When You are too Naive

As a parent we carefully monitor (or should carefully be monitoring) what are kids are doing, where they are going, what they are watching, what internet sites they are on, what friends they are making.

I found out earlier this week that I should have been heeding such advice I give my children.

For years I followed an internet site "Mom's Board" - I use to be a "lurker" on the site for several years as I was looking for reasons why I miscarried my first baby and then seeking answers to fertility questions.  Doctors know so much but a woman going through the process knows infinitely more.  So this particular site was an excellent source of knowledge and much of what I learned I was able to bring to the table when speaking with my doctor.

I finally stopped lurking and participated when I found out I was surprisingly pregnant with my son.  I had miscarried a child between my daughter and son and I was a nervous wreck.  So participating on the board helped ease my worries and to be part of a network of woman who truly understood my worries.

We eventually moved our conversations from trying to have babies to raising our children, dealing with medical and developmental issues.  We often debated topics such as vaccinations, religion, politics. We shared stories about our families, friends, neighbors.  We looked for advice from each other. We essentially became good friends.  My internet mom friends know more about me than much of my in real life friends.  When I hit a low point in my life, they were there to lift up the broken parts of me.  When my son was in the hospital they sent him gifts, they sent us meals, they offered so much support and prayers that I was overwhelmed with their kindness.  And none of these ladies ever met me in person.  Yet they treated me like a life long friend.

I have met one of my Mommy board friends and she is a sweet person.  I'd like to meet the others and someday we will.  When the timing is right for all of us.

One of the mom's on the board fell off the board.  She stopped posting and we were quite worried about her.  She has several young children.  She was part of our sisterhood and since no one was friends with her outside the board (didn't have email address or were FB friends) we were all getting more worried as the days and weeks went by that she hadn't posted.

Without going into details a person managed to get her "real name" as most of us have pseudo-names to protect our identities as the Mommy board is a public forum.  As the person was searching to see if they could contact her on FB as we knew she had an account, her name comes up in google and it's not all pretty.

We come to realize that she is part of very strong "hate group".  Many of us fall under the prejudice of her hatred.  We had no clue.  It turned my stomach to think we all shared so much information about ourselves and yet not once did she share that she had such deep rooted hatred towards certain groups of people.  There has been this total feeling of violation by many of us.

The disappointing part of all of this is that all of us (excluding this individual) joined this community of mom's with the intent of helping each other out. Sharing what we know, being shoulders to cry on, steps to support each other and this one person collapsed this board.  This board has essentially been disbanded.  Many of us are friends on FB so we can keep up with each other that way - but it was unnerving and disappointing to learn that a person could be so hateful and yet you have no idea.

We all have learned a valuable lesson this week.

After reading all about this person and her posse of believers - I learned how truly evil and hateful people can be.  And its truly very scary to think there are people out there.  It also makes me really sad.