How One Mom Built Community Here
Ask Gena what an ordinary day in MetroWest looks like and she answers in one word: “Chaotic.” Then she laughs. Between running businesses, answering emails, taking calls, and managing school schedules and sports and activities, all while trying to remember whether she drank enough water, she spends her days bouncing between mom mode and business-owner mode, sometimes in the same breath.
If that sounds familiar, that’s exactly the point.
Three years ago, Gena and her family came to MetroWest the way a lot of smart families do: looking for the place that made the most sense. Part of it was value, she says with a laugh, “if I’m being completely honest, affordability.” But what truly sold her was the location. In MetroWest, everything is close. Downtown sits under 15 minutes away, Disney is a quick drive, and most of daily life is within easy reach. “It just felt practical,” she says. “And once we got here, it started feeling like home.” For a family deciding where to plant roots in Orlando, MetroWest checked every box: central, connected, and the kind of place you settle into fast.
What she didn’t find quite so easily was connection.
“There were moms everywhere, but finding real connection wasn’t always easy,” she says. “Everybody is busy. Everybody is juggling work, kids, relationships, responsibilities, and about 47 tabs open in their brain at all times.” So she did what entrepreneurs do when they spot a gap: she built the thing she was looking for. “I wasn’t just building something for other moms. I was building something I needed too.”
That something is Mommy Wants A Break, and the name tells you only half the story.
Most people hear it and think self-care, and yes, Gena says, moms deserve breaks. But the longer she did this work, the more she noticed something underneath the exhaustion. “A lot of moms haven’t just forgotten to take a break. They’ve forgotten who they are.” Somewhere between raising kids, building careers, and taking care of everyone else, she says, moms stop doing the things they once did simply because they enjoyed them. They stop having hobbies. They stop making new friends. They stop feeling like themselves.
So Mommy Wants A Break became less about time away and more about what happens during that time. Gena describes a moment that stuck with her: a mom who came to a small gathering looking for a little childcare support and mentioned she hadn’t had an uninterrupted conversation with another adult in weeks. By the end of the event, the relief on her face wasn’t really about the break. “She felt seen,” Gena says. “It confirmed that it’s not only about time away. It’s about connection during that time too.”
MetroWest, it turns out, was a good place to build something like that. “It’s one of those places where people still genuinely want to see each other succeed,” Gena says, and as the owner of several local businesses, she’s felt that support firsthand. Neighbors help neighbors. Local businesses show up for families. People rally around schools, events, and causes. “That’s something I really appreciate.”
This fall, MetroWest celebrates 40 years, and Gena’s read on the community fits the milestone almost perfectly. She calls MetroWest “established but still evolving,” a place with history that’s still investing in itself. (Her favorite example? The remodeled Publix. “I know that sounds ridiculous, but moms understand.”) What she hopes never changes is the diversity. “People from so many different backgrounds and cultures call this area home, and I think that’s a huge part of its identity.”
And she’s not slowing down. This summer, Gena is launching a new community under the Mommy Wants A Break umbrella: The Orlando Bad Moms Club. Despite the name, she’s quick to clarify, it’s not about being a bad mom. It’s about being a badass one. “The kind of mom who realizes she’s allowed to have fun. The kind of mom who wants real friendships, who wants to laugh until she cries, try new things, and reconnect with the person she was before life became one giant to-do list.” The club is built around experiences, events, and opportunities for moms to make genuine connections, and to remember, as Gena puts it, that “motherhood should add to who you are, not erase who you are.”
Forty years in, MetroWest is still the kind of place where someone can arrive looking for practical and stay because it became home, and where a busy mom of three can build something the whole community needed. That’s the quiet magic of this place. Four decades on, MetroWest keeps drawing people in and giving them room to grow, a community that starts to feel like home almost before the boxes are unpacked. Gena found that here. So have thousands of neighbors before her. And as MetroWest steps into its next 40 years, there’s every reason to believe thousands more will too.
Learn More
To learn more about Gena’s communities, upcoming events, and ways to get involved, visit linktr.ee/mommywantsabreak. You can also explore the newly launched Orlando Bad Moms Club, a community built around fun experiences, genuine friendships, and reminding moms that taking time for themselves isn’t selfish
