Whitney loves sharing stories that help other people feel less alone, so she made a career out of it. After spending time in politics and public relations, she started freelance writing and her own personal blog, Playdates on Fridays, in 2015.
She is known for her vulnerable, relatable, and humorous posts about raising her three teenage daughters who are close in age. She also brings an authentic and realistic voice to topics such as marriage, mid-life, and mental health. You may have seen her work on Today Parents, Good Morning America, Huffington Post, Yahoo!, Her View From Home, Scary Mommy, Pop Sugar, and her own personal social media pages where she has nearly 250k+ followers.
In addition to freelance writing, she has created content for a wide-variety of online publishers, businesses, and non-profits, grown social media pages to more than 1M+ followers, and co-manages the successful blog Parenting Teens and Tweens.
She recently launched a gratitude journal for teen girls and their moms, and her work is published in five anthologies (with another coming out in 2022).
She is a serial volunteer for her kids’ schools and athletic teams, loves fancy coffee with little hearts made from cinnamon and foam, and never turns down long dinners with good friends. She binge-watches too many Netflix series with my teenagers and crime dramas with her husband, and rarely misses a walk with her extremely disobedient dog, Jax.
How it all began
It all started when some friends on Facebook told me I was funny and that I should start a blog. At the time, it was both flattering and hilarious to think that anyone would care what I had to say about anything.
But I’ve loved writing and storytelling since I was old enough to read my own books late into the night huddled under the covers with a flashlight, so I thought, “What do I have to lose?”
So, I started my blog, Playdates on Fridays, based on a weekly playgroup I was in when my three daughters were little. While the intention was to have a neighborhood playdate each week, as kids grew and sports practices and activities got in the way, there were only a few of us that were hardcore and rarely missed a Friday get-together.
These events were life-giving to me. So much of what I value about friendship and parenting and love and acceptance came out of these simple gatherings. I looked forward to them every single week because I had a non-judgmental place where I belong, where I could be myself, where I felt less alone.
It was there that I cried to my friends when I found out that doctors had missed a cerebral palsy diagnosis for my daughter and I did not know what her future looked like.
It was there that we found out–twice–that my friend’s breast cancer came back.
It was there that we sat together and held hands when my neighbor’s mom was diagnosed with Alzheimers, when another friend was discussing divorce, and another’s child was abusing drugs.
It was a small collective built on hope and trust and authenticity.
It was that type of community I wanted to build when I started my blog, those types of honest stories I wanted to tell, and that kind of support I wanted to lend to others.
And that’s what we’ve built on social media at Whitney Fleming Writes (formerly Playdates on Fridays.)
Now that my kids are teenagers, I’ve found that it’s harder for parents to share and support one another for a wide variety of reasons, so my goal is to share stories that make other people feel less alone.
Whitney Fleming Writes is just turning the page in my writing evolution, where I talk more about this next stage of big kid parenting, adapting to mid-life, and the occasional posts about marriage, grief, and mental health. I believe in writing about my own journey, but I also share stories of parents raising LGBTQ+ teens and neurodiverse children and kids who do not look like mine, because I think the only thing that changes hearts and minds is when we can tell our tales and recognize we’re not that different.
And I will always throw in the memes that make us all laugh about the ridiculousness of teenagers because there is nothing more ridiculous than a teenager.
I hope you’ll join me on Facebook or Insta, or join my mailing list so you can receive the latest posts, book news, or other relevant information.
Until then, let’s get through this together.
She recently launched a gratitude journal for teen girls and their moms, and her work is published in five anthologies (with another coming out in 2022).
I love fancy coffee with little hearts made from cinnamon and foam and long dinners with good friends. I binge-watch too many Netflix series with my teenagers and crime dramas with my husband. I rarely miss a walk with my dog, Jax, and I text too many memes to my friends.
