Winterport mother of two Sarah Cottrell is proud to call herself a “mom blogger.” But more than that, she’s proud to be a part of something great — a project by moms who saw a need and figured out how to fill it.
It’s called the Scary Mommy Thanksgiving Project. Families in need are matched with families willing to give through the parenting website Scary Mommy. This year, writers like Cottrell were given the chance to not only drive traffic and donations to the project, but have their work published in an anthology about surviving the holidays.
Started six years ago by Jill Smokler of Baltimore, Maryland, Scary Mommy is a website for all things family. Articles about everything from potty training to traveling with children reiterate the notion that parenting doesn’t have to be perfect. But perhaps the most popular part of the site, and the impetus for the Thanksgiving Project, is the anonymous “Confessional” page where visitors can leave comments or share secrets.
A confession
A few years ago, Smokler noticed a handful of mothers posting about how they wouldn’t be able to afford Thanksgiving dinner. Others posted they wanted to help.
Additional families came forward with struggles as Thanksgiving drew near, and soon Smokler found herself matching more than 400 families with donors. To date, Scary Mommy Nation, the nonprofit Smokler started to facilitate the donations, has helped more than 4,500 families, including several in Maine.
This year, more than $81,000 has been raised so far, and more than 1,600 families were sent gift cards to purchase Thanksgiving dinner. Another 500 or so were on the waiting list at the time of publication.
“This all happened really accidentally,” Smokler said. “I didn’t set out to start a nonprofit, it’s just grown from one family helping out another family.”
Applications are accepted from people all over the country, and while it’s difficult to say how many came in from the Pine Tree State, Smokler said there have been several, and there have been many donations from Maine as well. The application asks families to say why they need help, and the project never turns anyone away unless they suspect fraud.
For the most part, donors stay anonymous. However, occasionally families will want to send a thank you and the two will connect. Smokler said once someone even sent a family an additional $1,000 apiece after reading their story in a thank you card.
Finding a niche
Cottrell’s interest in the Thanksgiving Project and Scary Mommy started in 2012 after she received her master’s degree in intermedia from the University of Maine. Her days at the time were filled with doctor’s appointments with her oldest son, Finn, 4, who has hemophilia. Soon after, Cottrell found out she was expecting another child, Maxwell, now 15 months. She decided to stay home, but initially found the change of pace challenging.
“While I was in school I was busy all the time and I felt like I was going 200 miles an hour,” she said. “The day after I graduated, everything stopped.”
Without close friends with children living nearby, Cottrell started looking online for moms in similar situations and stumbled on Scary Mommy. Shortly after, she started her own blog, which was picked up by the Bangor Daily News earlier this year.
“I started a blog, I started following other writers and suddenly, I was joining this unofficial mom club,” Cottrell said.
Every so often, she would send an essay or post to Scary Mommy, but it was always rejected. She said she was interested in the site because it was the first place she found a group of moms not trying to airbrush motherhood into something glamorous.
“It was a bunch of moms talking about mothering in a real way, it was a breath of fresh air,” Cottrell said. “I loved seeing that other moms lose it and go hide out in the closet too.”
Finally, an essay called “Mother of Rage” got the attention of Smokler and Cottrell’s partnership with the site and several other online and print publications took off from there. Her work was recently published in a book published by Blue Lobster Book Company called “Clash of the Couples” and her blogs are regularly syndicated by the Huffington Post.
She had found her niche.
“I didn’t have anything else [but parenting] to talk about,” Cottrell said. “I’ve always written things, but it never occurred to me that I could hone this thing called writing.”
And now, a book
On Nov. 17, Cottrell will have another essay published in a book that will directly support the website and effort she so loves.
“It’s all holiday-related, there’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah,” Smokler said of the anthology titled “Scary Mommy’s Guide to Surviving the Holidays.”
“It’s really all about surviving the holidays, which is no easy feat with children,” Smokler said.
Initially the book was going to be a gift to families who donated; however, as the project moved forward, Smokler realized she needed to charge a minimal fee, though most of the money raised will go toward the families in need.
Meanwhile, Cottrell has found herself busy sharing the news with friends and family in person and through social media.
She said she’s proud of where her writing has come in the last year, but also proud of her participation in a project that will help families here in Maine.
“I know some of the other writers [in the book], the caliber of writing is really up there and they make motherhood seem less scary and intimidating,” Cottrell said. “But really, I think it’s great that a bunch of moms got together to solve a problem. That’s the part that makes me so proud.”