Kimberly J. Ward has been many things but being a mom has been her favorite title!  She has written a book, lived on a boat for 2 years and became a mom at the age of 35. She was a late bloomer and had her first baby late in life but now is loving watching her daughter become an adult (she is turning 21 this year).  She says the best things she has given her daughter are roots and wings and Nikki will be using that!  She wasn’t a fan of the newborn stage because the baby had colic and she really struggled with the fact that even if babies had everything they needed, they shouldn’t be unhappy. She was so wrong and struggled with self doubt and frustration.  Knowing that all babies cry is so important and thank goodness she had her husband who was the best support for her and their daughter. Watching her daughter bloom as a young adult has been her best mama moment even from across the world.  Her worst mama moment was when her daughter had a mental health crisis during her senior year of high school. Thank goodness her daughter was 17 and she still had some control of her mental health care. Covid was very difficult on her daughter and it spilled into the whole family. They all learned a lot from the situation and how to support one another in the best way for each of them. She wrote a book called Crew of Three, a story about their three years on a boat and it can be found on her website HERE,

Kathy Allen is a mom of a 56 and 55 year old as well as her first great granddaughter!  She is a nurse and has started a group called the gutsy nurses.  She was the second oldest of nine kids so she was very well prepared to be a mom! Her mom ran a daycare so she was very ready to be a mom!  She thought having only 2 and a step son so three in her home and her challenge was to not be so responsible and play more. She was the team mom, the classroom mom and was very involved with them and her biggest supporter was her mother-in-law because she was so thrilled her son was so happy.  Her own mom was working so hard, she couldn't really be her biggest supporter so they lived in San Diego near her husband’s family to raise their kids. She has really enjoyed watching her kids become amazing adults.  Her first birth was only 4 hours long and she was thrilled how he came into this world. She had a stepson who came to live with them when he was 9 years old and when he became an adult, he was diagnosed with cancer and passed away as a young man and watching that happen was the worst mama moment. She also had to learn that he was going to go through his own process and she wasn’t in control.  As a nurse, she worked as a nurse on and off throughout her whole life. She worked in almost every department in a hospital as well as mental health locations. She is now working with nurses who are on the verge of burnout. Her program is called gutsy nurses to help nurses understand what is actually going on with them.  The extra added stress of having a patient of theirs who could die at any time. They are experiencing a different kind of exhaustion called traumatic exhaustion. Parenting with this burnout is a huge issue. She is writing a book to help nurses with this burnout and exhaustion and how to handle it.  You can find her at gutsynurses.com

Barb Stone is all about creating things from life stories to be able to help people on their journey. She left her career 6 years ago to become a leadership development coach to help teams on their path. She has found that we all need some guidance and she loves to do that with a vast amount of people. She has published a book called “Lessons to Drool About.” Sometimes we get into a victim mindset where we think there is nothing we can do about that.  BUT she says that life can happen FOR you, not TO you. The good can find the story and the resilience from the story to create wisdom for yourself and the people around you. If you can focus on what you WANT, that’s where the energy will come from and you will walk that path instead of seeing all the obstacles in the way. Sometimes baby steps are the best way to get started with one step at a time. BUT don’t go it alone. You should always be looking for people to join you on the journey. Having other perspectives around you because they will see things you don’t see. We have to go through the hard stuff to get to the good stuff. We should live more like our pets, especially dogs because they wake up every day and are happy to be alive…EVERY SINGLE DAY. Don’t do it alone! They feel the moment RIGHT NOW.  We need to feel what we are feeling right now. They ask for what they want WHEN they want it. You can find her book that will help you find inspiration to be grateful, mindful and inspirational.  Find it HERE

Jeni Golomb is a mom of 2 boys ages 19 and 16, a wife of 25 years and a Harvard MBA with a new adventure in a marketing start up nonprofit. She was 28 and 31 when she had her kids because those were the same ages her mom was when she had kids. She thinks that putting your children’s needs ahead of your own is how you create amazing humans and if you are too young and don’t have a completed frontal lobe, you can’t necessarily handle that. She thought that being 28 as a new mom was the best age BUT the pivot of losing her independence and freedom was truly a slap in the face. She sobbed in her brand new nursery because she realized that she will FOREVER have to check in with that child…for the REST of her life.  That was a really hard realization.  You can LOVE someone so much it hurts but then also be overwhelmed by it. Her biggest supporter was her mom who came and stayed for 2 months. She woke up every night and sat with her daughter while she breastfed at night. She was there to help with her own baby and her baby’s baby. Showing up with consistency means being the witness to her children’s life. We are not here to paint the picture of our children’s lives but hand them the paintbrush and let them paint. Her teenagers are very communicative and she credits that with having a close relationship throughout their lives. She calls herself the GPS mom…her kids are in the driver’s seat of their own lives and as their GPS, she helps direct them to get there. Her worst mama moments come when she loses her temper because we ALL KNOW those kids of ours always know how to push our buttons!  Jeni can be found at www.glassbrkr.com

Beatty Carmichael is a dad of three adult children, missing littles running around and married to his wife for 32 years. He and his wife have never had a large argument!  He comes from a family of doctors and decided he wanted to pivot into helping people have blessed lives. As a business owner, you don’t always know what you are doing so it’s a learning process every day so he looked at parenthood like that too.  He gives a lot of the credit to his wife who read all the books on parenthood and he took what she learned from those books and provided the guidance and discipline to the kids.  He leaned on her and asked, “how can I help?”  His expertise is helping people get set free from all kinds of issues including unforgiveness. Unforgiveness is the source of many issues people have.  Over 700 people, he has worked with where unforgiveness is the block that many people face. Along the way, someone may have hurt us deeply and we haven’t let that go. Resentment is often the reason there is a block in relationships. Learning to forgive is a HUGE part of having a positive relationship with many people in your life. This can include parents, children, spouses/partners, friends, neighbors, etc. In early motherhood, it is important to be careful not to bring in past hurts that we haven’t let go of. Forgiveness starts way back in childhood because we are just our younger selves in a bigger body. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean excusing their behavior but instead understanding them that causes us to do things that aren’t meant to hurt us. He believes you need to separate the person from their actions. It may not be easy to do but the benefits outweigh the consequences of holding onto those feelings. You can find his book called The Prayer of Freedom at theprayeroffreedombook.com

Sally Raymond, from Santa Barbara, California, living near the ocean AND the mountains and at the age of 82, and believing that aging is a choice, she stays present.  She was married at the age of 19 and had two kids as a young mom. She realized that children are here to teach us. Her first born, at the age of 2, read the sign outside the car, Texaco! She realized he was a genius and she was NOT prepared for a genius son. With 45 minute debates at the age of 4 about why he didn’t need to make his bed. She went back to school to keep up with his intelligence and became a psychologist. She was just becoming a therapist when her genius son took his life. He was in calculus at the age of 14 and at the age of 15 was teaching calculus. Unfortunately she didn’t have the tools to see anything but a high achieving student.  He graduated at 21 with his bachelors and masters degree from Carnegie Mellon but took his life right after. She was lost and had no idea how she got to that point. She wrote a book as a roadmap of motherhood. She wishes she would have had this when she was a young mom. Suicide is the top cause of death for people ages 11-34. We need to do better. Her book took 28 years to write but doesn’t want anyone else to go through what she has. She realized, after he died, that we aren’t teaching our children social/emotional skills in school or at home. We aren’t teaching them to empathize, how to use their own emotions and how to be in tune with their own emotional needs. Being a mom is the biggest education she has ever had. She wishes she would have been more of a supporter than a mom.  You can find her book and more information about parenthood at https://sallyaraymond.com/. Her book is called The Son I Knew Too Late and you can find it on Amazon. 

Bill Williams is a dad of two after having many different jobs including photography, managed a TV network, and a TV station in Bowling Green Ohio (thinking there were mountains there).  He decided to set up his own communication consultant business but since everything went digital he decided to change his whole life and became a dad! And then became a financial advisor. He has been doing that for years but also found publishing and started sending out a thought for the day in email and 30 years later he has readers all over the world! He decided people need to laugh more! He has published his first book, 20 Years of Internet Humor. His two daughters are in their 30’s and active in theater. He loves telling jokes about mamahood and wants to make mamas laugh! Laughter and telling jokes are a great way to break the ice but also a great way to lower tension when things get tight. He wrote for a few comedians for a while and was never a performer but he thinks laughter is the way to go through life. Keeping laughter in parenthood can help break tension and think about finding the bright side of life. He sends his a thought for the day overnight so you wake up to a thought for the day. You can find him at internet-humor.com and sign up for a thought for the day. 

Meredith Cole is the owner of the Denver Village, an inclusive environment near the Stanley Marketplace where they bring together many different practitioners to support people, but especially moms. She and her husband have two sons and had the second during the pandemic. She says things seem really hard at the time but memories seem to fade a little and each new stage is a new shift and that’s really hard. Having the support of her husband has been amazing but her mama friends and “village” is also one of the most important parts of motherhood. Watching her kids be kind to others with empathy is so prideful for her. When her kids show the glimpses of who they are becoming, she realizes that she is doing the best she can. Finding the moments that are going well and emphasizing them is so important. Nobody is perfect and neither are our kids so take everything as a learning experience. She had a rough mama moment back when her little one got “lost” at an Easter celebratory event in a bouncy house. That moment truly made her realize what’s important! She wishes she would have known that when people give you advice, you truly just need to trust your gut. You are doing the best you can and nobody knows your baby like you do. Trust yourself. The amount of unsolicited advice is ridiculous. Trust your gut. You can find out more about the Denver Village by following them @thdenvervillage or www.thedenvervillage.com 

Hollie Wildehorn is from Australia and had her first baby at the age of 21! She was a very young mom and the town she was in was a very business oriented city (Cambria) and she was really mostly on her own. She was part of the alternative industry and she was part of a great community of moms and now with a 18 and 21 year old, she has a great relationships with her kids. Her biggest challenge was the fact that she didn’t know what the heck she was doing and you don’t know what you don’t know!  How do you be a mom when you don’t have someone to help you with it?  She was very prepared for the birthing process but after giving birth she wasn’t as prepared for when the baby came home. She turned to books and literature but turned away from mainstream books. In Australia she had a midwife who followed throughout her whole journey. She thought she would have a home birth but after looking at the mess she was worried about who would clean it up so she went to the birthing center. She homeschooled on and off throughout their educational career and that was her best mama moment. She struggles with with mama fears even to this day. She wishes she would have known that leaning into community and having supports that could have taught her so much. Why not lean on those who have come before us? She wants moms to know that you know better than anyone else.  MOMS know and she tells their partners to LISTEN to them.  Moms need people behind them cheering them on.  Instituteforselfcrafting.com  

Sharon Harmon, from Nashville, Tennessee who works with highly sensitive people using frequencies to help people figure out what’s going on with them. As a New York native, she met her husband in NYC.  She had her son at the age of 42 and they weren’t preventing pregnancy but also weren’t planning on it. As the eldest of five kids, she was the only girl and the “second mom” so that was like being a mom! She had a home birth and did everything holistically and didn’t plan for after the pregnancy. The paradigm shift was a huge change in her life and one of the hardest parts of motherhood. She also had a huge health issue with Lyme Disease that resurfaced. The exhaustion was so unreal that she couldn’t even climb a flight of stairs! She also couldn’t breastfeed because of Lyme's disease. Her husband has been her best support and she had her parents both there as well for a few weeks. Her husband and her figured out how to parent mostly on their own until they found some of their people.  Their son went to a Waldorf preschool/daycare and it was the perfect place for their son because they focused on allowing them to use their imagination and be kids. She decided that 2nd grade was the perfect time for her to homeschool until 8th grade. Her worst mama moment was when her son was in middle school because they started to butt heads a little more than they should have. She wishes she would have stopped homeschooling sooner. She wishes she would have had a better plan after giving birth. It’s messy and unknown and scary. She has a blog on end of life planning because she struggled with that when her parents passed away.  She works with highly sensitive people.  These are people who are more sensitive to the energy around them whether that is human energy or electronic energy.  She works with her clients both in-person and virtually. She works with moms more than children to set the environment for their child. You can find her at sharonharmon.com and on Instagram @sharonharmonphd

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