Graham Rucker. Photography by Yuvie Styles.
Looking for advice on taming your quarrelsome toddler? Shopping for colorful iced cookies to match your party theme? Need a new preschool for your high-achieving twins? Desperate to find a plumber before friends arrive for dinner?
Lake Highlands’ free source of expert advice burst onto the scene as a Facebook page called LH Mamas in August 2020. Since then, Graham Rucker and fellow administrators Rebecca Bickett and Savannah Darver have been encouraging neighborhood families to learn from (and lean on) each other.
Rucker, native of Nashville and wife of 2005 Lake Highlands High School graduate Brian Rucker, moved to Dallas to attend SMU and never looked back. She juggles her full-time job managing corporate clients for RethinkCare, where she helps employers with employees caring for children with disabilities, while managing life at home raising 5-year-old Caroline and twin 2-year-olds Claire and Charlotte. Her busy schedule left little time to build a social support network, and she knew wise moms turn to the village when questions get tough.
“It’s difficult to find your people when you move to a new place,” Rucker says. “In Nashville, you go to the grocery store and see 10 people you know. When we moved into our first house on Estate Lane, it was a long time before I felt like I knew anybody. Our goal with LH Mamas is to connect moms in our area so that they can find their people.”
Lake Highlands is a community with rich traditions and deep roots — a place where graduates of the high school often return to raise a family and connect with childhood friends. It’s not easy for newcomers to break into circles formed decades ago.
LH Mamas helps to bridge that gap.
“I’ve met some of my very best friends on the page, and lots of people tell me they’ve done the same,” she says. “If you share what you like and what you need on the page, I guarantee someone will reach out for a coffee date or margarita date. You are not the only one who feels outside the circle.”
Rucker has organized face-to-face happy hours to help members connect and encouraged businesses to host pop-up shops and mini markets. Participants tap into the wisdom of the site’s hive mind to find medical service providers, home contractors, party planners, catering services and small batch entrepreneurs.
Rucker says her favorite aspect is recommending locally owned businesses and watching them grow. One aesthetic service provider polled the group to name her startup, and now her appointment book is full. A mom who monograms children’s purses quickly sold all her stock and had to reorder.
“It’s a way to keep Lake Highlands businesses going and let families know when they need support,” Rucker says. “It’s scary for someone to go out on a limb and start a new business. When they do, we can all step up and support them.”
Often, companies offer free goodies to Rucker, but she declines. In fact, she’s usually first to make a purchase in hopes of vouching for fledgling businesses.
“It’s just exciting to see them take off. I don’t know how the Facebook algorithm works, but I’m glad they get a bump when I post. After that, it just grows naturally. If people go on our site to say, ‘Trust me, you’ll like this restaurant or product or service,’ families are willing to give it a try. Businesses have told me it makes a difference, and that’s exciting.”
In a bygone era, some questions might have gone to real-life moms, aunties or grandmas, or even to Dear Abby in the newspaper. Rucker admits a few should probably go to doctors, lawyers or psychologists, and commenters often suggest that with referrals to match, but no topics are off the table for LH Mamas, who handle hundreds of posts per week.
In the beginning, participants were mostly young moms, but “seasoned” moms now show up to both share advice and seek it. Posters may choose to remain anonymous when the subject matter is sensitive, such as how to find a good divorce lawyer, what to do when your child is the only one in the class not invited to a birthday party and whether or not to tell a friend when their teen is behaving dangerously.
Rucker says one of her toughest tasks is to deal with persistently negative voices and discourage running down businesses after a single unfortunate experience or mistake. Admins prefer not to interfere, but they sometimes remove content to keep the discussion civil.
“We pour a lot of time into it, and it’s stressful but rewarding. I think about the people who felt the way I did when I first moved here. It’s a lonely feeling. Every day, someone gets together with a mom they met on our page, or feels brave enough to go to an event. It’s worth all of it.”
