Free Mom Hugs, the Oklahoma City-grown movement that supports queer people rejected by their birth families for their sexual and gender orientations, has been subtly uplifting the LGBTQ-plus community on the Central Coast for the past three years.
Willow Kawamoto, the co-lead of Central Coast Free Mom Hugs, said that lately more people are seeking them out for comfort.
“I will purposely wear my Free Mom Hugs shirt during the week or especially on the weekends. I’m just out doing my regular errands, chores, grocery shopping, and … someone will … come up to me like, ‘May I get a hug?'” she said. “I’ve seen it more and more recently because of what’s been happening in this current administration. People are scared.”
Beyond parents, singles have signed up to support family members and friends because of the Trump administration’s increasing scrutiny of transgender people through a flurry of executive orders, according to Kawamoto.
In San Luis Obispo County, the Lucia Mar and Paso Robles school districts became hotbeds of the debate over the rights of trans students in athletics and locker rooms.
The Free Mom Hugs movement began at the 2015 Oklahoma City Pride Festival when Oklahoma mom Sara Cunningham wore a homemade button bearing the words “Free Mom Hugs,” offering hugs to anyone who made eye contact.
Cunningham founded Free Mom Hugs years after rejecting her son Parker’s sexuality when he came out to her. A conservative Christian at the time, she researched faith and sexuality and eventually came to understand the hurt felt by the LGBTQ-plus community.
Her cause became a national nonprofit after 2018 when one of Cunningham’s Facebook posts went viral, according to the Free Mom Hugs website.
“PSA: If you need a mom to attend your same-sex wedding because your biological mom won’t, call me,” her post read. “I’m there. I’ll be your biggest fan. I’ll even bring the bubbles.”
Now, Free Mom Hugs has chapters in all 50 states. California is broken into three regions for the nonprofit, according to Kawamoto. The northern chapter covers the Bay Area and Santa Cruz, going eastward into Bakersfield. The southern chapter extends from Los Angeles to San Diego counties.
Finally, the Central Coast chapter spans between the two. Under the leadership of Kawamoto and Community Action Partnership of SLO County Clinic Director Kayla Wilburn, its membership grew to 266 huggers in 2025.
For the past nine months, the local Free Mom Hugs group has assembled twice a month on Sunday mornings at the Gala Pride and Diversity Center in SLO. Kawamoto, who also serves on Gala’s action and activities governance committee, told New Times that the gathering emerged from a Free Mom Hugs coffee shop event called Coffee Klatch that used to take place two and a half years ago.
“What we wanted to do was create an environment, a space outside of Pride events and Pride Month, especially in a college town like San Luis Obispo,” she said. “There’s going to be LGBTQ students, not just in the college itself, but in local schools and just everywhere else on a day-to-day basis. What we wanted to do was set up a place where we could be incredibly visible in a downtown space.”
Over its three-year existence, the Central Coast chapter has doled out hugs, kind words, and heartfelt conversation at events like Trans Day of Visibility, Trans Day of Remembrance, the Lavender Commencement at Cal Poly, a celebration of life ceremony, and other LGTBQ-plus community advocacy events, including Cal Poly’s Out of Darkness Walk.
Last year, Free Mom Hugs also participated in the Atascadero and Santa Maria Pride festivals and Los Osos’ Queerwood celebration.
Kawamoto is one of the first trans volunteers for Free Mom Hugs. She isn’t a parent, but witnessing the backlash faced by the trans community compelled her to share the sense of community.
“When I initially came out, my birth parents and my adoptive parents were no longer with us, so I was technically alone when I came out, in terms of having a family, but what I did choose is my chosen family,” she said. “They’re the ones who actually did support me throughout my process of coming out and being my ally, being my friend, being that shoulder.”
Kawamoto estimated that the Central Coast chapter has hugged more than 1,000 people including students, adults, and children from all walks of life and ethnic backgrounds, and those who didn’t necessarily identify as queer. Recently, a community member approached the group after losing her mother.
“It was heartbreaking. … She just wanted to be loved,” Kawamoto said. “She knew that if she came to us, that we would just give her that sense of compassion, sense of love, a sense of home. Isn’t that what a mom hug is? It’s about home.”
For Kawamoto, there’s joy to be received in being a hugger, too.
“It reinforces who I am as a transgender woman and how I want to not only be perceived, but also how I want to be accepted,” she said. “By being able to turn that around and give that acceptance and love freely and 100 percent to another individual, it’s an amazing act of love, of kindness.”
Free Mom Hugs will be at Pride festivals throughout June in SLO, Atascadero, Los Osos, Cambria, and Santa Maria. But Kawamoto is unsure about the number of trans people who would feel comfortable attending those events.
“There is a lot of fear and uncertainty amongst my community, and there is fear among the BIPOC who live in Santa Maria. What if ICE shows up?” she said. “But I hope that they will feel safe enough to come out because we will be there, and right now more than ever, we need community and hugs from every mom heart.” Δ
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Pride 2025.
