Writer, entrepreneur, and founder of Latched Mama, Melissa Wirt, joins Zibby to discuss I WAS TOLD THERE’D BE A VILLAGE, a wise, honest, and heartening roadmap for finding and building your village—and transforming oppressive, solitary motherhood into a connected and joyful experience. Melissa shares the deeply personal story behind her book, from building a thriving online community for moms to confronting her own loneliness while raising six children on a farm. Together, they discuss the science of connection, the silent epidemic of maternal isolation, and practical frameworks like the “Three E’s” of engineering connection.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Melissa. Congratulations on, I Was Told There'd Be A Village Transforming Motherhood Through The Power Of Connection. Congrats. 

Melissa: Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. 

Zibby: Of course. And I loved doing our event together at the core club. That was so much fun. So I'm glad we got a an in-person experience too.

Melissa: Absolutely. Thank you. 

Zibby: Your book is great in so many ways as a mom who has had many thoughts on friendship and the village and all of that. Reading your book and having you be so authentic about your experience, but also analytic and the way you present a bunch of other stories of different people and even frameworks for us to use.

Tell me a little bit and starting it all, like feeling like an imposter and admitting that. So it's like a meta introduction. Explain why you decided to write the book and let's go from there. 

Melissa: Yeah. So about 10 years ago I started a clothing brand and we continued to sell clothes throughout the past decade, but what I really saw that was the kind of the bread and butter of the brand was bringing moms together and day after day I saw just how much of, almost like sponges we were to connection. And I also saw the roadblocks to it, the ways that we weren't always nice to each other and I really wanted to dig in and try to give the world something other than, an online community that was based on a breastfeeding clothing line.

I knew I had learned a lot. Through shepherding relationships and building online communities. And I also found myself completely alone. I didn't understand how I could be building this for all of these other people, but I wasn't doing the work myself. So I really wanted to dig into what that meant and what it felt like to build a village that I didn't have personally at the time. 

Zibby: So meanwhile, you were living on a farm Yeah. With six children. 

Melissa: Yeah. 

Zibby: And running a business. Yeah. And you start the book having had a miscarriage and I uhhuh, I won't give away the end unless you wanna talk about it. But you have this very, poetic ending to the book.

It wraps it all together and shows your progression and growth throughout the year of connecting and all of that. But it's not like you were just sitting around, yeah. 

Melissa: Yeah, I was. I was moving and grooving for sure. I still am, but I think what was really interesting is that. I think we all numb ourselves.

I think we all choose different things, whether it be food, alcohol, different things that we do. Mine was accomplishments and staying busy. The more busy I stayed, the less I had to look at what was truly lacking in my life. I personally, until I started writing this book, did not understand the science behind loneliness and how important human interaction and whether it be small or deep, meaningful relationships actually play into just us existing as human beings in general, physically and mentally. So I think I had been running for a really long time. I didn't have to learn how to trust people or let people help me or do all of those things if I just stayed busy.

And then the miscarriage knocked me on my butt and I was alone. And we were at this farm and I didn't understand what was next. But I knew things had to change. 

Zibby: Wow. You even have a whole section that extols the virtues of the weak connection, right? Yeah. Like just saying hello to someone or just like in passing and what do those connections do and how can they lead to bigger connections?

Talk about that. 'cause I feel like people are quick to dismiss those types of encounters.

Melissa: Yeah. As human beings we, we need each other and we need those moments of connection. And I think that so many of us have started to, order our groceries online or go to Yelp to get, review information.

And I think what happens when we actually say hello to somebody or go into the coffee shop or have these interactions is we get little moments of energy back from the other person. And we also get little moments of worthiness when somebody smiles back at you or holds the door open or tells you're doing a great job, or looks at your little kid and tells you how cute they are.

Little tiny things allow us to have the energy and the confidence to lean into some of those bigger relationships as well. 

Zibby: So interesting. I know this whole online everything. It feels like you're saving so much time, but we don't often talk about all the things you're giving up. 

Melissa: Yeah.

And it is easier. If you order things online, you don't have to get dressed, you don't have to do your hair, you don't have to worry about judgment. You can order whatever you want. And I think it allows us a certain level of privacy and it allows us a certain level of comfort from kind of the self shame or the judgment from others.

But it really cuts down on the fact that we do need each other and we do need those interactions. 

Zibby: So you have a whole framework in the book as well, the four C's of connection. Wait I can't find that, but I have found the three E's of engineering connection. Should we talk about that? Let's just switch.

Melissa: Yes. 

Zibby: So you have three E's of engineering connection and in each chapter you start with an isolation mindset and a village mindset, which I love. So for this chapter, for example, my, the isolation mindset is my life just isn't designed for meeting new people. It's hopeless. Yeah. And the village mindset becomes, if I am conscious about my life, choice is big and small, I can create opportunities to connect.

So these are encounter. What are the other ones? Hold on. Encounter, engage. I'm flipping through and this is an exposure. 

Melissa: Yeah, so I, what I hear so much from the people in our online com online community and my friends here, is that they just don't have time and why? I think one of the misconceptions about connection is that it takes a lot of time and energy, and it does take time and energy, but what it does is it also gives you back energy because we're literally biologically programmed to need connection. So when we do lean into it, when we do find time even to do something like this, I know my next three hours of my life are gonna be more productive because you and I are talking right now, as opposed to if I had just leaned into working on emails or designing in Canva or doing something, I know that I'm gonna have more energy.

And it's weird that it works that way and I didn't understand that it worked that way until I researched the book. But it literally is just something we need like food and water and shelter. 

Zibby: And it doesn't matter if it's online like this on Zoom versus like sitting next to somebody, you can get energy wherever.

Melissa: Absolutely. It's always better probably when you're together and it's always better when you have a camera on. It's why like those Zoom calls, I always feel a little oh, cameras aren't on. And that's why bosses are like, Hey, can you guys turn your cameras on? Because it goes so much further past the words that are said.

It's the nonverbal communication. It's the smile. It's the being patient while somebody figures out what they wanna say. Say, it's all of those things that we continue to carry with us throughout our days that help us be better parents and better humans and better employees and everything so. 

Zibby: Well, don't you feel like.

I'm a little older than you here, but back in the day of the telephone. Yeah like I would spend hours talking to people. And it didn't ever feel at a remove, because I feel like we were all listening so much more now, if somebody doesn't have their camera on Zoom, it's because you know they're doing something else.

Absolutely. 

Melissa: Yeah, and we just don't prioritize connection. And I think that's a major issue is that if we're not prioritizing it, it's not gonna happen. But I think it begs the question like, does society tell us it's important? And it doesn't because we work in these high paced times where your kids have to be, in seven different activities and you need to cook a gourmet dinner and then you know, you need to do this and you need to do that.

And. Where is that actual time for connection? If it's not something that is built into society as in general, we're gonna continue to live these isolated lifestyles. 

Zibby: So ideally we would just put it on the to-do list. 

Melissa: Absolutely. Yep. And that's what we talk about a little bit in the book of.

Blaming it on the calendar. It's Wednesday night, sorry, kids, it's book night. The calendar says it's book, it's book club night, and you just put it down as something that is another part of your to-do list, which makes it sound like it's a chore. And sometimes it does feel like that.

I know personally I'll have something on my calendar and I would much rather just, be at home in my pajamas and make dinner with my kids and not go out. And sometimes I think we need to do that, but I think there's other times where we talked, we talk about calling them, put on your sneaker moments where if you can just do that one little thing, maybe you can take your sweats off and put on your jeans, and then can you get to the front door?

And then can you drive, to the coffee shop? And then can you say hello? And then can you say about this terrible thing that you're holding onto that has shame wrapped around it, and then suddenly you're doing it. You're doing the thing and you're doing the connection, and that just starts to snowball into feeling really good.

Zibby: Have you watched the show Shrinking? I have. The one guy who they like forced to go into the coffee shop and then he like talks to the barista and then he has to talk to the person at the table. It's like similar to that. 

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting 'cause I think we. I think we're all have a certain level of anxiety.

Maybe not every single person in this world, but I think especially as moms, if you think about the amount of decisions we make every single day and how many of those are going to be wrong or failures, it is. It is literally like we wake up in the morning and I hope to get 50% right, and I know that I'm gonna fall on my face.

The other 50% of the time. And I think what's really sad about this and looking at the bigger picture is that every time we make, a mistake or we don't do something right or our kids don't behave the way we want them to or the way we expect them to, we start feeling the shame like, we're not doing it like we did something wrong.

Like we didn't research that enough, or we didn't lean into it enough, or we didn't teach them that. I think what's really scary is when we do live in isolation, there's no way to get through that shame. There's no way to share it with somebody else, and that's the only way that you can learn that somebody else made that same mistake two days ago where somebody else's, a kid stuck their tongue out at some at the park too.

And I think so much of motherhood and connection is sharing stories because society paints this beautiful picture, it, they paint this gorgeous picture of motherhood where it's supposed to be. Perfect and clean and wonderful, and it's not, and there's there, there's nothing that we can do to change that other than talk to each other and bring some reality back to the picture.

Zibby: So how did you pull off writing a book with your own company and the six kids and everything else, when did you get it done? 

Melissa: Yeah, so I have a lot of help at home as much as I can find. But I wrote this book primarily on soccer fields inside indoor pools, during swim meets. Anytime I could carve out.

I did have a weekly couple hours that I worked on it within the office, but the rest of it was weekend time grinding with kids. I still have, my 11-year-old still reminds me of the time he missed his swimming event. 'cause I was deep in a story that I was writing in the book, and it's just, you just piece it together.

But I believe so much in it and I believe that it can change lives. My life is completely different on the other side of this book. And it's not because of the press it's gotten or how many it's sold or anything like that. 'cause none of that's happened yet. It literally has changed. Because I have a village and I believe in the words in the book, 

Zibby: it's amazing. I always feel, you talk in the book about the guilt of asking for help and how we would never, it would never occur to us to arrange a meal train for ourselves or something like that. 

Melissa: Yeah. 

Zibby: And every time that I like even think of asking for a mom to take a kid like, 'cause I just can't figure out the logistics and I was like, I'm gonna.

I can't, I just can't do that. I'm gonna have to ask a favor. 

Melissa: Yeah. 

Zibby: And I always say to myself like, I never mind when people ask me. I love it when people ask me to do favors. Like I love being helpful. And so many people love to be helpful. And I think we always think it's an imposition. And so sometimes I have to tell myself, no, you're actually like robbing the other person of the opportunity for them to feel helpful, which makes them feel better.

Melissa: And I think. Like another Little Jedi mind trick with asking for help. Asking for help is like inherently vulnerable, and it doesn't quite take, in my opinion, sometimes when we're in that moment of, oh my gosh, how am I gonna get the kids where they need to be and how am I gonna make this work? Sometimes we're in such this like panic mode that it's vulnerability without really feeling vulnerable.

It does, it's hard to ask the question, but sometimes when we're like asking it for our kids or we're in that moment of panic, or we don't know how to make it happen. It actually is sneaky vulnerability, I feel like, because it's like this, I have to do it, I have to ask or it's not gonna happen.

And it allows us to move that relationship with whoever we're asking for maybe a little bit further than it would normally get because we are asking for help and we are saying. Indirectly, Hey, I can't cut it. Like I can't get this done. And I think for high achieving individuals like you and me, sometimes that's a little hard to swallow.

Zibby: Do you feel like you have a village in place? For the book? For the book? Like the book? Book or like just, I mean for the release of the book, like it's a lot. It's a lot to have a book come out too. 

Melissa: I feel like I have been in learning mode. Like intense learning mode for, of course the entire time I've written the book, but the last six to seven months.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what it looks like. I've just succumbeded to the idea that I'm gonna do the best I can and I'm going to learn. Some people say you write your first book for your second book, and I don't. I always thought that was like a performance based thing, like my second, your second book sells more than your first book.

I really think that it will probably be more enjoyable the second time because I won't be in this place of constantly feeling like I'm asking questions or bugging people or trying to gather information. It's a really interesting industry and I've enjoyed. Every moment of learning about it, but it's, you have to ask questions.

And sometimes that's hard for me, if I can't Google it or research it. And it brings you back to the idea that you have to ask for help and you have to actually communicate with people as opposed to Google all your answers. 'cause some of it's no, under layers of information and finding the right people. So yeah. 

Zibby: Last time we talked, by the way, you were like, I should probably plan a book tour. 

Melissa: Yeah. 

Zibby: What ended up happening with that? 

Melissa: It's not, I'm doing some online events in the next week after the book launches, but yeah, no, I'm not planning on going anywhere right now. I don't think I ever really figured out I was like, oh, it's gonna be spring and the trees are gonna be green and it's gonna be a wonderful time to launch a book.

But I didn't think about the fact that literally we have 35 different events every week with the kids in the afternoons and our pare just got homesick and went back to Germany. 

Zibby: Oh no. 

Melissa: Yeah, no, that happened all. He texted me last Sunday and he said, I booked a flight for Friday. 

Zibby: Oh no. 

Melissa: It was like, oh my gosh.

I have a book coming out. So that's happened. It's just. I don't know. I believe in it and I want it in people's hands, and I wanna get through this initial launching of it, like I, I want it out there and then I wanna just see what happens. So maybe there will be one eventually, but I don't know.

I've enjoyed my time in New York at the couple times I've come up there and we have, I have some press the week after booked, so that will be helpful as well. 

Zibby: Wow. You built a company that is now making so much, not making so much revenue, it earning so much revenue, has been so big, has like millions of people who are part of the community.

How, what was the secret sauce of that, especially the community since that is your focus in the book and that is what you've done professionally. Like how did you do that? What can other people do and. 

Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. I think that we talk about this a little bit in the book. I think Latch Mama was a trial in vulnerability.

I think anytime you start a small brand and you bootstrap it, we don't, I'm not inherently wealthy or anything. I took $10,000 for my last real estate commission check before I had my baby, and that's what we started the company with. But we didn't have money for models. We didn't have anything. We just built it.

My husband has some technical knowledge and he launched Facebook ads at the right time and I think what happened was that I showed up and I said, Hey, I care about moms. I wanna put this product out into the market. I don't know what I'm doing. And it's such, I think, an amazing lesson in general for just human beings, it's asking for help. It's saying, Hey, I don't know what I'm doing. Can you guys help me? Let's do this together. And then it just snowballed from there. And there have been ups and downs and amazing moments and moments that have taught me more about human nature, the good and the bad than I've ever hoped to learn.

But I think in the end it just doubles down on what the book's about. It's just that we need each other. It was, I didn't, I have never gotten out of bed every day and gone to work for the clothes. The clothes have been. Completely a side project. It's been building the community here at Latch Mama, we allow women to bring their babies to work.

So in the United States, you can't get a job without childcare and you can't get childcare without a job, which is really scary for a lot of women who either are single moms or in relationships or situations that aren't the best and aren't the healthiest. Some of that work has really been what drives me and has kind of changed my life apart from the revenue and the company in general. So I just wanna keep it going. I think motherhood is really hard and it's beautiful and rewarding in those little fleeting moments sometimes. And sometimes it's in the big moments. But for the most part, I think it's hard to be a mother in the United States, and I think we need each other, and I don't think there's anybody else that understands how hard it is than other moms.

But somehow we sometimes get catty and competitive with each other, and we have a really hard time, dropping our own self-judgment to really come together. I don't know. That was a long answer. 

Zibby: No, it's all good. I think that the older I get as a mom, the more. The less I do all that comparison stuff.

Melissa: Yeah. 

Zibby: Like when I just started, I didn't, and I felt like you, I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't have, I had some confidence, but it kept getting challenged by the fact that other people were doing things differently. 

Melissa: Yeah. 

Zibby: Then I kept wondering maybe they know something I don't know, and now I'm just like, this is how I do things.

Melissa: Yeah. But could you imagine if, how much more joy there would've been in those beginning family, like those beginning motherhood years, if that's the way we were. And I understand that it has to take time and you can't look back and all of that stuff, but I look at the way I parent now and I just, I love it.

I love my relationships with my kids and my kids are getting older, but I just wish that I found as much joy in the early days, and I don't think much has changed there. I think there are a lot of younger moms or moms that are in the trenches right now with little kids that I. Need to be told that they're doing okay.

Our mom intuition's important and doesn't matter how other people are doing it. I think what really matters 

Zibby: is that we need each other, I. I agree. No, I'm so thankful for the moms I was in the trenches with. Oh my gosh. I would not have made it through without them. 

Melissa: Yeah, it's wild.

And I don't think we prepare our moms for it. I don't, I think we talk about, the coming home outfit and what the nursery's gonna look like, and we don't really talk about, the I way that motherhood can take us out at the knees and is a new adolescence. It's literally like a second adolescence and, I love that aspect of the book.

And it brings me, it's like the part that gets me the most right now because I have a almost 13-year-old who'll be 13 in two weeks. And there was this story where it's not in the book, but it happened recently where I was at a lacrosse game and he's playing lacrosse and he's really not good at it, and he's okay with me saying that, but he's, it's a brand new sport for him.

And there were these moms behind me and they were talking about their carpool. And I desperately need to get the kid in a carpool because it's throwing off dinners and stuff like that. And I turned around and I asked them if we could, if I could be part of their carpool, and they immediately said no. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh.

Melissa: And it was fine, but they were like, we are we have five. And I was like, oh. I was like, I have six. So she said, I have, we have five. And I said, oh, I have six. And they were like, kids, why would you ever do that? So then I sat behind my sunglasses and I cried all over the cross game, which was fine. But then he got in the car and he like, quickly finished the game and got into the car and then he was crying because a kid had been mean to him and it was the most beautiful thing in the world because I could say to him, Hey, you know what?

We're both trying to navigate this together, it's all hard. And that matched vulnerability in that moment of me trying to find my way into this new little community of moms and him trying to find his way into this new little team. It was like one of the most beautiful parenthood moments ever, and I wouldn't have had it unless I hadn't taken the time to write this book and really lean into how we all change as moms and how we need each other, and I don't know. It's just it's such a beautiful journey when we can sleep enough and eat enough and get enough time to actually stand back and look at what's happening. 

Zibby: Amazing. Melissa, thank you so much. I was told there'd be a village. Now we have a village and a book. 

Melissa: Yes. Thank you so much for having me, and thank you for championing the book and the way you have been.

I really appreciate it. 

Zibby: My pleasure. All right. Take care. Bye.