A New Year’s Letter from the Editor

This letter was initially written for the current issue of Madeworthy. As it turned out, we didn’t have space for it, so we decided to run it here. Thank you for your indulgence!

Happy 2025!

You will be reading this letter weeks after I wrote it. Our publishing schedule is such that we had to finish everything for this article before Christmas. It seems so long ago now.

While it’s the beginning of 2025, all shiny and new and full of possibilities, for you, it’s the end of 2024 for me. And the end of the year always makes me prone to looking back. My nostalgic frame of mind, coupled with the fact that Tanglewood Moms is turning 10 in 2025, makes me incredibly sappy, my children assure me, so I apologize in advance.

Tanglewood Moms started, as many of you know, as a group on Facebook for women in Fort Worth. It was immediately popular and grew quickly. I joined as a member about a year after it started when I needed recommendations for a plumber.

I always liken the original group to a local Angie’s List. The members can always be relied upon for the best recommendations for almost anything you can possibly need. Your kiddo knocked her front teeth out, and you need a pediatric dentist? No problem. You finally decided to take the plunge and install a pool? Tanglewood Moms have you covered.

So, it was natural for Victoria, the group’s founder, to extend it into a website. TanglewoodMoms.com went live in June 2015 and proved to be as popular as the group. The website was a local business directory and blog. After a few months, Victoria realized that she could give local writers an opportunity to be published on the blog, and she put out a call for writers.

This is where I come into the picture. I started writing for the blog and quickly offered my proofreading services to the other contributors. This amuses me because I never learned grammar in school. We were part of a pedagogical experiment: if you expose children to great literature, you will absorb great grammar. Trust me, that’s not the case. I wouldn’t know a dangling participle if it stopped dangling and bit me on the bahootay. However, my father made me turn in every single essay I wrote to him, and through his rather harsh proofreading, I learned how to write. Thanks, Dad!

Because I was proofreading articles before Victoria published them on the blog, she offered to teach me to publish them. I took over the management of the blog in early 2016 and got to know so many good writers in our community. A year later, as we were talking after a meeting, Victoria mentioned that she thought we should start a magazine. I laughed. Okay, I guffawed. Print was dead; didn’t Victoria know that? Well, four months and one week later, Madeworthy debuted.

I’ve been a part of Tanglewood Moms since November 2015, and honestly, I will be forever grateful. It’s only a little hyperbolic to say that Tanglewood Moms changed my life. When I started writing for the blog, I was a single mom who was so downtrodden I could only see the soles of the shoes of people passing by. Through Tanglewood Moms, I’ve made some of the best friends of my life, I’ve gotten to attend events I would never have dreamed of attending before, and I’ve found that I’m a pretty good storyteller. But mostly, I’m proud of the community we have created on Facebook, on the website, and through the magazine.

I get to tell stories for a living. I get to explore our city, meet its people, and then tell you all about them. How incredible is that?

So here’s to 2025, and here’s to more Tanglewood Moms and Madeworthy! Here’s to more friendship and more stories and more community. Most importantly, here’s to you, dear reader. We couldn’t do it without you!