Once upon a time I had a baby. None of my close friends had babies. They were all in that phase of life where you are thinking about getting a dog but not sure if that is Just Too Much.

I loved that baby more than I knew possible. But with motherhood came a host of mixed feelings—exhaustion, terror, numbness and something akin to buyer’s remorse. Those feelings I kept inside and they threatened to topple me.

I found a group of women all with babies the same ages and we began sharing—the good, the bad, the ugly. It was those honest stories that saved me. Suddenly all of my mixed feelings lost their dynamite. It was all just part of the deal. Hard stuff became funny. Messy emotions were normal. Motherhood was something complex and that somehow made it simple.

I wanted to celebrate those women and thus Mother’s Day Eve® was born—a party just for moms on the night before Mother’s Day. The first year 45 women came together. By year three there were 450.

I was onto something—these women needed each other’s stories. Mamalode was born.

Mamalode started as a free, local print magazine in 2009—which is probably the worst business model at the worst time ever. Our unlikely success has come from our readers—they mailed magazines all over the world to friends or moms or sisters and then those women also wanted Mamalode. Within a year of starting a subscription program we had subscribers in all 50 states and 10 other countries.

Now Mother’s Day Eve® is a trademarked event that was celebrated in 59 communities in 2014 (you can license it too)! Mamalode is read worldwide. Our website has over 2000 stories from over 500 writers—moms, dads, kids, New York Times Bestsellers, huge bloggers and a merry batch of first time writers. We have 20 print issues and a special anthology just for dads (Dadalode).

We don’t have staff writers—our stories come from readers. Their stories are the heartbeat of motherhood. Our story is really a fairytale come true—a little magazine that has chugged along the track laid out by our audience. They believe, so we do.

Watch out world, this little magazine has big plans!

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About the Author

Elke

Elke Govertsen is a entrepreneur and founder of Mamalode. She has been featured in Real Simple, Forbes, Where Women Create, Ad Tech, and listed as one of Origin Magazine's "Top 100 Creatives." She has been a speaker at The Girls Lounge, Adweek, C2Montreal, HATCH, TEDx and (her favorite) in classrooms. She speaks on a variety of topics from entrepreneurship to overcoming obstacles. She loves consulting in the areas of community design, storytelling and brand building. Her special skills include extreme bootstrapping, overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities. Of the many things she has learned by doing Mamalode, her ability to work with absolute chaos/kids/mess just might be the best. She is learning that slowing down creates more impact.