things I have learned in the last 302 days.. .

· Women feel alone.

· Women want somewhere that they can be themselves.

· Women can support other women, even if they don’t know the other women.

· Women love to laugh and be silly.

· Women are hard on themselves.

· Women have a hard time forgiving themselves.

· Women work hard for what they want.

· Women have a hard time sleeping.

· Women have worked jobs they hate to take care of their children.

· Women will ask other women for advice.

· Women love their families.

· Women love their pets.

· Women don’t do a lot of crying in front of other people.

· Women are AMAZING .

My “little” Facebook group has grown to over 4,300 women. Facilitating has, so far, been easy. We are a group of women that are all different, different backgrounds, different beliefs, different relationships. I am amazed at what I am learning through this process and I hope the ladies are also learning that we are never alone and women supporting other women is how life should be done.

6/28/2022 Update: My little group now has 5,000+ Members