The People Leading When Leaders Do Not

In the last few weeks, the women said, they had been inundated with questions from readers about how to help their community as the number of coronavirus cases in the state began to grow.

The blog largely depends on advertising to stay afloat, but in this moment, “We absolutely didn’t want to try and take a sales approach and get money or anything like that,” Ms. Miller said.

Instead, she, Ms. Gentling, and the rest of their team tried to come up with a cheeky spin on the need to self-quarantine, then work with a local business they’d long loved to promote it.

Finally, they arranged to have all proceeds from the shirts go to one of their favorite charities, Infant Crisis Services, which provides formula, diapers and food to struggling families in the area.

In the last two weeks, their writers have put together detailed guides to free educational resources, how to navigate working from home with young children, and activities to keep children occupied, like virtual tours of Oklahoma City museums. Pinned at the top of their Facebook page, which has a following of more than 18,000, is “A Parent’s Guide to COVID-19 in OKC.”

“Honestly, we’re nervous. We have no idea how this is going to affect us,” Ms. Gentling admitted. But she said her drive to make the blog the best possible resource for parents trying to navigate the virus, physically and emotionally, had given her a sense of purpose.

“Because if I was just stuck in my house thinking of how I was going to homeschool my kids, I would be going crazy — not saying I’m not going crazy,” she added, laughing. “But being real and transparent, and saying this is hard, and we don’t know when this is going to end, and pumping out resources that are useful, that’s what we want to do.”

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