Message from Our Founder

When I was a kid growing up in Minnesota, I read Les Misérables over and over, and when I wasn't reading it, the musical was playing on repeat (yes, I was very nerdy). I didn't know it at the time, but I was absorbing a value system that would shape my entire life.

It all comes down to one scene. Jean Valjean, desperate and fresh out of prison, steals silver from the Bishop who took him in. When he's caught and dragged back, the Bishop doesn't press charges; he gives him valuable candlesticks. I call that radical, unearned grace. What's key is next he steps back — takes no credit. He never finds out what his kindness set in motion. He simply disappears from the story.

But Valjean makes a choice: he receives that grace, which isn't easy either. And it ripples outward for the rest of his life, touching hundreds of people who will never know the Bishop existed. That's the part that got me, even as a kid. It takes both. Someone willing to give freely, without needing credit. And someone brave enough to accept help, without shame.

I believe people are inherently good. Truly. People want to help — they just need three things to make it possible: the safety to be vulnerable, the belonging of a real community, and a clear path to actually do it. Give people those three things, and they will overwhelmingly do the right thing. People frame that as inexperience, or "not knowing how the world works." However, possibly it's being someone who looked a little deeper at what's environmental, what's systemic, and what's human.

That's why Moms Help Moms exists. Our village is full of moms who are sometimes the Bishop and sometimes Valjean — giving what they can, receiving what they need, and passing it on. No red tape. No credit required. Just grace, moving from one family to the next.

Sometimes grace is simple and kind. Sometimes it's really, really hard: vulnerable, open, ego-decimating, meeting people at their lowest (or unkindest) moments. It means accepting what you don't deserve, for something you believe in. It means knowing that boundaries and sacrifice aren't at odds. And people do it every day — I know, because I've seen it.

Lesson being: be careful what media your kids watch! Ha.