My name is Shannon M. Kulik and I am the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of this online magazine for women which hopes to offer a ‘profoundly beautiful and lyrical spin on empowering women to be inspirational, fearless and to surround themselves with loveliness’. This story tells the beginnings of BohoMamma.
The birth of our son in 2007 was the beginning of a change in my life. I realized that the world does not stop for us after we become mothers. There are no breaks or pauses in life after motherhood. There are no more “I’m going to say in bed today” kind of days (if there are, I haven’t reached that time in motherhood yet).
There is only one direction after motherhood and that is forward.
There will still be bad days and good days; deaths and births; divorces and marriages; heartaches and joy; and, stress…lots of stress, but now we’re mothers.
Once we make the choice to have a child, we have both an opportunity and an obligation to be better, stronger and more fearless in our approach to life and in the face of those bad days. Truth be told, while I do sometimes look back on days of sleeping in bed until noon, I like this life better. It has more meaning and that gives me purpose.
There is a power in the commitment that we make to our children. It is a force that can push us to be more daring, confident and fearless as women. We see things differently. We recognize our own habits and patterns. We realize the world around us and how it impacts the lives of those we love in untold ways.
We learn that we cannot teach our daughters to love their bodies if we’re tallying our caloric intake at the end of each day. We cannot help shape our sons’ view of women, if we don’t demand respect for ourselves. We cannot convince our children that they can do and be anything they choose, if we’re not pursuing dreams for ourselves.
The richness of motherhood lies in its ability to shape who we are as women. It is finding our womanhood through motherhood.
The reward is the look in our children’s eyes as they grow to be stronger, bolder and venture into the world with the courage and character that we envision for them (at a much younger age than we were afforded). The reality is that we are a different generation of mothers. Some of us live away from the traditional female community that we would normally turn to for advice, humor and help raising our children. A lot of urban moms started our families later in life and as such our mothers are older: their help often the equivalent of using their cane to keep our little one from tumbling down the stairs. For some of us, our mothers came of age in the 60s and they are off conquering their own worlds and enjoy their time with our little ones, but don’t define themselves as the type of grandmother who needs to be at the heels of our families on a daily basis (and we tip our hat to them in the process).
And so, here we are…taking the best of what we’ve learned from the women who’ve come before us, the information we gather from one another and using our own instincts to decide for ourselves the type of mother and woman we will be.
This site is called BohoMamma because we are a bit bohemian: finding freedom in the ability to draft our own, unique version of motherhood. We are also mammas, a more relaxed version of the terms mothers, moms and mommies. We have ideas on politics; we have intellectual pursuits; we like music; sometimes we need to be distracted for a moment or two; we want to learn and to share. We want to know how to get what we need, as quickly as we can because our time is limited. We are multifaceted…no matter how often media and advertisers tell us we are “this” or we are “that” and no matter how many people tell us we cannot be “that” because we are “this”, we will keep expanding our definition of what is important to us. And, that’s what we wish this site to represent: different aspects to our character. BohoMamma was designed with clean, modern lines because we have enough going on in our heads – we don’t need the stimulation. We need a place to relax and a place to discover. We need a place inspired and a place to get in touch with our creativity.
I hope that BohoMamma.com offers you many chances to learn something about yourself, others or the life around you. I hope that you relax when you’re here. And I hope you spread the word if you like what we’re doing. And if you don’t? We’d like to hear that as well.
We welcome you to the BohoMamma community.