Re-emerging from the ashes with red hair

Allow me to reintroduce myself, Substack style.

Hi, my name is Lauren.

And I originally was going to write this post on Instagram, but then I thought, why not write it for Substack, where I can really pour my heart out and go off the hinges. I’m in the mood for a vulnerability hangover.

I took these branding photos a couple years ago now, but I’ll probably use them for years to come.

In these photos, I had recently cut my hair and colored it a vibrant red, and as the saying goes, when a woman changes her hair, she’s changing her life.

I made this hot, drastic change at a time where I’d decided it was officially time to rise from the never ending piles of laundry in my bedroom ashes and reinvent myself as the hot mom. AKA get out of my post-partum, post-pandemic slump and start showing up for myself better than ever before.

And none of this was exactly planned, I’d always wanted to color my hair red and it was time to do something different with my cut, but looking back it all makes sense.

I had decided I was finished drowning in the dreariness of postpartum (for the second time!).

I don’t find postpartum dreary, I actually think it’s the most incredible and beautiful time, but this is how I felt at the time. I think the moms who have been there know what I mean.

I was ready to emerge and take all of the struggle that I was drowning in and turn it into purpose.

So, the Elevated Mama was born.

I put the wheels in motion to start my brand.

I started night one of a branding course called Iconic, with one of my personal icons,

cara alwill

. (actually, I started the first call on the way home from my life-changing hair appointment).

I quickly secured my LLC and domain name.

And then my branding quickly evolved from the Elevated Mama to the hot mom’s club and the hot mom life.

The mission to help you become an Elevated Mama still stands, but helping you to step into your own hot-mom-ness, just feels so much sexier, right?

So, that’s how Lauren the hot mom was born, with red hair.

See, you wouldn’t have got all that from an Instagram carousel!

Now, I write for the hot mom life blog, launched my podcast (the Hot Moms Club!), and offer holistic lifestyle coaching to help moms up level and feel incredible in all areas of their lives. Because I believe the key to creating a beautiful life and reaching our goals, lies in the way we care for ourselves holistically— feeling good every day

Other things about me:

(I guess I’ll do this in semi-chronological order)

I’m a native Coloradan (which is apparently rare these days) and a New Yorker at heart.

I’m a nurse. Not currently practicing in a health care setting, but it’s an important part of who I am.

I had a very niche specialty as a Kidney Transplant coordinator— I know a lot about kidneys, dialysis, and how to get a new one if ever needed. Again, niche, but I really loved it.

I have over 12 years of experience and passion in the health and wellness field.

I’ve always loved helping people optimize their health and feel their best, even when the people I was helping were at their absolute worst and most vulnerable in the hospital.

Over the years, I’ve dove even deeper into learning about holistic health, wellness, and personal development and applied it to my own life to help me combat depression and burn out.

I hated taking anti-depressants (though they were a good tool to pull me out of my initial depression and feel what it felt like to not be depressed, so I’m not knocking them. Wonderful tool that I’d recommend to anyone struggling to see past their depression, just not a long-term option for me personally.)

I debated keeping that last line in, because I feel so much shame and secretiveness around taking an anti-depressant, but for what? Depression has this uncanny way of isolating us, but I’ve come to learn that I’m far from alone in experiencing it.

Irene is my ride-or-die chihuahua, don’t ask me how old she is, because I don’t know and trying to do the math breaks my heart, she’s a cranky little old lady, we’ve been besties since January 2016.

I wasn’t planning on getting a dog, but my alter-ego’s name since my early 20’s was Irene (after the infamous hurricane Irene that I spent hours reading about personified on Twitter by all the fabulous New Yorkers that I followed at that time. Come to think of it, Twitter also happened to be where I developed my para-social relationship to NYC, which will be an important detail later)

I came across Irene’s little picture on Twitter from a shelter that picked her up off the snowy streets of Colorado and instantly knew we were soulmates.

I met her, her little snaggle tooth sealed the deal for me, but I slept on it for a few nights to be responsible, telling myself that if she was still there, it was meant to be. I went back and picked her up on the way home from my New Years getaway in Winter Park.

She’s proven herself to be the toughest bitch I’ve ever known, and I’m so fortunate to have weathered the lows and ridden the highs of the last 9 years with her by my side.

I officially moved to New York in the Fall of 2016.

I had stayed for an extended period of time on two previous travel nurse contracts, and then in the Summer of 2016, I’d landed my third and decided that this time I was going to find a way to seal the deal and fulfill my life long dream of becoming a New Yorker. And I did it.

During those travel nurse contracts, I also spent 6 months in Boston, where I always told everyone that I dreamt of living.

Shortly after ending my first NYC contract and landing in Boston in January of 2015 (with snow piled up past my head absolutely everywhere lol), I quickly realized that me saying that I wanted to live in Boston was me playing small for what I really wanted, but thought was too out of reach for me, to live in New York City.

But don’t worry, I still had plenty of fun in Boston, as pictured above.

One of my proudest accomplishments is when I quit denying myself and became a New Yorker.

I can’t explain it, but New York is my natural habitat. I still miss it every day.

Shortly after moving to NYC (officially), I met a hot British man at brunch. He had just landed via Dubai. His name is Samim, but he introduced himself to me as Sam.

He begged me to let him take me on a date, resorting to offering to cook me spaghetti bolognese at my apartment, to which I said, “sure”.

We married 5 and a half months later.

Some people ask me why I was so resistant to saying yes to a date with him. I wasn’t playing hard to get, I was heart broken and badly burned from a relationship that ended months before, which now isn’t even notable enough to include on the timeline.

Love heals all, quickly.

I still remember the moment that I fell in love with Sam: at the opening of the nativity scene of the Rockettes, my favorite part that gets me every time— I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, because you must. I looked over and the man was in an absolute puddle of tears. I knew that I must marry him.

This was December of 2016, one month after we met, and we married in April 2017, for those tracking the timeline.

Sam and I moved from NYC back to Colorado at the end of 2020.

The pandemic really took the glitter out of my sails. Working as nurse through the worst of it at the epicenter of NYC took its toll on me and caused years of burnout that I feel like I’m just coming back from.

We decided to make the move back to Colorado to be closer to my family as we started our own, and for this I’m super grateful.

I now have two children, Maria, age 3, and Leo, 2.5. (Maria is almost 4, but I’m not ready to start rounding up yet. They’re 15 months apart, for my time-line-trackers)

They are walking miracles and it has been absolute blessing to have been able to step back from my nursing career to spend all of my time with them.

Oh! and we just took them to New York to see the Rockettes— something we hope to keep a regular Christmas tradition! You better believe I cried as soon as the curtains rose on this full circle moment. Maria now says she wants to be a Rockette when she gets bigger.

Out of habit, I still call myself a stay at home mom when people ask me what I do, because this is the bulk of how I spend my time, and my priority.

And I’m also an entrepreneur. Determined, no matter how long it takes in this slower season of my life, to lean into my vision to help other moms.

To share my wellness expertise and own personal experience in hopes that it lifts up other moms who are navigating the massive identity shift of departing from their old life, and figuring out who they are again amidst caring for tiny humans, becoming mothers. And to help them feel their best every day as they figure it out.

My mind goes blank whenever someone asks for a fun fact about me, because I have no fun facts, only wild stories.

See? That could have never been an Instagram caption.