Moms’ morning meetup

Shawntelle Minear, mom and Kernersville local, made a meet up group at the beginning of the year to help praise women and socialize with other moms in the area.
Minear, who is originally from California, moved here five months ago from Reidsville. She created the group in January 2023 on Facebook and has received lots of praise for creating this group when she did.
“I’m new to the area,” Minear explained. “I have only been living in Kernersville for five months. I work from home and my husband is a stay-at-home dad, so I needed to meet people. I work out of California and there is not a whole lot of options out there for meet ups in the morning, which is really my only time to do anything. It initially started that way and quickly evolved into something a lot bigger, and it became more of like building a community of women.”
The first meet up had an attendance of nine people, along with their kids, making the total almost 20. After the meeting, parents would reach out to her thanking her for putting a group like this together and it has started helping them build friendships in the community.
“That is kind of my goal,” she said. “I want to start creating little micro communities throughout the Triad area where people can go out and meet other moms and get that support. One of the things I constantly hear is motherhood is so lonely. A lot of times as soon as moms have a baby, it’s kind of like they don’t have that support anymore. It’s hard to make friends. It’s hard to go out there and meet people, even other moms like me who are new to the area.”
Minear explained that she is passionate about helping moms build a community together to always help people in need.
“It’s important to me to lift up and support women. A thing that I am very passionate about is helping give women the support they need,” she said. “Once I started hearing more and more women reaching out saying how desperate that they needed this and how excited they were about it, it’s kind of fueled that passion even more.”
Minear said one of her mottos is that “your network is your net worth.” Building a community that people can be around for support or whatever is needed during that time is critical in a person’s life but especially after becoming a parent, Minear said.
“The more time that you get to know people, opportunities can just sort of arise naturally. I love this idea that we all rise together and I think that is all part of it,” she said.
Minear knows that the first step towards joining a group or seeking a community to be part of is hard because she had to do it herself not too long ago.
“One of the things that is kind of important is that I know how difficult it is to put yourself out there. The thing is, we’re all looking for friendship,” she said. “Everybody who comes is looking for the same thing, so it really helps take away that pressure of feeling like that it’s going to be difficult. We make it easy; we’re going to be friendly; we’re going to be inviting; we want you to join; we want you to be a part of our community and keep it pressure free; no judgment. It can be really hard to put yourself out there and we have had plenty of moms that have said they did, it was hard but that they were so glad that they came out, that it was a ton of fun and super helpful for them and their social life and their mental state in general.”
The mom meet up group is held every Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. The first and third Tuesday of every month they meet at the West Salem Public House, located at 400 S. Green Street in Winston-Salem. On the second and fourth Tuesday of every month, the group is held at Kyle’s Coffee, located at 126 S. Main Street in Kernersville. At Kyle’s, each member’s first drink is free. This is because the pastor at Citizens Church is donating money towards their group to help support moms.
Minear also holds a meeting almost every Friday morning with different activities, such as a walk at Oak Ridge Town Park or the Quarry and a morning mimosa event. These events vary and can be found on her Facebook page.
An important factor that comes into place when picking these locations is that she wants every location to be kid-friendly. She understands that getting childcare is difficult and expensive so kids are always welcome to tag along at each event. Another important factor is that she wants every event to either be cheap or free so there is no barrier for people to attend.
Minear strongly urges parents or people expecting to become parents soon to get into any community that is accepting and will be there for them during this time of transition.
“You so badly need support because pregnancy in general can be very hard, so just having that support is so helpful,” she said.