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Lisa Whelchel is wearing a big fluffy robe, sponge rollers, a green facemask, and SpongeBob SquarePants slippers. No, the woman probably best known for her role as sassy rich girl Blair Warner in the '80s sitcom The Facts of Life isn't at home watching a chick flick. She's standing center stage in a hotel ballroom in Louisville, Kentucky, surrounded by 200 women similarly clad in p.j.s and ponytails. It's the kick-off night of her latest MomTime Get-A-Ways weekend conference, the ministry she launched in 2002 for stressed-out moms in need of some pep talks and playtime. Tonight, the focus is on the latter.
But before the games begin, Lisa, 40, shares a few thoughts with this bustling room of popcorn-munching women who obviously are excited about a rare Girls Night In. As she slowly takes off her facemask with a wet washcloth, Lisa encourages her attendees to take off their own masks tonight, "the ones we're so good at hiding behind.
"Share at least one story about the real you with the women around you," she urges, then gives the women some time to chat among themselves. After a few minutes, Lisa launches into the unlikely story of how she and Steve, her husband of 15 years, got together as well as how they've weathered some difficult seasons in their marriage. "Years two through seven were really tough," she confesses, referring to the time when they had three children in three years and then lost all her earnings from The Facts of Life, as well as their house, to bad investments.
It was during those tough years that Lisa launched the neighborhood moms' gathering that was a precursor to the MomTime conference. Their family lived in Los Angeles then, and their three kids, Tucker, Haven, and Clancy (now 14, 12, and 11, respectively), were 3, 2, and 1. "At those ages, taking them out in public was miserable," Lisa explains. "Yet staying in all day was miserable, too. I was desperate for some adult conversation." So Lisa invited her mom and two church friends to join her for a weekly gathering to eat lunch and play games (Lisa's a closet board-game lover) while their kids napped or played together in another room. The women jumped at the idea, and the first MomTime group was born.
"That gathering became a life source for us," Lisa says. "All the laughter, food, and talk were natural stress relievers. By the time our gatherings were finished, we were ready to go tackle another week."
They invited other friends to join them over time, and eventually other MomTime groups formed. Then when Lisa was asked to run the Friday night portion of a women's retreat with her church, she brought the fun and games to this larger group of women. "So many women came up to me later and said that was their favorite part of the weekend," says Lisa. "They told me they needed the laughter even more than the teaching. I knew I'd struck a nerve."
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