Momosphere Recap: MomThrive, Frank Bruni and Goodbye, Dawn

• The would-be inaugural meeting of the MomThrive conference was set to happen this weekend in Toronto. Proving (perhaps) that putting on a mommy blogging conference isn’t a license to print money after all, organizers were forced to cancel with only a week’s notice due to “a situation beyond our control”. I can only assume it has something to do with money, but I could be wrong.
  Blogger Sober Julie, tried to salvage some sort of get togetherfrom the wreckage by organizing a meet up for the attendees who were already out their travel costs. Things came together quickly with the hotel providing free meeting space and discounted rooms, many speakers willing to come and talk to whoever showed and other vendors throwing in freebies as well.
  The original organizers are pissed. Or, at least, they made sure to state that they, “…are not in any way associated or involved with this event, nor are we “happy”.” On the one hand, it’s understandable that they don’t want to see their hard work and planning be taken over by somebody else. But on the other, they had every opportunity to find a way to save their own event and failed. “Cancelling” on vendors, sponsors, speakers and attendees at the last minute is simply not “professional.”

• Moving on: Parents these days. Frank Bruni devoted several column inches of last Sunday’s NY Times to explaining how this generation of parents are spineless, self-involved worry warts who aren’t doing their kids any favours. The good news is, however, that it hardly matters because kids will grow up just fine anyway. I’m not surprise it garnered mixed responses either dismissing his childless, can’t-possibly-understand-how-hard-it-is perspective or praising his honesty and insight since the column really didn’t say anything at all. Helicopter parents are doing it wrong and so are free-range ones. Yawn. There are as many different approaches to raising children as there ever were. The only difference is that now there are opinion columns in the Times talking about.

• Also this week, the mom blogging community lost one of their own to cancer. Dawn from Defying Melanoma continued blogging about her struggle with Metastatic Melanoma right up until a couple days before she passed away. There is a fund set up to help feed her husband and two sons, if you are so inclined. The outpouring of love and support has been wonderful and I, like so many others, would like to leave you with the last words Dawn wrote on her blog, “Check your skin people. Check your skin.”

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