How The Expert Hot Mess Mom Came To Be

I’m Alisha (pronounced uh-lish-uh, this is important. I am me, a wife, a daughter, a foodie, a writer, and your resident Expert Hot Mess Mom. I started out as a food blogger in 2016. I wanted to teach women how to “eAt HeAlThY” and love themselves. Unannounced to me I was still struggling with disordered eating and diet culture. At a certain point, I realized women need fewer 30-minute recipes and more women chasing their dreams. So, I stopped developing recipes. I still love to cook and eat really good food. I just decided I had bigger fish to fry.

I set out with the goal of creating a space where moms can come and feel like they aren’t alone. A place where they could come and not have to put on a brave face but just be human. As humans, we have good days and we have bad days. We are happy and we are sad. Some days we’re mad and we don’t even know why. And that’s just the normal human experience, add on being a mother and there’s a whole new layer of crazy. I wanted a space where we could own our crazy, judgment-free, shame-free, and most importantly guilt-free. Motherhood is hard and it’s magical but it’s not the only piece of who we are. 

When we become a mom more often than not we completely lose ourselves, I know I did. I became a mom and that’s the only thing I was. I wasn’t Alisha anymore, not that I ever knew who she was anyway. I wasn’t a wife. I wasn’t a friend because I didn’t have many. The worst part was not only was I solely identifying with my anchor of being a mom, but I also had to be the perfect mom. The pressure I put on myself to make sure everyone was happy all of the time was… well, on a scale of 1 to 10? 1,000.  The memories that needed to be made needed to be grand. The dinners that needed to be made, needed to be made with love, 15 steps, and 253 ingredients from a Pinterest recipe. The birthday parties, the Christmases, the Easters, the Valentine’s days, the vacations all needed to be perfect. If anyone got in my way and messed up my memories, there would be hell to pay my friend, hell to pay. The perfectionism and shame I carried for not being able to live up to the absurd standards I made for myself nearly killed me, my motherhood, and my marriage. I was unhappy all the time. I was toxic. I was lonely. And I was done.

As I began to find freedom, fast forward many, many years, The Expert Hot Mess Mom was born. When researching how to run an online business every source said I needed to be an expert in whatever I was doing. I decided I didn’t want to be an expert and pretend that I’m also a mess, because humans are messy and the Expert Hot Mess Mom was born. 

As I connected with women who felt like I once did, lost and as guilty all the time, I knew that I could use my freedom to help them. I know what it felt like to wonder if I would ever be anything other than mom and then feel guilty for thinking I should be anything else. 

I made the ultimate pivot. I developed a program, using the tools I used that help me find myself again, change my mindset around motherhood and perfection, and that helped me learn how to structure my days so that I don’t feel defeated at the end of every day. 

We put way too much pressure on ourselves. We hold ourselves to standards we wouldn’t hold anyone else to. We lose ourselves in our motherhood and one of the things that make us stronger, smarter, kinder, and wiser IS our motherhood. I love all 4 of my children. I love my husband. And I love myself. I love who I’ve become and who I become each day. I love that a day can suck and I can embrace it instead of telling myself how horrible of a job I did or that I’m the worst. I love that I’ve learned to say no and stop trying to make everyone else happy over myself. I’m done sacrificing every piece of me in order to stand high on some fake pedestal the world made for mothers. I don’t want my kids growing up thinking that a stoic pedestal is the goal. I want my kids growing up understanding that life is messy, complicated, fun, exciting, and full of love. And I want to live through all those things with them imperfectly and full of grace.