Mama’s Comfort Camp

Testimonials

“I came to Mama’s Comfort Camp in the midst of postpartum depression. I was anxious, overwhelmed, and isolated. The support I found here literally pulled me through my darkest days.”

~Lindsey, Lafayette, Colorado
“If you’d told me before I had kids that a Facebook group would keep me sane I would have laughed you off!, and yet, here I am checking MCC daily, so grateful that it exists.”

~Laura, Ithaca, NY
Before MCC, I was going to a therapist but still felt like I was going through motherhood alone. At MCC, I found loving support only a keyboard away.
When I realized that I was addicted to alcohol, Mama’s Comfort Camp was the first place I typed those scary words. Within a day, I had seven – seven! – “me toos” and advice on where to look for help. I can’t imagine anywhere else where I could have safely uttered those words but at Mama’s Comfort Camp.

~Natalie, Los Angeles, California
“MCC helped me grow. Now I give myself grace and love instead of huge guilt. Because of MCC, I have a stronger voice to advocate for my family’s needs.”

~Bethany, Ithaca, NY
“Mama’s Comfort Camp is a university of compassion”

~Anna, Trumansburg, NY
“I was deeply hurt in other online parenting groups that were supposed to be supportive but felt like the mommy Olympics. Mama’s Comfort Camp is the only online forum where I feel safe and loved so I dare share my real challenges, my losses, and my wins.”

~Chanah, Jerusalem, Israel
“I was completely blown away by all the love and support I got at MCC when I was sad and scared. I’ve learned to be more compassionate and to be gentler with myself. This is rippling outwards to all my relationships.”

~Megan, Ithaca, NY
“I posted at MCC while in bed in the middle of the night, in the waiting room at a doctor’s appointments, and from the school parking lot… It’s literally always within reach! I rarely have to wait more than a few minutes before the loving responses start coming. I am so grateful for this resource…”

~Ann, NYC

Meet Our Den Mama Moderators

: Celeste

: Hannah

: Tiffany

: Gretchen

: Hilary

: Rachel

: Stephy

: Katy

: Emily

: Llanya

: Natalie

: Erica

: Christa

: Melissa

: Rebecca

: Lyza

: Laura

: Jill

: Amy

: Cathy

: Hailey

: Kimberly

: Sara

: Lucy

: Jen

: Summer

: Belinda

: Tamiko

: Brittany

: Jenn

Featured Den Mamas

Jill Ayers
Mom-wife-educator-activist-advocate. The order changes depending on the day, but the importance never wavers. I love being a part of this space and having the opportunity to connect with mamas on a personal and organizational level. I love coffee, tulips, and walking anywhere possible. I’m the most extroverted introvert I’ve ever met and love to “take it all in” before forming an opinion or making a decision. Fun fact: I’m a lifelong vegetarian and I’ve never consumed meat. I’m raising my daughter vegetarian as well!
Melissa Muller Douglass
Mindfulness entrepreneur and licensed social worker. My kids don’t ask for dessert, they say “Mama can we practice chocolate mindfulness”, and I say yes every time. In addition to chocolate, I love weeding my garden, listening to bird’s songs as the sun rises, and de-cluttering so that one day I can live in an Earthship and use an Elf bike. #goals
Stephy Scaglione
I’m Stephy! Mother of two. I like long hikes in the woods, margaritas, and keeping it REAL! I am damn near the sunniest person you will ever meet…sometimes a little too positive. If I were a food I would be a bowl of cherries. I have been through a lot in life from a weird autoimmune disease and genetic defect to infertility and miscarriages, but it all brought me to NOW. I love being part of MCC. It lets me help moms and lift females of all kinds. Anytime you need a buddy feel free to reach out. I’m tattooed, free thinking, ungirly, and super body positive. I’m not a Pinterest super mom. I’m more like a dumpster fire full of smaller dumpsters that are also on fire…but I’m rocking every single moment of it! Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mamas! No matter the path that got you there!
Kimberly Fick
I’m a mom of two boys, one who is on the Autism Spectrum. Hubs and I are currently on a long education adventure, slowly finishing up our Master’s degrees in Divinity and then headed to get PhDs with the goal of teaching someday at a seminary (or maybe just starting our own!)

What? & Why?

What: an emotional support network where moms from around the world offer loving support to each other. Mama’s Comfort Camp is Not a parenting forum! We don’t come here to parent better, we come to MCC to FEEL better: to be seen, heard, and held, not to be fixed or saved. We breed ComFortitude: the strength generated when community members come together to support and comfort each other. We offer moderated support forums online, as well as in-person support meetings and community events in our birthplace/local chapter in Ithaca, NY (Additional local chapters are at the inception stage). We use Facebook groups for our forums, but MCC is so much more than a Facebook group, it’s a unique resilience engine: leveraging social media to mobilize kindness, ideas, and resources.

The Problem:
Maternal guilt, shame, and isolation cause extreme stress to mothers and families, often resulting in depression and anxiety at a great cost to family and community. Well-meaning unsolicited advice can be hurtful and sometimes destructive to new mothers. When humans are hurting, the foremost needs are to be seen, heard, and held. Maternal suicide is highly correlated with the presence of acute guilt and shame. Disarming these emotions saves lives.

Our approach:
We provide lovingly moderated online peer support forums that adhere to a unique set of respectful community guidelines and clear boundaries. Our main forum is for emotional support issues for mothers around the world, and our Ithaca Chapter uses online communications to facilitate real-world interactions and mutual assistance locally.

MCC supplements mental health services in many ways: even those who have the financial ability and the courage to seek therapy and if need be medications rarely see their providers more than once a week. Having constant access to peer-to-peer emotional support, regardless of time, place, financial ability, or transportation saves lives. For those who don’t have access to mental health services, MCC is the closest thing to mental health support — always available, and absolutely free.
Where? & When?

Where? Everywhere! Our forums use facebook groups, where you can make friends with mothers from around the world and across the street.

Join our international group here.

Join our Ithaca, NY, Chapter group here.

Why on Facebook? Because it’s free for the users, accessible from anywhere and their group forums are equipped with excellent moderation tools. However, we are exploring ways to possibly migrate our safe spaces to a self-hosted platform.

When: 24/7/365 x 8 years! MCC was founded in 2012 and has been offering safety from judgment available all day and all night ever since. In 2016 we became a nonprofit project of the Center for Transformative Action (affiliated with Cornell University), and when we started offering additional programs we changed the name of the organization to Mother UP! in 2020.
Who?

Who: Mothers of ALL kinds, ages and stages. A lot of mom’s network focus on the first year of life, but at MCC we recognize that motherhood stressors change over time but never go away. At MCC you could make friends with biological/step/adoptive moms of newborns, toddlers, preschoolers, tweens, teens,”empty nesters”, and grandmothers. The intergenerational support is powerful.
Our Mottos

1. Moms don’t need more advice, we need more support. A safe space that provides protection from unsolicited advice provides respite from judgment that is necessary for mother’s well being and the mental health of the family. Therefore MCC is a mothering forum and not a parenting forum. It’s not about parenting better, it’s about mothering happier.

2. There is no such thing as a bad mother. A mother knows her family best. Exhausted/depleted mothers don’t always perform their mothering to their highest standards, resulting in guilt, shame and suffering. Nourishing the mothers heals families from the inside out .

3. Problems are solved when we focus on meeting needs rather than expectations. No one can decide what another person needs. A safe space provides individuals with the opportunity to identify their true needs and find the right avenues to meet them.
What's Wrong with Unsolicited Advice?

What’s wrong with unsolicited advice?

When we’re struggling, what we need is unconditional love, support, and witnessing. When we’re not ready for it, the brain tends to experience advice as blame. Strange, but true! The internal self-critic grabs the mic and dishes something along the line of “If you were any good you’d have known to do this already, and if you know this but are not doing anything about it you must be lazy or stoooopid or broken.” Yuck, right? That’s why at MCC we only give advice when it’s specifically requested. We trust the mama will ask for advice when she’s ready for it. And until then, we meet her wherever she is, with support and love.
Our Loving Guidelines
First thing first:
YOU ARE SIMPLY WELCOME.

This means that:
- You don’t have to earn your spot here; there’s no need to support others before you seek support for yourself. Really.
- Participation here is guilt-free: post, respond, or simply lurk as you prefer. If it’s comforting for you, it’s enough.
- Brevity is overrated! Motherhood is nuanced and there is no need to apologize if you can’t be succinct. You are brave for putting your vulnerability into words, so you get a permission slip to elaborate! Here we don’t need to worry about keeping our voice down or our complaints short!
- Don’t let “outsider syndrome” discourage you from joining a discussion!
- Please share your wins and happy moments with us! it’s super fun when moms from all over the world cheer with you.
Guidelines = Healthy Boundaries = Safety
1. This is a Safe Space: we offer confidentiality, kindness, zero judgment, and FREEDOM FROM UNSOLICITED ADVICE. We come here to validate, not educate, so please don’t confront people. If you can’t support someone, move on to another thread, and start your own thread for support if you need it.
- The flip side? When you post, say what kind of support is useful. Looking for advice? Let us know.
1. MCC is a Safe Space for all campers to embrace and celebrate our differences and support each other through the common experience of motherhood. We do not tolerate discrimination here, and discrimination on the basis of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, nation of origin, or immigration status in this space is grounds for immediate removal. Campers who are experiencing discrimination in their lives are welcome to seek emotional support around their experiences.
2. To offer you the best possible support, we ask that you use our posting structure with the TOPIC and what you NEED in your main post. The details can then follow in the first comment. Please use the trigger warning “PT” (Potentially Triggering) when discussing upsetting situations. If you forget to use this format, the admins might re-post for you or ask you to edit.
3. When Discussing Medical/Legal Issues: You’re welcome to seek emotional support and mothers with relevant experiences, but please consult qualified professionals for medical or legal strategy. When supporting others, please follow the needs expressed and avoid unsolicited advice. Please frame your sharing as telling your own story, don’t diagnose or tell a mama what she should or shouldn’t do. If suggestions are requested, you may mention medical or alternative treatments, remedies, and medications that you have experience with, but please don’t give directions.
OUT OF BOUNDS:

* No discussion of vaccination or circumcision; these topics compromise our safe space.

* No photos of rashes, bruises, or symptoms.

* No Public Service Announcements (PSAs) or warnings.

* No medical, legal, or safety debates.

We trust our members to educate themselves and to make sound decisions based on their family’s priorities.
1. MCC is feminist in nature. Discussions that challenge structures that oppress women are allowed here, as are discussions about creating a world that will better support all women, mothers, and children, even though this might be construed as political. Please respect various points of view in these sensitive discussions as we come from different religious, political, and cultural backgrounds. Also welcome: respectful conversations about handling religious/spiritual tender spots. While vents/stomps about frustrations with your spouse or partner are welcome, please avoid outright men-bashing. The war between the sexes doesn’t belong at Mama’s Comfort Camp.
5B: MCC is not the space to debate parenting choices (feeding, sleep, vaccination, circumcision, etc.), safety issues (including car seat safety), party politics, and religious dogma. We are respectful of each other’s choices and opinions; we believe that almost all parenting/family choices are valid with the exception of corporal punishment (but please do seek support for the hard parts and missteps of parenting!). MCC is also not the place for discussions that oppose women’s reproductive rights or to warn/alarm us of dangers in the big bad world.
1. Please don’t use MCC for crisis management; make sure to reach out for support from qualified providers. The best place to start is by calling 1-800-273-8255, the National Suicide Prevention Service. You can also text them at 607-269-4500 or visit ithacacrisis.org/. This resource is for supporting people through ANY kind of crisis not just those related to suicide.
2. Confidentiality is paramount! Violating confidentiality is grounds for removal from MCC. Please do not discuss posts outside of the group, and please do not ever share personal details about another member in a post or comment. Anonymous posts for sensitive topics are welcome. Send in a PM to the Mama’s Comfort Camp Facebook Page (facebook.com/mamas.comfort.camp/) and it will be posted anonymously for you by a Den Mama within 24 hours.
Please read our disclaimers and expectations document for important confidentiality issues:

facebook.com/notes/ithaca-chapter-of-mamas-comfort-camp/disclaimers-and-expectations-for-mamas-comfort-camp/1661056470669992/
1. Memes and links: Memes that touch your heart are welcome. Blog posts or articles should only be shared with words on how they moved you. Please avoid sharing articles that promote particular parenting or feeding styles, or scary stories.
2. No self-promotion or advertising, please!
3. Be respectful of the Den Mama moderators. MCC is run by a team of volunteers, and we do our best to uphold the group guidelines with kindness and consistency. We understand that it can feel unpleasant to have your post or comment deleted, and we are always happy to answer questions via PM. If we miss something, please report the post to bring it to our attention.
The Den Mamas, our volunteer moderators

The Den Mamas are trained moderators who volunteer their time and considerable talent to hold the safe space boundaries of the Mama’s Comfort Camp forums. They are the backbone of the entire program, and some of the smartest and funniest women ever. Thank you Den Mamas!

Meet the 2020 Den Mama team in the gallery on the left.
Come join us!

Comfort Coloring Pages

Gopee the guppy serves a loving reminder to attend to our own needs.

Click here to get the printable PDF page
Drawing kindness from the inside out,
our mandala coloring page is practically a meditation. Enjoy!

Click here to get the printable PDF page