The closest thing I ever came to writing a blog was maintaining an emo Tumblr page during a melancholic, transitional era of my life circa 2009. Never in my wildest dreams as a 20-something would I have imagined my next attempt at public writing would be musings upon the đ€Żđ« of parenting, mid-life, baby products and my journey founding a company in the juvenile products space. But here I am, so let the musings commence.
I have to give credit to my fierce and brilliant ex-colleague Melody Hammer, founder and CEO of LoudLacquer, who gave me the sage idea to use a blog to start generating SEO during the excruciatingly slow development, prototyping, and testing phases of building my first baby product. Melody sparked the notion that publicly sharing my journey as a founder, my experiences as a mom, and my âhot takesâ on consumer brands in the kids space would organically help me articulate the brandâs voice and hone the Mother of Invention mission and values. Mel, thanks for the smartie pants advice.
It seems only fitting to use this inaugural blog post to detail the dramatic and unexpected and wonderful events that led me to founding this company. As one might expect, I am a proud mama. I pushed two little ladies out of my vagina: Sarah (6yo) and Samantha âSammyâ (3yo). Most days Iâm profoundly in love with my little ladies and genuinely crave spending time in their ever-expanding universes. We love to dress up, swim as pretend mermaids, play with dolls, have freeze dance parties and do arts and crafts. Being a Girl Mom is deeply rewarding. More than occasionally, however, I fantasize about activating God Mode, freezing time and escaping to a desert island far away from any meltdowns, fighting, food throwing or general sassy attitudes.
After a 1.0 career as an actor and filmmaker, I held a variety of leadership roles in early stage media and tech companies during the digital media explosion. My identity was 100% wrapped up in my professional successes. And I eventually decided to "lean in" and embark on a journey of working mom-hood. It was a much higher degree of difficulty, emotionally, than I ever would have imagined. I frequently drove home from a long day in the office in tears feeling as though I was royally sucking at both my job and momming. Sheryl Sandberg lied.
In January of 2022, while I was running the marketing division of an innovative indie publisher, my 6 month-old Sammy had a health scare that rocked the foundation of my family. After a terrible case of the croup, she started making frequent side eye movements while her body would tense up. Afraid she was having seizures, our pediatrician rushed us to Children's Hospital Los Angeles. To make matters worse, our nugget couldn't sit up, had floppy muscles and was generally delayed from a gross motor perspective. Although we quickly determined she wasn't having seizures, the myriad doctors and specialists we visited gave us a spectrum of bleak to cautiously optimistic predictions for her future growth trajectory. The one thing they all agreed upon was that we couldn't diagnose an infant and needed to keep periodically testing her for autism, neurological disorders, genetic diseases. And we needed to act aggressively as though she was potentially on the Autism spectrum, because early intervention is key to shaping neural pathways.
During this period, we lived in purgatory. But, with months of intensive physical and occupational therapy and too many doctor visits to UCLA and CHLA, our little Sammy miraculously outgrew her behavior. Her eye rolling, over time, stopped completely and she built the muscle strength to stop unnecessarily tensing her body. She caught up developmentally. She started to walk, talk, and do everything on a ânormalâ timeline. Physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and testing faded into the distance.
As one might imagine, the months' long ordeal scrambled me up real good: physically, emotionally and spiritually, I was the definition of a basket case. It felt as though the universe had gobbled me up and then it spit me out as a nervous, imposter-syndrome imbued, empty vessel and I started to question everything: my values as a mom, my career choices, my place in the world.
And yet Me-The-Scrambled-Egg, against all odds, turned out to be a pretty tasty omelet. I decided to take a professional leave to slow down: to be more present with myself, my inner voice, and most importantly, spend much more time with my littles. It was a nerve-wracking jump into the unknown: taking a step away from work messed with my identity, and for many months I felt completely lost at sea in a rudderless dingy of my former Accomplished Executive self. I didnât want to see or talk to anyone but my kids, husband and family. I cocooned and started, from what felt like scratch, to figure out what kind of mom I wanted to be, what I wanted the next 40 years of my life to look like, and how to build both visions in tandem.
No one teaches you how to be the parent you want to be. Sure I read the books, but I decided I needed more help. So I decided to get my "MFA" in parenting through the incredible Abigail Wald of Mother Flipping Awesome who helped me learn new techniques for parenting a strong-willed child. I organized my house and, by proxy, my brain. I created new systems that made running the kids' lives more streamlined. I got to all of those tasks and projects that had been on the back-burner for years. I invested in my health and started regularly exercising. I started playing the piano again and reading spicy romance novels (The Fourth Wing and ACOTAR rebirthed my sexuality). I fulfilled my lifelong dream of SCUBA diving with whale sharks!
Most importantly, I immersed myself in my girls' lives. I'm forever thankful for the hours I spent following my toddler around our favorite duck park, bathing in the sweetness of her fledgeling youth and in the beauty of nature. From preschool drop offs to doctors appointments to dance classes to park strolls, I relished the ability to be present with my children in ways that were simply unfeasible while working 40 hours/week.
By jumping off the treadmill of my working life, I was able to clear the space in my brain, heart and nervous system to re-access my creative, artistic spirit. I finally mourned the loss of my decision to stop making films back in 2009 (the era of the Emo tumblr) and instead, choosing a more steady path in business. I began to see my transformation into motherhood as a lifeforce for creativity and vision and self-rebirth. And in this place of power, I began having an explosion of ideas for products that could make parenting easier. I honed in on diaper changing. I decided that I was finally ready to found my own venture, something I had been terrified of doing even though I have almost exclusively worked in early-stage companies.
Today I feel more powerful, confident, healthy, grounded and spiritually awake than ever before in my life. Sammy, if you ever read this blog post some day, let me say this "Thank you for scaring the living daylight out of me: you are singlehandedly responsible for the most profound transformation in my life. I love you."
So MOI: It is my wish in founding this company and being in community with other moms, dads and caregivers to be able to hold space for their authentic experiences, their trials and tribulations, just like I am hoping you will hold a little space for mine in reading these words. Hopefully my products can help other moms on their unique, challenging and triumphant journeys along the way. Thanks for giving this a read, and stay tuned.
