Moms, You are Not Alone

While searching for adoption blogs during the journey of adopting her own daughter, Marile Borden realized that there were some great blogs geared towards moms and some really bad ones. In May 2009, after a year of planning the website, Borden’s Momicillin was born. It would bring the best mommy bloggers out there to one accessible place.

Since its start, Borden now has seven regular bloggers, has created a Facebook page for her site and has seen a surge of popularity. The Facebook page has over 21,000 followers.

“Momicillin has great writers that are validating and entertaining for moms,” said Borden.

One of the more recent additions to Momicillin is a monthly bookclub with a live-feed, author chat on Facebook. It has been well received and many members look forward to it each month.

When approached by Random House’s public relations department, Borden was excited to partner with them. The book club kicked off with Anna Quinlan and has hosted other authors such as Elizabeth Berg and Lisa See. Next month’s reading selection is Gail Caldwell’s Let’s Take the Long Way Home. Since the author is based in the Boston area, Borden has high hopes to do a live broadcast with her as a local event.

Shortly after the successful launch of Momicillin, Borden decided to conduct “a grand experiment in building a Facebook community” and started work on her second website and Facebook page, Moms Who Need Wine.

Borden knew that the timing was great as moms were just beginning to jump into the Facebook world. “The Moms Who Need Wine page is for moms who don’t take themselves too seriously,” said Borden. “Being a mom is the greatest job in the world, but one of the hardest.”

“Moms Who Need Wine is a community of moms from across the globe who have come together to share our stories, revel in our imperfections, and find solace in the fact that we are not going it alone,” said Borden on her website.

Borden tapped into that mindset and now boasts nearly 420,000 followers. The logo is in demand and she now offers t-shirts for sale and working on offering customized wine glasses.

She wasn’t the only one who noticed the popularity of this site. The California Wine Club contacted Borden and now offers an exclusive wine club for members of Moms Who Need Wine, something she would like to see expand globally.

Another popular event of the site was Moms Night In. Borden and four other moms did a live-feed broadcast, similar to the popular television show, The View. They conducted a wine tasting, discussed parenting, life, gossip, and television shows. Over 100 followed the event. She hopes to make Moms Night In a regular thing and hopes to find a sponsor for it next time.

Also in the works is a live-feed chat with Ben Flajnik, this past season’s runner-up on Bachelorette, who happens to own Evolve wines in Sonoma County.

When it was clear that Flajnik was going to be in the final four or five on the show, Borden decided to look up his bio and found the website to his winery and made contact with Flajnik’s partner, who thought the idea was great.

One follower of Moms Who Need Wine commented that she loves this page because “it let's me know that I'm NORMAL. This page is full of professional women, stay at home moms and people like me who do it all. We all heart wine.”

Maintaining these sites does take time. Borden said that she spends at least an hour a day providing content and monitoring the pages, getting rid of spam and keeping things interesting. More hours are necessary as she plans events, sometimes taking up to 30 hours. This is time in addition to her running an advertising agency for the past ten years and being a mom to her son and daughter.

It has definitely been an exciting time for Borden to witness the growth of both Momicillin and Moms Who Need Wine, and to see how it evolves on a daily basis. 

So if you are a mom who needs a little diversion, support, or just to chat, these two sites may be just what you need.