An open letter to Hillary Frank

When you contacted me in January about joining the team of Longest Shortest Time Mamas moderators, I was excited to play a different role in a community that I’d really come to value over the last year. That invitation signaled a change to a healthier direction for the group, and I was honored to be considered.

And then I waited.

I waited for the hiatus on posting to end while the LST staff and two existing moderators regrouped. During and after the hiatus, you and Abigail talked about how we could define hate speech and that you had been thinking about new rules for the group. I imagined they would be new rules that would gently guide the content of LST Mamas back to the core values that you put forward on the podcast. Helping to bring the group back to those values was why I agreed to sign on as a new moderator.

I waited while you said you guys were going to try to work with a social media consultant for guidance. I was excited that an important step had been taken, something that would enrich the FB community, take some pressure off of you guys to DIY the problems, and it meant that the volunteer moderators would have some time-tested, insightful guidelines moving forward. You had a Town Hall post and you got a lot of honest feedback from group members. It seemed everyone was hopeful that the listeners/group members voices were important to you, and that the community you created was worth investing in.

I waited when you said that the social media consultant thing fell through but, in the meantime, I got to know Claire and Joshana better through our exchanges. I saw just how little support and direction they were being given in their roles, but that they remained fiercely loyal to you and to the LST Mamas community.

I waited while you and Abigail worked on ways for the new group of moderators to work together and not feel helpless among the crowd of +18K. I remained hopeful that LST Mamas could be something even better than before. I kept working on being a less active participant in LST Mama discussions so that I could more objectively moderate, and I saw new, more productive engagement from the existing moderators making a difference for the better.

And then you told us big changes were coming.

You told us that you were going to put an end to the group. You weren’t asking for our input, but you wanted our help in deleting members from the community one by one. Your decision struck me as final somehow, that you’d finally been able to voice your unhappiness with the group and how it was no longer something you could wrangle. I felt for you, because I thought that even though you had people behind you to help try to make it work, you might have felt hopeless about seeing things through. You were in the thick of re-launching LST, regaining momentum, generating new content, and getting a fresh start on a new platform. All of those things are huge, and continue to earn my respect, so I didn’t take the dismissal personally. The decision wasn’t about me, it was about you, and that’s totally ok.

In more than 20 years of being active in online communities with far-flung people I knew I may never meet but was fulfilled in being vulnerable with, your community was only the second “Moms group” I had ever joined. I felt immediately at home in the group. Did it strike me as utopian? Sure, a little. There were voices that were on the fringes, but for the most part, they still had the chance to be heard. When I sensed that minority voices were endangered, specifically the voices of women of color, I started a subgroup. You were immediately supportive of that in private correspondence, and I remain grateful for that support. Our subgroup is thriving, but we’re struggling with the question that other subgroups are: do we remain an outlet for LST, or do we cut ties now that the LST social media ship has no captain? Do we want to be tokens?

I understand the desire to “archive” the group, because throwing away the voices and stories of thousands of women doesn’t strike me as something you would be comfortable with. Your dedication to giving women voices in the thrashing sea of judgment, misinformation, and constant struggles to be heard online has been important to so many people. With that track record, I only wish you had given LST Mamas a chance to right itself.

LST Mamas as an un-moderated space will become something entirely different. Our stories will still be there, and that’s important to many, but the sense of community will continue to be diminished. A fan group makes sense to me, stepping away and saying, “this is your space, use it as you see fit”, but that requires management from within. Having been involved in businesses that are a labor of love, I understand the urge to control the brand image, but at the end of the day, the only way you can do that is retaining an authentic voice and creating things that represent your values. The people consuming those things do so for myriad reasons, and you can’t change how they interact with what you’ve put out there. If you want a community of ideals, then governance is required.

I thank you for a year of being part of something special. I’ll miss LST Mamas, for all its faults, but I’m grateful for the experiences here and for the women it helped me connect with. I hope that the decisions you made concerning the group do more good than harm.