By Gwyneth Hyndman, HMHB Storytelling Coordinator
Photo credit: Cathy Copp
It is 4:53 p.m. in the afternoon on North 6th Avenue. I run towards The Elm, reminding myself that now is absolutely most definitely not the time to take a reflective moment.
It had been 13 winters since I had walked down this street in Bozeman – specifically to buy snowpants from the Walmart Supercenter on North 7th Avenue – and it’s hard not to pause to think about the turn my life took with that $19.99 purchase.
It was my first season in Montana. I didn’t know if I would stay beyond April, I had told my college friend, Flora McCormick, in 2013 as she had held her newborn son on her couch and listened to me pendulum back and forth on where I belonged in the world. Everything was unsure and I obviously just needed to be alone, figure myself out, and commit to nothing. But I had just met this fly-fishing guide in Big Sky. He was bartending at the restaurant I worked at and when the moon was out, we’d sometimes go snowshoeing through the woods after our shifts. He had kind eyes. I liked how he saw the world. So I needed new snowpants.
Tonight, March 1, 2026, is the10th anniversary of the Roots Family Collaborative storytelling event “Moms Like Me” – the
reason I am walking briskly across the street, sliding through the door, to find my HMHB co-workers and then a seat in the balcony of a full house before the lights dim. Flora is the Emcee and “Vibe Steward” – an aspect to this evening that feels warmly satisfying, like magnetic tiles clicking into place. The infant son she held in her arms that winter is nearly a teenager.
And back on 6th Avenue, the seats of my Chevy Exquinox are littered with crayons, peeled-off socks, orange peels, fruit bar wrappers, a car seat and a booster. My daughters’ eyes are also kind, and they love the rivers of Montana as much as their dad. Those Walmart Supercenter snowpants haven’t fit me since 2018.
All around me – in the audience, on the stage, in the Mom Band – are humans who carry around a collection box filled with moments when life changes course. Maybe it’s as simple as committing to a pair of snowpants, which made another month of night snowshoeing possible, which arguably led to a wedding band from the Chico Hot Springs gift shop and two carseats.
For storytellers Gabby McElwain, Bethany Green, and Mikeaela DiBerardinas, who bravely take over the stage to share their journeys of motherhood on a Sunday evening, the complexity and moments are gripping in their detail. We are right there in the trenches as Gabby remembers a postpartum magnesium drip being wheeled into her room, accompanied by barf bags and towels on ice, and a provider’s assurance that this is the worst she will ever feel in her life. We feel the chill as Bethany describes taking a call from her father, as she was beginning her own pregnancy journey. We walk in the warmth from Mikeaela, as she recalls the decision to embrace surrogacy, and a frank explanation her daughter offers to a stranger on the street.
We laughed from the belly. We held our breaths. We winced. We nodded. Our jaws clenched. In the absence of a tissue box, we took a break to go to the bathrooms, unravelling toilet paper to stuff in our pockets.
We heard ourselves in these stories. We realized that the seats around us were filled with allies. And how true it was, in the words of Roots Family Collaborative Executive Director Suzanne Bendick, “We are not alone.”
And when the Mom Band performed “Dreams,” I couldn’t have been the only one to hear this Cranberries song from my teenage years, reverberating through the decades. I opened the door of my car, settling into the driver’s seat with dustings of crushed popcorn, spying a discarded art project on constellations in the rearview mirror, as I turned the key in the ignition, murmuring this song that has taken on a new meaning.
Oh my life
It’s changing every day
In every possible way
And oh, my dreams
It’s never quite as it seems
‘Cause you’re a dream to me
Dream to me
Did you get a chance to attend Moms Like Me in Bozeman? Let us know if there was a story that was especially meaningful for you that night – or if a story shared in the last 10 years at the Moms Like Me event has helped you in your parenting journey. You can reach us by emailing gwyneth@hmhb-mt.org
Also, don’t forget the Helena community has their own storytelling event coming to them this spring, hosted by The Early Childhood Collaborative and the Helena Village Collective. You can catch Families Like Ours at the Myrna Loy on Friday, May 8.
Tickets can be booked at https://www.ecchelena.org/families-like-ours
