How GCM Began

We Began as a WebRing

Gentle Christian Mothers first began in 1997 as a webring on the old WebRing.org website. Christian mothers who did such things as choose not to let their babies cry-it-out, breastfed on cue, wore their babies, slept with their children--or, as some would put it, attachment parenting mothers (or marsupial mothers!)--didn't have much support from the Christian community in general. I decided to help build a support network by making a webring to link websites of like-minded mamas. I hoped it would encourage other gentle mamas and would help to spread the word that Christianity and attachment parenting are more than compatible and that attachment parenting is biblical.

A few years ago, Yahoo bought WebRing. Yahoo no longer owns WebRing, but, in my opinion, webrings have never been as cool as they once were before Yahoo took over. Partly because of that, along with other reasons, too, we no longer have either a GCM WebRing or other type of "ring." I feel that is okay, though, because soon after the GCM WebRing was made, we began growing into something more than a webring.

Becoming More than a WebRing

Soon after the GCM WebRing started, I began building a membership list of mothers on my website on Geocities. The list included members of the GCM WebRing and also members who didn't have websites. To be listed, I made a requirement that everyone answer some questions in which they explained what gentle mothering meant to them, and they also shared their testimony of how they came to know Christ as their Savior.

Sometime in 2002, I finally took that list down from the GCM website because I was unable to keep the list updated. We will probably will never have a list of members published on the GCM website again. There used to be a forum on the message board that was open to registered members of the board where moms could post their answers to those questions and read other mothers' responses, but after the board crashed in March or so (I'll look up the date) 2005, a new board was created, and it doesn't have a forum for that.

Beginning a Message Board on ezboard

In August 1999, I emailed all the members and let them know I was starting a message board for Gentle Christian Mothers on ezboard.com. We started with a few members posting, and then other people heard about it, and we began growing.

Sometime probably in the Fall of 1999, I purchased the domain name "http://www.gentlemothering.com" to use for my personal website. I planned for it to be a place to put all the articles I had written. The hosting company (a free site), lost all of my pages, and rather than build a new site, I decided to just use the domain name www.gentlemothering.com for the Gentle Christian Mothers' website.

In October 2002, we moved the message board off of ezboard and moved the GCM website so that they were both hosted by Praising Jesus as Lord Hosting. We found that for less than the amount it cost to have our message board on ezboard, we were able to get a message board on our own website, our domain name, and lots of webspace for our website.

The domain name www.gentlechristianmothers.com was purchased in February 2003. We used to have our website at www.gentlemothering.com, and www.gentlechristianmothering.com used to forward there, but after our board crashed earlier this year, we moved the message board to another server and used the domain name www.gentlechristianmothers.com for the message board. The webhosting company we are currently going through is one that is owned by a GCM mama, and she has been a great help with the board. :) Just this month (August 2005) I moved the articles, etc., from the old website over to the same place that the message board is so that they are all together again on one website. Our main domain name at this time is http://www.gentlechristiamothers.com/ instead of www.gentlemothering.com, though both belong to GCM.

In November 2002, I acquired a business license for Gentle Christian Mothers so that I can do business as (DBA) "Gentle Christian Mothers" and can sell our print newsletter Gentle Mothering. In December 2002, the first issure of Gentle Mothering was published (you can read the articles in the first issue here). I planned on sending out a newsletter each month, but I found I had neither the time or capability to do that. Now I have help, though, and we, Lord-willing, will begin sending out a newsletter quarterly starting in Autumn 2005.

url: http://www.gentlechristianmothers.com/

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