my teeth in a tattoo parlor, but from giving someone life. I made people! Like with real organs and stuff. What has some dude made lately? A sandwich? And did it have a pulse?
Throughout the video I show off my stretch marks, hoping that anyone else who might be judging their body would find a little humor and encouragement in my silliness. When I finally finished battling iMovie (because anything technical always feels like a personal attack on my brain) and uploaded the stretch mark video onto YouTube, I felt excited in a way that I hadn’t felt since I’d launched Sticky Cook. It was great to be doing something creative again, and I knew that no matter how many people my video reached, I was putting something good out into the world, a message that was meant to help people and make them laugh.
Almost immediately after it went live, I started hearing from moms. Their positive feedback motivated me to make another video. And then another one. I was pulling all-nighters like I was back in college. I made every mistake you could possibly make (and a few that I’m pretty sure no one else has ever made) figuring out how to film myself and edit the videos. I’d have to reshoot things because the image was blurry or the volume was off or I’d left the lens cap on. Once, inexplicably, all the footage came out red like someone had bled all over the screen. More than once, after spending many hours editing, I accidentally deleted the project file and had to start all over from scratch. But as frustrating as the mechanics were, I was exhilarated by this creative outlet. Every time a parent commented that one of my videos made them laugh or encouraged them, I received a jolt of inspiration.
The fourth parenting video I made was snarky, aimed at shutting down any arguments against breastfeeding in public. I had to rerecord it four separate times because of technical issues (read: technical incompetence). A few days after posting it, I was trying to get some of Ari’s breakfast out of my hair when my phone started blowing up with texts from friends letting me know that Ashton Kutcher had shared my video on his Facebook page. I don’t know how he’d stumbled onto it, but he posted it on his social media pages and wrote, “Sometimes sarcasm is the best way to combat ignorance.” Suddenly, people were sharing the video all over the internet and it was quickly going viral. I remember Philip and me lying in bed late one night, refreshing the screen over and over again as the counter neared and finally reached a million views. A million views! People had watched something I’d made a MILLION times! That was probably more than the views on all the episodes of The Ambush Cook combined.
The next day, Philip took me out to a fancy restaurant. “This needs to be celebrated. You put yourself out there. You won this huge thing, and then when that didn’t work out, you had the courage to get back up and do it again your own way.”
My hobby turned into my career. I loved being in complete control of the content I was creating and not having anybody try to make me an expert or suggest I “tone it down a bit.” A lot of people seemed completely okay with me just being me. Finally.
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WHAT WE’RE TOLD about ourselves as children follows us into adulthood. As a little girl, I was told I was too talkative, too loud, too hyper, too impulsive, too candid, too, too, too, too . . . much. I asked too many questions, cried too much when I heard a sad story, felt too much enthusiasm about everything. And so I grew up and became an adult who was too much. Being told you’re too much can often leave you feeling like you’re not enough. Weird how that works, right?
What I tell my kids, through my words and actions, about who they are really matters. This is both scary and empowering. Even in those crazy mom moments when I find a part of their personalities or their quirks annoying, I need to be careful how I respond to them. I am one of the