JEN: Hello and welcome. You are listening to In the Den with Mama Dragons. I’m your host, Jen. This podcast was created out of our desire to walk and talk with you through this journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. We are so happy that you’re here with us.
During many of our episodes, we drop the name of our organization “Mama Dragons”. We answer questions that are asked in our groups and we discuss the themes that most often show up from those who seek support from our organization. And it occurred to us that some people might get connected to the podcast, but not really understand who the Mama Dragons are. We generally focus on a specific topic related to parenting, but this week we are going to take a little detour and talk about ourselves. And help listeners understand who it is that they are listening to. We are going to talk about where we came from and where we are now.
We are going to try to take this chronologically, but there was a lot of overlap in real life, at the time, so we can expect to have that overlap happen here also. We have gathered together several individuals who have been impactful in the leadership of Mama Dragons to walk us through it all as they remember it. Chronologically, we have: Yvette Barrus Zobell, Neca Allgood, Julie Turnbull, Wendy VonSosen, Celeste Carolin, Cameo Sherman.
So I’d like to start with Yvette to talk about the very beginning of things. Yvette, you were among the very first handful of moms who came together in a private conversation in December of 2013. Talk to us about what was happening for each of you before you connected with these other women and how did you find each other?
YVETTE: There’s so much I’ve forgotten. It’s all kind of a blur. But I went back and I found out a few little facts. We would constantly talk on this LDS Family Fellowship Page. And it was full of men, women that were allies, and also LGBTQ folks. And so I think the women just felt such a connection with each other. We were all members of the LDS faith and trying to navigate that with our LGBTQ kids. And so, somebody said, let’s get a message thread started so we can really have a good conversation, maybe kind of private. Maybe some of the things were a little bit private.
And that’s really how it started. It was, we’d laugh and cry and dare to say things that were a little sacrilegious at the time. And, you know, it was just very cathartic. And we were all members of the church on that thread and we were all active in the LDS faith and we all had LGBTQ kids and we were feeling such a pulling and a dissonance. And of course you all know the story that Gina decided that we needed a bigger format because it was hard to keep track of who was saying what. So she made a facebook page. And then, Meg, called it Mama Dragons. So that’s my recollection of how it all got started.
JEN: It’s interesting when you go back to read those threads because most of you stayed up really late at night and you were messaging each other at 11:00, 12:00, 1:00 in the morning even. And then, Neca would wake up in the morning and reply to everyone else who was still in bed.
YVETTE: I remember. I remember just how wonderful that was being on the thread with those ladies. It just felt like . . . ya know. Something about being on that little thread, they just felt like friends, does that make sense? Instead of this big facebook group. And so we just chatted and chatted and told each other our concerns. And it was cathartic for sure, yeah.
JEN: So, like you said, that private message thread didn’t last very long, about a month before the Facebook Group was created. And that was January of 2014. And, I think, in reading through, I think it has a lot to do with, like you said, tracking. Because you have some people at 1:00 in the morning and it’s pages long of random stickers and messages to each other. And people are trying to reply backwards. There’s not really a conversational flow. So, Gina created the group and called it the Mama Dragon Council. What was the group like at that point? How many people were in there? And can you talk about how the group got its name, either you or Neca?
NECA: Let me chime in a little bit about that group. Part of the reason Gina created it was for a very practical reason. She and her teenage child, at the time, were trying to get a GSA started at a highschool in a very conservative community in Utah. And, Gina, who was not the mom of an LGBTQ child herself, was trying to support a lot of LGBTQ students at that school who did not have a lot of support. And, so, she was in that group asking questions of moms who did have an LGBTQ child about what she could be doing to help and support. And I think all of the earliest moms in that message thread were moms of gay or lesbian children. And I got added to that message thread as the first mom of a transgender child, I guess, hoping to bring in some of my experience to help with a gender variant child in the group that Gina was supporting.
JEN: Do either of you want to talk about the creation of the name of the group.
YVETTE: Well, we know that Meg had, I think she originally posted – I was looking for it yesterday. And I think she originally was just posting on the Family Fellowship Page, it seems like. Maybe it was the one we created the Mama Dragons, but I think it might’ve been before, where she’s like, Mother Bear is not strong enough. I’m a Mama Dragon. I will breathe fire on anybody. I remember that specifically. And then she came up with the idea, why don’t we call ourselves Mama Dragons. And it was just perfect.
JEN: That blog post is available, portions of it are available on our website for people who are interested. But, yeah, she wrote a blog about her own experience of feeling like she was growing talons and scales. And it’s actually a really beautiful blog post. I don’t know if it’s publicly available in its entirety anymore. So, about this time, this is when I joined in, that January of 2014. And there was conversation already because we didn’t highlight this, but you guys were not located close together for the most part. You had people in Arizona, and a couple in California, and a couple in Utah. And nobody had met in person. You guys were super excited to meet in person. So you planned a retreat. Talk to me about that first retreat.
YVETTE: Alright. Well, the first retreat that I went on was the one in St. George, I think. It was fabulous. You were there, Jen, I remember I met you, I think, for the first time there. And Neca was, she cooked for us, right? You cooked really cool food for us. I can just see you at the bar making food.
JEN: Neca was my roommate.
NECA: Which was hilarious because I went to bed at 10:00 and Jen came to bed at about 1:00a.m.
JEN: And then Neca got up at six. We only shared the bed for a couple hours every night.
YVETTE: We just talked and talked and talked. It was so cathartic. I know, wasn’t it especially important to you at that point, Jen. Weren’t you just . . .
JEN: Are you asking if I cried the most? Yes. I was someone who cried the most. It was brilliant for me, absolutely. After that retreat, a lot of moms had taken a lot of photos and they were really active on social media. So, when we got back, they were posting pictures of this retreat on social media. And requests started pouring in to join the group. The group was pretty strict at that point. So we created a new space that could be a little bit more open and the Salt Lake Tribune actually picked up that we had had this retreat. And so it got bigger. Yvette, you did a ton of vetting in those early years. How, at the start, did we decide if someone was qualified to be in our Mama Dragon group?
YVETTE: We were pretty liberal in who we let in. If they were an ally and they were in a position where they wanted to support LGBTQ folks, they were let in. It really was not, I remember, I don’t know if we even vetted a person. Mainly, if you were a friend, I think if you were a friend of somebody, we just trusted you. And, since there was so few of us, we let anybody in who wanted to be in because we just trusted that, if you wanted to be in our group then you must be a great ally. And it wasn’t necessarily just moms. So we had a lot of sisters and aunts and grandmas and friends and teachers in the group at that time who were allies. But, when did the official vetting start where we would actually vet them? I don’t know. Was that after we got organized with a President and everything? Do you remember?
NECA: We had a board, but no president at first. And that board was really sort of just the first ten people in the message thread. It’s like, ha, you got there first, you got a job. And, while it worked for us for a while, the reality is that people's lives get complicated and they needed to step down from that responsibility. And so part of us creating more structure of our leadership was just so that we had an official mechanism to let people step down from leadership roles and let new people step in.
YVETTE: I do remember that it was very one-on-one when we vetted. We talked to them. We would chat with them often, listen to their stories, see if they were ok. We had time to do that. But then, as we got bigger and bigger it was so overwhelming. We couldn’t do that anymore.
JEN: So, Neca, you mentioned this, but I’m going to turn to you. Around 2006, we needed to make things a little bit more formal. And a lot of that was you that did that. You were there, obviously, from the very beginning, but what sort of things were happening around this point? What did we do? What was changing during this formalization process?
NECA: One of the things that was changing was that we actually had two groups running in parallel during this period. We had the original group, the Mama Dragon Council, which we continued and the criteria for admission to that group was that you had to actually know someone in the group face-to-face. And then, we had the group that ultimately became what is now Mama Dragons main group. Where we did the vetting process that Yvette described. We also, like I said, had just had a board of ten people who were running the organization and as people were needing to step down as they’re lives changed, we needed more formal process to turn over leadership. I kind of got nominated to be the first president. I have no recollection of volunteering for that.
JEN: I distinctly remember volunteering you.
NECA: OK. ‘cause I was going to blame Jill Rowe.
JEN: I’m pretty sure it was me.
NECA: OK. But, I felt like I had some of the skill set to get us that first layer of organization that we needed. And so I wrote our first set of by-laws that really were designed to give us flow into the board so people would join the board for a three year commitment. But then also have a President and a President Elect. And so I served as the first president. And, in the by-laws, I wrote that a president only serves for one term. But, since I kind of started being President in March of 2016, I served, roughly, a year and a half.
And then, when we had our first election for president, we actually did the election in our Facebook Groups. And Julie was the person who was elected to be our first President Elect. And I tried to kind of divide up tasks between, this is what the president does, this is what the president elect does, this is what the board does, just trying to distribute the load based on what it looked like at that time. But I remember when I was talking with Julie about what kind of commitment was it going to be to be President Elect and I said, “Oh, I think it’ll be four or five hours a week.” Julie, I am so sorry. I said, “Oh, you’ll be fine.” And then it was just this torrent of responsibility.
JULIE: Yeah. That’s ok. We all learned as we went, right? It started out as four or five hours a week.
JEN: So, during that point, Neca, the first mission statement came out. You wrote the by-laws. We started creating subgroups. Julie worked herself to death creating regional groups. And we did a lot of participating in Prides where we could. What did it look like when Mama Dragons participated in Pride at that stage?
NECA: We primarily did hugging booths. And we had a two-fold goal. One was simply to help LGBTQ people feel loved, particularly to have loving parents because the reality then and still is now that not every LGBT Q person comes out to loving, accepting parents. But the other thing we were trying to do is spread awareness that our group existed. You can’t join a support group if you don’t know it exists. And so by being present at Pride Festivals, we could help the people who attend Pride, whether they were LGBTQ people themselves, or allies to let the people that they knew might need Mma Dragons, find us.
JEN: So, lots of important decisions about the direction of the group were happening and Yvette mentioned that, for a while, it was pretty much anyone who was a woman who wanted to be supportive was welcome. We were pretty exclusive with cisgender women at that point. And talk about, if you remember, why the focus changed a little bit and how some of the things happening in our members' lives were changing the tone and direction that Mama Dragons was taking?
NECA: From my perspective, the group narrowed it’s focus specifically to focus on moms more than on allies because moms were needing a different kind of support than allies were. Moms had specific questions about the nuts and bolts of parenting an LGBTQ child. How do I help my child who’s getting pushback at school? How do I support my child when coming out to extended family is not going well? And so those were, kind of parenting specific tasks, that it seemed like were places where people particularly needed support, and needed that support from other parents.
Allies weren’t necessarily having those same experiences. Also, parents themselves get pushback when they support their kid as their kid comes out. And that's particularly true for people who are a member of conservative religions or conservative communities. You know, you suddenly may lose a significant fraction of your friend-base if people don’t approve of your decision to affirm your child. And so we needed a space where mom’s could be talking about some of those experiences as well.
JEN: We also, in my memory right, about that time period, lost – several of our moms lost their children to suicide which dramatically, in my memory, changed the focus inside the groups to education not just celebration, not so much political advocacy. But I think some of those early suicides profoundly shaped our organization. Because you can read statistics and that matters, but it’s a really different situation to know those moms and attend those funerals. And, obviously, the organization isn’t a support group for those who have lost children to suicide. That became kind of a focus that shaped, I think, a lot of our educational decisions going forward.
Before I move on to the next phase, toward the end of your presidency, Neca, the organization won a pretty awesome award and you gave an awesome acceptance speech. We should include a link to that speech in the notes. But, can you talk about that award.
NECA: Equality Utah, every year as part of their Allies Dinner, gives an award to a person or group who’s been an important ally in that year. And, I think it was, was it in 2015 that Equality Utah gave Mama Dragons, as a group, the Ally of the Year Award. And it’s interesting, because Equality Utah is definitely a group that focuses on making political change to make the lives of LGBTQ people better. But what they saw was the moms who were speaking publicly in support of their kids had a big impact on legislators in a way that even sometimes LGBTQ people themselves sharing their experience didn’t.
The way I think about it is that it can be hard for Utah’s very conservative legislature to step into the shoes of an LGBTQ person and understand what their lives are like. But most of the people in our legislature are parents. And so it’s easy for them to step into the shoes of a parent and say, “What would I do if my kid came out to me? Would I have their back?” And so that was an opportunity for Mama Dragons , I think, to see the value we were providing in a different way, to be given that award. And it was also big thanks to Equality Utah, another opportunity to share with a wider audience about the existence of Mama Dragons and we did have a significant spike in people asking to join our group after that.
CELESTE: Jen, I think one important part of our history that we missed is the exclusion policy of 2015. So, the exclusion policy of November 5th, 2015, I think that shaped, drastically, the direction of Mama Dragons and our membership and the needs of our membership. In fact, I think, that was, to me, like a defining part of our history.
JEN: Can you talk, for people who are listening, who are like, “The Exclusion of what policy?” Like what are we talking about? Can you explain that?
CELESTE: Yeah. Definitely. The LDS church seemed to be kind of doing what they’re doing today. Where things were getting a little bit better for LGBTQ people. There was rumors that wards and stakes were being more accepting and affirming. That people were allowed to have callings in the LDS church, which in the past, they really weren’t. They were considered sinners if they were actively homosexual. In this exclusion policy that came out defined, essentially, that the LDS church was taking a really firm stance on homosexual behavior and that people who were acting on their homosexual behavior were essentially considered apostates of the LDS church and they would be removed form the church.
And they went, kind of, back and forth for a minute on what that looked like. But that original policy was harsh. And there was a big flood of membership leaving the LDS church with folks that were both allies or people with LGBTQ kids after that policy came out. And there became a spike in demand for support for families, specifically moms of queer kids.
JEN: You are 100% right. And it also changed, a little bit, the trajectory of the group because it had included members of all faiths, but primarily the members of the group came from LDS or Mormon roots. And, at that point, there was a mass exodus from the church and the group membership changed and continued to change over time so that it doesn’t particularly represent LDS people anymore in the same way that it did.
So, in 2018, Julie, you took the reigns as President with Wendy as your President Elect partner in training. This was right about the time that Mama Dragons needed, in my mind, to go from like a small group of friends - there were several hundred at the time – but a small group of friends who kind of all knew each other and we needed to become more official. And we got an actual bank account during this phase. Talk to us about how Mama Dragons was changing and expanding and talk about what your primary focus was?
JULIE: We focused a little bit, when Neca was talking on the changes, I think that there were so many changes in the trajectory of the group that year when I was President Elect. We drilled things down to regional groups because everybody, regionally, was having a different experience. I mean, if you’re in Utah, you’re having a very different experience than if you’re in Seattle.
So we really started to make some significant changes during that time. And I was kind of just floundering trying to figure it all out. And, so, then, by the time that it was time to have the next election where we were going to choose the President after me – I’m going to talk about Wendy for a minute because I didn’t know Wendy. I had seen her online. I read what she wrote. I loved how she wrote. She seemed really smart. And I saw her at an Affirmation Conference and tackled her at the buffet and sat her down by me and said, “We want to nominate you to run for Mama Dragon President.” And I will say, that’s the only time in my life, I’ve had true inspiration, is at that moment.
With, as Neca left the presidency, and we were left with this amazing thing that she created. The by-laws, I mean, the organization process had started and we were really ready to go. At the time that Wendy was elected and she was the President Elect and we had defined roles for her and what she was going to do. So I feel like we really hit the ground running which was why we were able to do what we did. But it was very clear that we needed to be super official. And we needed money. To start that, we needed money. And to get money we had to do certain things. So, with a lot of help from other groups and people in Encircle and with LoveLoud, we were connected with attorneys and logo designers and we just started to start the process to get official.
And that was a lot of money going out that we didn’t have and a lot of people donating their legal services or giving it to us at a severe discount. And so we started the process of getting our 501c3, of trademarking the new logo. And with that, we were a group of very close friends even though we didn’t know each other, a lot of us in person but on Facebook. And a lot had gone into the creation of Mama Dragons. It was very emotional. So there were a lot of emotions that we were dealing with as we moved to a new logo, as we moved to a new mission statement, as we drilled down and became very official. Sometimes that’s really hard. So it was an emotional year, I think, for a lot of people.
CELESTE: I think, Julie, also, when you say that, like even in the board itself, there was a lot of people that there were a lot of opinions on how we should move and how the mission statement should be written and how things should be. Should we be a non-profit? Should we not be a non-profit? I feel like there was kind of a division with it.
JULIE: For sure. Yeah. And I’m a peacemaker and it was difficult. I think Wendy and I had some really hard phone calls and some really hard conversations. And it was so clear what we had to do to move forward, but it was very painful. It was a very painful year, I would say, for a lot of people.
JEN: Not everybody was onboard for all of the changes. And, like you said, we were all friends back then. Everybody was close and had shared some pretty deep emotional interactions, and so emotions ran high. I think you guys handled it brilliantly. Can we talk about the logo for a minute, because, Yvette, while we have you here, you were put in charge or you volunteered – I can’t remember – for the first logo. And it was exciting. We were excited to get this logo. How did that go down originally, like, the first time because that would've been 2015ish?
YVETTE: All I remember is a lot, I remember you were trying to get a logo and everything we did just didn’t work. You know, we tried and tried with several people and it just never worked. So then we hired, there’s a website and you just, people show you their designs and then you pick one and then they continue to work on it, one of those things. And so that’s how it evolved. And it was a couple of people on this community. But, when they made that decision, when they were done, I was like, “This is it. I don’t care if anyone likes it,” because we have worked on it, I don’t know if you remember that, Jen. you had worked on the logo trying to get it. And we were just trying to get it. And we were like, “This is it. We don’t care.” and I thought it was really cute. I loved it. I loved it. And so some people disagreed on it.
JEN: Before that, we had a lot of things. And we were all wearing different shirts with different graphics and stuff on it. That was the first time we got unified. I was super excited too. I was with you because I had tried and not been able to do it. And then you pulled it off for the $200 measly dollars in cash that we possessed as an organization and it was brilliant.
YVETTE: That's right.
JEN: And then, Wendy and Julie, you’re the ones who redid that logo. Talk about that, like the decisions behind that and some of the conversations that were happening about that.
JULIE: Ok. Interestingly, I had probably four different Mama Dragon shirts with four different logos. So, when I joined Mama Dragons, you know, I was a little bit confused. And then, people could just draw a logo, or draw something, and then make a shirt and it said Mama Dragons on it, right? So we had all this . . .
JEN: I still have mine by the way.
JULIE: Yeah.
YVETTE: I do too.
JULIE: I do too. But we just had all this stuff and so it didn’t seem very professional. And we’re trying to become professional, a professional group at this point. And, by the way, I didn’t mind being non-professional. I thought it was great. But, now I have the responsibility of making sure this group goes somewhere. And so it changed how I had to look at things a lot. One of the things, and I think Wendy can weigh in on this because she's more graphically minded. But, one of the things about the logo is, to make it marketable, it needed to be simple and it needed to say something, and it needed to represent the group. And that was, well Wendy, you should weigh in. You should talk about this a little bit because I feel like you were more behind the logo change.
WENDY: I think at the time, we were kind of narrowing down what our mission was at the same time. So we kind of had to decide who we were focusing on. And we came to the decision that we wanted to focus on the new mom of the LGBTQ kid that had just come out or they had just learned about this. And so we wanted a logo that would not scare away the new mom. And so we felt like the fierce fire-breathing dragon might not be the best choice for the new mom. And so we wanted something that would be welcoming while also being a dragon and also being simple enough that we could use it in various different forms with marketing. We went through a lot of different ideas and kind of landed on something that would work well for graphics as well as be recognizable so that when somebody saw the Mama Dragons logo they would know exactly who we were and kind of what we represented.
JULIE: I think we probably looked at, I don’t know, we had three different really good designers giving us ideas. And we just kept, we were like, “No. No. No.” I mean, everyone was like, “Uh, that’s not it.” Because we were trying to envision it, right, on a baseball cap, on a t-shirt, on marketing materials, everywhere. And when we finally thought, “OK. Let’s give one more designer a chance.” And the very first one that he sent us was that one. And that’s it. It was really kind of cool because we knew we’d know it when we saw it. And it was just so simple, but we could incorporate all the colors into in various different ways. So, thank you, Wendy, because I’d forgotten all the reasons why we decided to change the logo. So, once we had that, that was gold.
JEN: So, at that time, like, early in Mama Dragons, way back at the beginning, we were doing kind of crazy things. We were pooling together money to fly a queer kid across the country to live with their aunt because the family wasn’t a safe spot anymore. And we were calling out women in different locations to drive around and help find that kid who was in crisis that just had run away. And people were offering up their couches for different people. “Does anybody have a couch for this kid who’s been kicked out” or whatever. And part of that, I remember, in the conversations, being like, “This is actually kind of dangerous.” This is opening people up to some scary stuff. And opening the organization to some liability. So, part of that, in my head, moved towards coming a non-profit was very practical. We don’t want to sponsor strangers in each other’s houses and become the AirBnb
of homeless kids, or whatever at the time. But, how much push back did you get, Julie, in becoming an official non-profit.
JULIE: A lot. I wouldn’t say necessarily in becoming an official non-profit. But we got a lot of pushback in how we were doing things because, right, we’re all a bunch of moms and we want to rescue these kids and we want to provide them a safe space. But it was such a liability as a group, if we become an official legal entity, we can’t be doing things that put the group at risk, you know. There could be lawsuits. It was very difficult to get people to change their mindset about the group for sure. And I think it goes back, even, to the part where we’re a support group for moms, we’re not an ally group. That’s part of it that we had to really define our mission and our goals. And people are very comfortable in that old way of doing things, which I totally understand. It was great. But it was all very painful, I think, for some people.
JEN: So, you finished up at the end of – I can’t believe you did all of that in a year. You were done in January of 2019? You did all of that in a year. That’s breathtaking. So in 2019, Wendy, you take over. You take the lead and Lisa Dane is your President Elect. You had been super involved working with Julie. But talk about some of the big things that happened during 2019 and the start of 2020 when you were the President, Wendy.
WENDY: When I took over the Presidency, Jen, you were our board chair. And Julie stayed on as treasurer. So we kept working together. We got some really exciting exposure through some big media, which really helped get our name out there. So, the CNN United Shades of America did a piece on us. We were featured in Oprah Magazine which was really exciting. We were able to go to the headquarters in New York when we were there, Julie and I, and Lisa, to meet with the author of that article. Julie and I, and Lisa also, went to New York to the Stonewall Inn for an event that Facebook flew us out for. Jen, you and I went to the UN and did a suicide prevention training in New York. And then, Mama Dragons was kind of featured on HBO’s “We’re Here” Show. And they donated a sizable amount to Mama Dragons. So I think that all of those things helped spread the word about Mama Dragons. But, while I was president, COVID also hit. So that was kind of an interesting time.
JEN: I was just going to mention that.
WENDY: So we were kind of in the middle of planning our very first Mama Dragons conference. And we were speaking with some big name people that were considering coming to speak to us. We had a venue all booked and that, kind of, came to a halt. And, in fact, in June everything was shut down. We weren’t able to do in-person events anymore. And I think that kind of took a hit because a lot of what we do is online, but with regional groups, I think it’s important that moms get to meet each other face-to-face. And it was hard for a lot of people to not be able to do that anymore, and especially hard for a lot of people not to be able to hug at Pride events that year. And so, a few things happened to help those people. We created Paper Hugs and Wrapped in Hugs, kind of, for that support. Our mission is to support, educate, and empower moms. And, so, the support part was necessary at that time. So we created the Paper Hugs and Wrapped in Hugs to support those moms.
JEN: Yeah. Lot’s of big programs, and it changed everything with the way that we approached Pride. Toward the end, middle to end of 2020, I knew – like you said, I was serving as board chair – and I knew that I had reached my limit. The organization needed to grow. It needed to expand. It needed to do new things. I just didn’t have the skill set to take on what needed to come. And so I cajoled, maybe, I encouraged, talked to Celeste, and Celeste Carolyn was hired as the first paid employee to ever work with Mama Dragons. And she came on as the Executive Director. So that was toward the end of 2020, and you’ve been serving as the Executive Director for almost three years now, Celeste. Can you talk about the trajectory and how things have changed and what your focus has been for the past three years and if you have any idea of what the next phases might be?
CELESTE: Those are all really big questions. So, I took over in September of that year, Jen. And it was equal, you and I kind of like discussing what could happen next. I had pitched an idea of how to change Mama Dragons, moving Mama Dragons from a place of being a peer support group to really being an educational center for moms. And the idea was to create an eLearning program because we were struggling. We were struggling moving from being a support group to a non-profit that could function. And so I pitched it. I thought it was kind of a fun idea, but I don’t know how you took it. I was like, “I want to build this monster thing, and I want to be able to scale it, and I want to be able to launch this within a year.”
JEN: I loved it. I was so excited.
CELESTE: And at that time too, the ask for me too, was can we move from a working board which was kind of a traditional board model, to a non-working board advisory type board. And so there was kind of a two part ask. Like, financially get Mama Dragons in line that it can sustain itself and employees. And the second was, can we flip our board from this traditional board where, you know, there's usually like four or five people on the board sprinting, working 30, 40 hours a week, trying to lift this entire organization to something that was more sustainable. And, I mean, that model, I know it happened for a very long time. Like, all of you here that are sitting here, at some point, did this for Mama Dragons, this sprint.
And so it was a fun pivot. And it was really tricky. I come from a background of business and I ran big organizations, big employee pools. And this has honestly been the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my career. And, I think that the hardest part was that our workforce, our volunteers, are also the people that we serve. And so there’s this emotional attachment to identity when it comes to Mama Dragons. It’s so beautiful and so strong. But that’s where the resistance to change comes from is that you’re not asking people to change things in an organization, you’re asking them to change part of their identity, and especially those that come from a conservative religion.
So, one of the things I want to back up a little, is there were pivots on how we dealt with religion within this group. In the beginning, we were LDS focused. It was a group for LDS people who were almost all active that were trying to navigate this space of how to advocate for your child. Then that November 5th policy happened in 2015 and a lot of folks weren’t able to stay within the religion. They couldn’t deal with the cognitive dissonance. There was no space for that, and so a lot of people left. And so now we have this group that’s fractured with people who are hurting from this religion that want nothing to do with it, and then we have people who are staying in this religion. And these two groups were not playing very nice together because of the pain that they’re in.
And so we’re creating these new environments within the group at this time of like, how do we deal with this? We’ll create this Mama’s Tryna Stay, Mamas Moving Forward. We’ll create these subgroups for these people. And then there was a space that, I think in Julie's time, there was a pivot that, “Well, how do we let more people? What about people that understand LDS culture that are in Utah and Idaho that are part of this? Can we let them in?” And then threw as another pivot that was like, “Wait, what these people are experiencing are the exact same thing in other conservative environments.” Right, like someone who’s part of the Evangelical church is going through the exact same thing that these LDS moms are going through, just with a slight pivot of language.
And so we opened the doors wider again. So we’re now looking at this Mama Dragons now that allows any person who identifies as a mother to join our group that comes from varying levels of experience, but really focusing on people that are coming from a conservative environment, like, that’s what we’re good at. We get it more than anybody else of what it takes to advocate for your kid when there’s all this cognitive dissonance. This is your family. This is your belief center. And this is your community. And they’re saying your kid is broken. That’s what we’re good at. So we’re taking that and we’re moving it forward. So, Cameo joined me, I’m trying to remember what year?
CAMEO: January 2021 is when I started working with you.
CELESTE: And Cameo helped me build a lot of what we have today. She jumped in and helped us re-org Facebook Groups because when I started we had 4200 moms. Which, when you think about, like in the years of 2014, 2013 we started with 16 people and a message thread. So, it was at 4200 moms. Today we’re almost at 10,000. So when we think about the scalability of our resources, like how we used to vet members, can you imagine Yvette, 50 to 100 people every week, is what we do now. And the processes that we had, I remember doing what we did. And I just, we keep having to pivot and change because of the scale that we now do everything at.
And really, this last few years has been, “How do we sustain what’s already coming at us.” Mama Dragons is known really well in specific states. And it’s needed in other states. Some of our biggest growth areas have been in Florida and Texas, which makes sense because these moms who come from a culture that is rejecting their children need our support. We also really fine-tuned, like, our focus these last few years, of really supporting moms that first year and then getting moms who have graduated from that first year that kind of have this under their belt to come back as mentors and really mentor these new moms. Because, at least, the research says that at least one affirming parent can change the life of these kiddos, right? So it's really us just trying to get that parent that’s new to the journey to like turn towards their kid and be affirming and hopefully move towards celebrating and then advocating. And graduate from Mama Dragons and join Equality Utah. And so it’s just us kind of honing in on that vision that you all created earlier.
JEN: Are we supposed to graduate from Mama Dragons?
CELESTE: At some point.
CAMEO: I mean, you don’t have to graduate, because, like you mentioned, it’s a journey. You can come back and mentor, like I was just at a Pride event. And there are moms there who are clearly super affirming already. And I’m like, we still need you to help support those newer moms. And I think a really big key thing as we’re talking about like who we’re focusing on and the targets too. And I know this was a discussion with an executive team and then Celeste took it to the board as well was, what does that mean as we identify who this new mother is. And a couple changes happened. One was that we defined it as, anyone who identifies in a mothering role. We’re not going to identify that for you. So we have trans men who identify as mothers. We have some cisgender men who identify as mothers.
I think I just pulled data on this and we have 145 members who are somewhere on the gender fluid spectrum, so gender fluid, gender queer, agender, nonbinary, however they define themselves. So I think that’s awesome. But, also thinking about, we want moms in that first journey who want to affirm their child. It’s ok if they don’t know how to do it. That’s what our support groups are for. That’s what Parachute eLearning is for. But we need them to want to learn how to affirm their child. So that’s kind of a, I don’t want to say a line we drew, because clearly we don’t know necessarily, even through the vetting process yet. But as the moderators work within the subgroups and the main group especially, as conversations happen, it needs to be positive and supportive as long as that mom’s wanting to learn, that’s what we really care about.
CELESTE: I think that the interesting thing in some of our changes is that, what we’ve found is in this bubble that’s just about moms, we continually want to make it about the kids and save the kids. But, what we’ve found is that if we focus on the kids and save the kids, the moms don’t get saved. They won’t take care of themselves first, which is an important lesson for moms that they have to put on their mask before they put on somebody else’s in the airplane. And, this is their space to do that.
CAMEO: I love that.
CELESTE: I think one other pivot that was made, kind of, throughout this history is, is that we kind of talked about that we were going to focus on moms. We have a lot of allies, we have a lot of therapists that want to join our group. And I think there’s not a lot of understanding of why, why they can’t be in that space. And I think that it’s because it’s not the moms job to teach the therapists how to be a good therapist. It’s not the moms job to teach the allies how to be a good ally. But this is their only place that it gets to be about them.
Outside of this space, it’s about their kid and so we really try to protect that. This is your space that this gets to be about you, that you get to ask all the hard questions, the things that I don’t want you asking your kid. I think it’s really beautiful. And I think, today, those same experiences that you had in the early years of building these relationships and friendships and deep connections are still happening. And they just happen in a different way. And I think there’s some longing and sadness. That people are like, “Oh, it’s not how it used to be.” But the end result is still there which, I think, is incredible.
NECA: I was just going to say there are some ways our group feels so much like it felt in 2015 because I still see moms coming to that group and saying, “Help. This happened and I don’t know what to do.” and I see people volunteering their own experiences, sharing those and not saying, “Hey, you have to do it this way.” But saying, “Here’s what I did that worked.” or “Here’s what I did that went disastrously wrong, so maybe not that.” But I see that same generosity of people sharing their experiences in our groups that we’ve had from very early on. And that helps make it a place where people feel safe to say, “I need help.”
JULIE: In a lot of ways it’s a safer space, I think. Like Celeste was talking about how we had therapists, we have people that wanted to get in there and therapize everyone. And we were just super inclusive of anyone we thought who was an ally we would bring them into the group. But it did create a space where mom’s stopped daring to say anything because they were afraid they’d say the wrong thing. And then they would sometimes get beat up for saying the wrong thing. And we were like, “Yeah. We want them to say it here. We do want them to make the mistakes in the group and not say it to their own kid.” So that had to happen and weeding that out, I mean, after you let everybody in it’s hard to get everybody back out and create that safe space again. So we went through that transition.
And I think, talking about the Facebook Groups, because I think a key piece we left out was, Facebook got behind Mama Dragons. And they touted us as one of their main groups. And they invited us back to a Facebook Group Symposium that Neca and Lisa went to. And we participated in training with them. And they were trying to create the mentor program. And we had meetings, weekly, with Facebook executives, not executives but the people in charge of the Facebook Groups. We would meet with them and talk about what was working and what wasn’t working. So, in that timeframe, we had so much publicity, we were becoming so well known that it was just crazy. And our numbers were growing, not to the level they have now, but that’s when it really started was our numbers went from quickly like 400 to 4,000. And so that was a very cool relationship that I think we had with at Facebook at the time.
JEN: Everybody keeps talking about the decisions to narrow. I remember huge pushback at different points like, “You let transphobic people in your group. And my mom tried to apply but you wouldn’t let her because she was transphobic. You kicked her out.” And trying to find those balances and really narrow in. We’re not the biggest group that exists because of this beautiful focus. Celeste, can you talk to us for a minute about, without naming organizations or whatever, but the different types of organizations that exist and what makes Mama Dragons unique in that space.
CELESTE: I think one of the biggest differentiations of Mama Dragons is our focus on conservative religion. I don’t know of another group that allows space for people to move within their belief system as well as Mama Dragons. Like the we will meet you where you’re at, when it comes to your beliefs. And I think that that’s really cool and that we celebrate that. That you’re like, “If you’re an active LDS person and you’re sitting in the pews advocating for your child, we are grateful that you’re there. If you left the LDS faith and you’re on your own journey of self acceptance and figuring out who you are as a mother and raising your child, we will meet you there. If you’re coming from a different faith background and you have your own experience, we will meet you there.” And I think that’s really cool, but that storyline stays the same.
I think the other unique difference of Mama Dragons is really that we focus on the mom because of that conservative religious environment that needs so much support, that the mom is still seen as that primary parenting figure and has the influence in the home. And I think that’s unique to us too, is that there’s always a push as we grow and develop as people, that we grow and develop the organization with us. And we’ve done a really great job of saying “Where is our focus that’s going to make the biggest difference.” I think it’s really that first year that our moms are raising that kid. That’s really the decisions that they’re making there, are making the biggest difference for their kiddos. And I think we do a great job at focusing on that.
One of the most unpopular decisions I’ve made as an executive director is stopping hugging booths. And that is not turned out that people have loved that. But I made it for really specific reasons. It was to create more differentiation between us and other organizations. There are specific organizations that that’s what they do. And they do it well. And they’re awesome at it. And it’s always looking at, as a non-profit, like we don’t have to be everything to everyone. We just have to be really good at this thing.
And we’ve moved to less pride events and more mental health events and more suicide prevention walks because what we’re finding is how do we find those moms in need in these small communities. They’re not at Prides, usually, yet. They’re somewhere else. They’re heading to their therapist and saying, “I don’t know what to do.” Or they’re relying on a friend, like that’s how they’re finding us. And so we’re really trying to focus on how to find them. But, I think that there’s something really unique of what we’re offering because of how we vet people coming in. We’re really specific about how you’re going to get into this group.
And we do, literally, everything we can to do precautions to make sure the trolls and moles are out. I mean, they try. They keep trying. But we do the best we can. I don’t know. I just think that what we’ve created is incredible. I think of all of us here today and all the little efforts. I don’t think any of us probably envisioned what it would be today or what it will be tomorrow or in three years or in five years. It’s pretty impactful. You put a group of moms that come from a conservative religious environment that have been trained their entire lives to serve and act and raise children and you set them on one topic, like, we’re kind of unstoppable.
JEN: I love that you mentioned the one topic because I was just thinking about how it actually just feels like a miracle. We’re talking about religion, we’re talking about orientation, we’re talking about raising children. I’ve never been in a parenting group that doesn’t end up having fights all the time about whether breast feeding is best or bottle feeding is ok. And we’re talking about sexuality and religion and faith and parenting in one little spot with 10,000 people. And, really, the contention and the moderation and stuff is very minimal. We have every contentious topic that exists all wrapped up in one.
CELESTE: We do have some guidelines, right? Like we have amazing moderators. We have a huge team. I don’t know if a lot of folks know this, but we have over 170 volunteers and a handful of employees at Mama Dragons. And those 170 volunteers all work in the background to make this seamless. But they don’t notice us. They don’t know what’s going on in the background. They just think, oh, this Facebook group is just here. Look at all these things happening, all this. This eLearning program is just over here. Oh, I can take QPR Suicide Prevention for free? That’s great. That’s over here. And it’s just all seamlessly happening.
But this group behind it is moving this mega-wheel that’s really helping parents change how they look at parenting queer kids. I think, right now, our political climate is really charged, more than I’ve ever seen it. And I think that more so than ever, parents need good academic research, information. And parents that have gone through this journey of like, “How do you do this?” Because it there just seems like there’s so much misinformation out there. And I think that's one of our lines, is like if people are trying to present information that isn’t backed by research, we’re not going to let the jive, right? Everything that we’re sharing is shared both by parent experience and research. This is what the doctors say. This is what the therapists say. This is what this ten year research study said about trans children say. And I think that’s just incredible.
CAMEO: I’m going to add to that too. Just going back to what our current mission is, which is we support, educate, and empower mothers of LGBTQ children. And I feel like listening to all of you as the decisions have been made along the way, we’re working through that path also. We’ve got that support down. We’ve got our main group on Facebook and then we have regional groups for different intersectionalities including religion and race and special needs or trans kids. I feel like we’ve got that support.
And then we added this component of the next part of our mission which was education. So adding the QPR Suicide Prevention Trainings, and then adding Parachute eLearning, I just think it’s like this beautiful flow of mirroring the journey of moms as well. They first need that support. “Oh, my gosh. My kid just came out. I don’t know what to do. I’ve never had that modeled for me. That kind of goes back to that conservative culture and upbringing of our moms. Most of us never saw how to affirm LGBTQ children. It wasn’t modeled for us.
So we get that support and then we learn how to do that. And then the next step is that empowering. We empower our moms to really celebrate their kids. And it’s really, like, our mission is this beautiful journey. Our moms are going through this beautiful journey. And it’s just a powerful thing to witness. It’s been a powerful thing to experience. And, kind of like what you said Celeste, of moms not knowing what’s going on in the background. I joined in 2018 so it was really cool to listen to Julie and Wendy talking about what they were doing. I had no idea. I just was over here going, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” And those are the moms that we want. The ones were are like, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I love my kid. Cool. Come join us. We love your kid too.
CELESTE: I think there’s a handful of things coming up that are pretty exciting. And, like, when we look at the future of Mama Dragons. Parachute will continue and expand. We have hundreds of moms every month do Parachute courses which are eLearning courses just generally about how to parent a queer kid. The new ones that are coming out are going to be about gender and then also advanced suicide prevention. We all know in this group that there’s a higher risk for our kiddos of suicidal ideation, self harm, and then suicide attempts. And so our goal is to create something that is more long term. QPR is a great start. But then our parents really struggle with the longterm affects of suicidal ideation and what do they do with chronic suicide, and how do they handle self harm?
Some of these things are really important topics that they need more information on and they need more information before it happens. And then, other things that you’ll see is, we have peer-led support groups. But we’re going to start doing therapist-led small groups to help support parents that are in crisis. And they’ll be specifically topiced. So one week will be about self harm, the next week will be about eating disorders, where the parents can come in and moms can ask specific questions to a therapist about what’s going on with their kiddo and seek support. Because, right now, to get into a specialty therapist, it’s usually between three and six months. And that’s too long. It’s too long to not have answers for those things and not know what to do as parents. And I think in the future of Mama Dragons, we’re going to see more advocacy work in teaching our parents how to advocate in legislation and how to get more involved so that the political climate that our kids are suffering through right now doesn’t happen again.
JEN: So talk to us, Cameo, I want to kind of wrap up with what Mama Dragons is doing right now. Just like the basic overview of the programs and services that are available for people.
CAMEO: Yeah. Absolutely. So Mama Dragons has support groups on Facebook. We have our main group for everyone who’s a member. We have 20 regional groups. We have seven subgroups which cover different intersectionalities of being LGBTQ. And then we offer for free to our members, QPR which is a suicide prevention traning. It’s, like we mentioned before, it’s kind of the beginning. It’s a little basic. Im excited for where we’re going to take Parachute to become the advanced suicide prevention course later to kind of dive deeper into helping prevent suicide amongst our LGBTQ kids. We have Paper Hugs and Wrapped in Hugs. And Paper Hugs is where Mama Dragons can write letters to each other’s kids and to the other moms. and it’s just kind of a way of sharing our love across the mail and letting these kids and these other moms know that they’re not alone and that they’re loved. And realizing that the moms need to take care of themselves also and they need to be loved and supported as well. And that’s what our group is about.
And so Wrapped in Hugs is a way for us to do that, sending blankets in the mail to each other. And then we have Embracelets, which is a program where Mama Dragons and even members outside of the community can make friendship bracelets and send them to our events director. And then she passes them out to whoever is hosting a booth at a Pride Event or a Mental Health Fair. And everyone can grab a bracelet. And it’s just a way to take that support with them as they go throughout their day.
And then we have Parachute as we mentioned before. It’s an eLearning program. Right now we have Intro to your LGBTQ child. It’s free for members. It’s a nominal fee for non-members. And it’s just a way to learn about your LGBTQ child and how to best love and support them. Go to Mama Dragons.org. Click on Programs, and you can find information about all of them.
JEN: This little walk down memory lane was super fun for me and I hope that our listeners feel like they have a little bit more understanding of the Mama Dragons, particularly the ways that we might be able to help support, educate, and empower them! Thank you, deeply, to each of you for coming to help better articulate this last 10 years of Mama Dragons history!
JULIE: Goodbye, Thank you.
WENDY: Thank You.
NECA: Thank you, Jen.
CELESTE: Thanks, Jen.
JEN: Thanks so much for joining us here in the den. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends. We’d also love it if you could take a minute to leave us a positive rating and review on whatever platform you’re listening to us on. Good reviews make us more visible and help us reach more folks who could benefit from listening. But, review or not, we’re glad you’re here. For more information on Mama Dragons and the podcast, you can visit our website at mamdragons.org or follow us on Instagram or Facebook. And if you’d like to help Mama Dragons in our mission to support, educate, and empower the parents of LGBTQ children, donate at mamadragons.org or click the donate link in the show notes.