It’s been already one year and a half. It’s quite a long time and it feels even longer in this pandemic suspended times and I didn’t realize it until a couple of days ago. Supermamas is a fully developing initiative in Belgium from 2020 and since then it’s growing like crazy. It all started in October 2020, after many thoughts on how to engage myself more for my community here in Brussels, during a pandemic that was carving our souls in the worst possible way, with fear for the others and for ourselves.
I was on FB, scrolling my feed and I ended up on a post of a friend who lives in Hamburg (I also interviewed her in Italian here) and who was so happy to have met fellow mamas in the nicest way: through the preparation of a meal for a new mom, to support her during the post-partum period.
I started to dig into her post to find more about this “thing” and I found out an amazing initiative going on in Germany and Switzerland completely for free to support mums in the very first stage of their motherhood, during the postpartum days: the SuperMamas.
In three days, after a couple of calls with the incredible woman that brought the movement in Berlin, Emilie, I decided to do the same in Brussels🚀
As natural as it can be, if you are a parent, I decided to dedicate my spare time (mostly during lunch breaks and couples of hours in the weekend) to the launch of what it felt at that time an incredibile opportunity to build a community. I was like: ” how the heck is possible that in a city like Brussels we don’t have anything like this yet? “. It really striked me. So, alone, I started.
The main idea is that as moms need the first and foremost support during the high demanding post partum period (in whatever circumstances also in case of baby loss or abortion), who are the best placed to give that if not other moms? We know that fellow mamas can do a lot shouldering and “pampering” each other as we also know the power of a good chat with someone who gets you perfectly. I’ve always thought that sisterhood is something real and not some kind of magical empathy with no connection with the realm of the everyday reality. Cooking a warm meal for a mom that just gave birth is something extremely powerful both for the intentions that you can put in that meal while cooking it for her family and in the simple fact of preparing and bringing it to her, together with a bit of your time.
Find time to cook for a “stranger mom” that lives closeby, in our manic daily life is an act of extreme kindness and it is revolutionary to me.
AND IT EXPLODED. I started the FB group, I did a couple of posts in the main Brussels based mom groups I follow and in less than 1 month we were already more than 300 on the group and the pampering already kicked off for two new moms. We were in the midst of the second (or third?) wave of COVID-19 and still an activity that had at its core meeting someone unrelated to us, outside of our “bubble” was sailing with a tailwind.
We need connection, we need to feel that someone is caring for us and we also need to care for the others.
This incredibly fulling experience is still going on in my life and I have been joined by a team of 9 other magic Supermamas that help me with the organization of the pamperings in all the 19 municipalities of Brussels and in two other regions in Belgium (Brabant Wallon and very soon in the Hainaut) in addition to in person meet-ups and external collaboration with the other parenthood support networks in the country. The Brussels FB group counts more than 1.2k moms and we are beyond the 200 pamperings done in the last year.
If I think about it now, it feels like I was doing the impossible and yet while I was doing it, it felt so urgent that I didn’t think about it twice or even how far I could have gone or what if I failed.
I met and still meet every single day new amazing people, I volunteer with them or I simply give my time to do something relevant for my community and that’s priceless.
I feel I belong to this place because I do something to change it for the better.
Vattelapesca 