Womanhood & Motherhood: Bridging the Gap | A Conversation with Shanicia Boswell
This week on the herb'neden podcast, Terran sits down with author, blogger, and wellness retreat leader, Shanicia Boswell, to discuss what it means to be a black woman postpartum.
All of this encompasses who we are as women and as mothers, and we need to be seen in all of it. - Shanicia Boswell
Terran
What's up guys? Welcome back to another herb'neden podcast episode. I'm your host, Terran Lewis, and today I have Shanicia Boswell with me. And I'm so excited to talk to Shanicia.
In the midst of running her global parenting company of over half a million women Black Moms Blog and retreat company, the Self-Care Retreats. Her bestselling book, Oh, Sis You're Pregnant!, was released as the number one new release in pregnancy and childbirth and in minority demographics that is on Amazon. Her passion and dedication has made her a sought out expert on parenting and self-love.
She also recently authored a book tailored to young girls called The Girl's Guide to Puberty... she's done a lot of amazing other things as well.
Shanicia
Hey, my name is Shanicia. I am a person who loves life. I don't like the introduction of like, this is what I do. A lot of what I do is who I am. A lot of my work is in motherhood and womanhood, because I think that there is a separation, and I'm always working to like bridge that gap.
And I'm sure you understand becoming a new mom. Like, what does it mean to still remember myself as a woman while being a mother? And so I am always on that path in that journey to try to figure that out. And that's what I do in my work. But me as a person, I am a mother. I'm an author.
I am a woman who believes in joy and happiness and realness, and, I'm happy to be here.
We are a space within an already marginalized space of motherhood that celebrates black motherhood. I have a black daughter. When she did her first year of school in kindergarten, she was the only black child in her classroom. Nobody could understand that except for another black mom. - Shanicia Boswell
Terran
Okay, so let's talk about Black Moms Blog, because to me, that's one of the ways that I know about you first and foremost. I don't even think that I knew that you ran Black Moms Blog at first. I think you said like over half a million women are there.
Shanicia
Which hits different now with social media than it used to back in the day. As you know, with the algorithm changing. But I started BMB, I think about ten years ago at this point, my daughter was turning two almost. So yeah, and I was a stay at home mom. And I just felt like everywhere I looked, especially back then, I didn't see us.
Now when you get online, you see it a lot more. So it's hard for people to understand that. But a decade ago we didn't exist. And even being here in Atlanta, I would take my daughter out on playdates and people thought I was her nanny because the only other black women that I saw in those spaces were nannies.
So I was looking for my own community at a time when my life wasn't cookie cutter. I didn't have the husband, the white picket fence, you know, I was with her father. We were not in a great place at the time. All of my friends were getting their master's degrees and traveling the world, and I was the first one in my friends group that had a baby.
And I don't think that we focused enough on the isolation that moms feel in that space. Your body is changing, you're changing, and it's like you're putting to rest this old version of yourself that you don't know anymore. And so I was in the space of needing community and that's always been one of my strengths, is building community.
And so I started the blog as a way to like, talk about my experience, like, oh, this is what this looks like. We live in this tiny one bedroom apartment. We're sharing a room with our daughter. We're trying to figure it out. I'm 24, 25 years old. My life is not perfect. And everywhere I looked online, everybody was kind of emulating this, like 1950s housewife.
Everything is clean. And I'm looking around. I got a Lego over here. I got a potty over here, I got bread crumbs. I'm like, what is, what is life? So that was kind of my start to Black Moms Blog was just meeting other women who look like me to tell me that this was okay and I wasn't crazy.
Terran
Wow. So that was I mean, you just pretty much saw the need. Like you said, there was this gap. And what I really heard there was, as far as representation, because I know that even with me, having herb'neden like, that's something that's been big to us to as far as, just showing people of color within our marketing, showing people of color using the products or showing the everyday, relatable content, because I think that we can all relate as being young black girls at one point that we didn't see that representation for ourselves, and especially, like you said, being a black mom.
I was so used to prior to, you know, I was married for ten years before having a baby, but I was like, my house was like clean to me, and it's still clean, but it's not the same type of clean.
Shanicia
It's not the look. As a black woman, you got to say, it's still clean. We know, but it's not the same.
Terran
We're seeing all of these things, all of this, marketing in general. But it's like, where is a space that we can go and feel like, you know, this is community.
Shanicia
Yeah, I like that you said centered and that used to be a big part of my tagline. We are a space within an already marginalized space of motherhood that celebrates black motherhood. I have a black daughter. When she did her first year of school in kindergarten, she was the only black child in her classroom. Nobody could understand that except for another black mom.
When I talk about hair care, nobody can understand that except for another black mom. Skincare, our skin is different. The oils that we need, all of these different things. Nobody understands that. But another black mom. Even down to our cultural relationship statuses with our men a lot of times can nobody else understand that except for a black mother, right?
We know how to code switch. We know how to step into a space and, you know, put on the the voice and do the things. But when it comes to our families, which a lot of our work is deeply involved with our family, our community, our children, how we raise them, that is culture.
And you can't you can't shake culture. So that was a space for that for me.
Terran
We needed that. And thank you. Thank you. First and foremost for creating that space.
There's no manual. You're going to create an every new mom does this. You create your list. I will never let my child watch an iPad. I will never forget my child. This. They're never going to drink juice. I'm never going to do this. That. And you're going to do all of it. And the quicker you accept that, it just becomes a little bit easier. - Shanicia Boswell
Shanicia
I tell women all the time do not "unique" yourself. And what I mean by that is when you unique yourself meaning you'll say things like, "I have everything I want, I can't complain because nobody is going to understand or my situation is so bad. I'm embarrassed, I can't complain, nobody will understand". You are unique-ing your situation to the point of isolation and there is no healing in isolation.
I rather you lay down on this floor, kick, scream, cry in a place where you feel safe and get it out of your body. And then I'm very solution oriented. Okay, what are the next steps. You want to cry for two weeks? Cool, I got you. I'm gonna sit there and I'll say nothing. I'm not going for any advice.
We're just gonna sit there. I'm going to get it out. But after this over, what do we do next? Like what are the next steps? And I feel that people kind of get stuck between you speaking their situation and feeling like they're stuck in their situation, then getting bogged down with excuses for how to fix it because everything's a choice.
It's always a choice. You can just choose to make a different choice. But I think that we as women, one thing that we do really well is community. We're nurturers. We'll get together and do the podcast, we'll read the articles, we'll go to the retreats, we'll go to the conferences, the meet ups. And we are always in that space of wanting to heal or at least appear to be healing.
But then when it comes to actually like sitting with ourselves and looking in the mirror and say, okay, so what do I need to fix here? That's where it can get difficult. So we can use the community to bring it into a space. So we learn how to self-reflect.
Terran
And be accountable. And I think even with the the message that is been shown up, everything that you need is inside of you already. So it's like you just getting together with that community, but also understanding that that power within you to be able to pull yourself out from whatever situation. Because I know that even, a lot of people everybody's talking about like postpartum depression right now.
I think I said something about postpartum to somebody and they said, oh, you're dealing with that too? But their postpartum is after you give birth, like everybody's in postpartum. Postpartum depression is being depressed within that state of postpartum.
Shanicia
And I want to I want to make a clear clarification here, because this is something that normally gets lost in the sauce. There's baby blues and there's postpartum depression. A lot of people go through postpartum depression and baby blues but don't know the difference between the two. So baby blues is kind of like that sadness that you have after having a baby.
And it can be confusing because you could have wanted to be here. You could have done all the things. You're like, I wanted this baby. Why do I feel so heavy? But you're able to pull yourself out of it, right? You're able to, you know, after a few months because you're putting to rest this other person that you used to be.
And then postpartum depression is debilitating. It's where you can't get out of bed. You're having thoughts of suicide. You don't want anybody around you. It can also be mirrored in not wanting anyone around your baby, like you have this extreme anxiety around someone helping you or hurting your child, even the father. And so I think especially in our community, we don't tend to know the signs because we were kind of raised with it.
Take, you know, eat some crackers, drink ginger, take a nap. and you're going to be okay. We don't believe in depression. We don't believe in needing help. But for a lot of women, especially black women, noting noticing the signs between the two, when you see, okay, I'm not eating, I feel the sinking feeling in my body. I want to die.
I think it's important to really say those things out loud so that anybody that is watching this, understanding that that is not something that you can just shake off. A little sunlight ain't gonna help that and you need more help and it's okay to go get that help.
Terran
Because for the baby blues, yes. Sunlight. And that's actually good to just, make that distinction, because I feel like postpartum depression is kind of the term that is becoming a little overused, similar to like narcissism or something. And everybody's thinking that everything is postpartum depression when sometimes it's like you said, it's debilitating, like you are down and now baby blues is like you said, just trying to find yourself again and find that that self-love after like giving birth to you.
Shanicia
And you can be extremely sad during baby blues, but that is why I had to say it. Because you're right. We have these terms now that we throw around like psychologists and doctors and everybody's this and everybody's like, oh, I have postpartum depression. And I'm not minimizing anybody's experience. But to really understand what it means to be clinically, you know, postpartum depressed is a real serious matter.
I thought that I would have the tears after childbirth. Like I would push out this baby and look at her and be like, oh my gosh, my baby.
That didn't happen for me. I came out of that and I felt like I was on fire, I was up, I was moving around. They were like, you need to sit your butt down. My tears didn't come. I was safe for like a month, and it was this very specific moment. I was sitting in the kitchen and she had woke up at like 1:00 in the morning.
Me and her dad were in there and I went to get her, and I looked at her and it was almost like I had this out-of-body experience, like I was a fly on the wall looking at myself. And I was like, I made a baby. Like, we made this child. And that's where my emotions hit. But also with that, there was a level of sadness because I felt like I was like, wow, I'm looking at my friends and they're doing all this travel.
They're still going to the club and partying. And I was 23 when I had my daughter. I was young. And so I was just like, I felt like this side of myself had died and nobody could understand it. And back then we're, you know, young kids are selfish. A lot of people are still selfish.
We don't know always how to check in with people. You just assume, hey, this person's good, you know, she's got this baby. She's in this relationship. And you, you're kind of forgotten about in a sense, like you are forgotten about. People don't really always know how to show up for you, and it's not because they don't love you.
They just don't know what to do. Especially when you're that young and even sometimes when you're older. And so you really end up looking at your life and you feel guilty because you're like, especially when you have all the things. You got the husband, the home, the the kid. You're like, I've done it. And you're like, why do I feel so sad about this?
What's wrong? And it's because there's still a separation between your motherhood and your womanhood. They're not one in the same, even though they're in the same family. You cannot forget one and only have the other.
So I felt like I was in this this new stage of adulting. And they say every seven years you go through a transition. So 35 is one of my seven years, right? So I'm going through this entirely new transition of womanhood. But where I feel like now, where I didn't have before, is a level of stability and self like, I know who I am. - Shanicia Boswell
Terran
How are you feeling 11 years later? Because I'm 11 months in and I'm feeling like I'm getting my footing more now. But I'm like, at 11 years later. Do you feel do you feel more stable?
Shanicia
I still feel like a little girl. I mean, I feel that every few years I rediscover another part of myself as a woman and as a mother. I learn a lot from my daughter through my mothering with my daughter. But just recently, I'm 35 years old. I have no problem saying that I love it, but around 33 to 34 I notice I was in this space of anger with my mother.
And it was almost like, you know, we hear so much about your 20s and you're in school and it's fun and you think by 30 you're supposed to have it figured out. And I realized that I was going through things that my mother wasn't healed enough to support me through. And I was big grown, middle age.
Right? Most people lived about 80. That 35 to 45 is our middle age ground. And I'm like, why am I so angry right now? And I realize I needed my mom at 34 years old, I needed her and she couldn't be there. Not because she didn't want to, but because for what I needed, I knew that she didn't have the capacity to be there for me, and I was upset about it.
So I felt like I was in this this new stage of adulting. And they say every seven years you go through a transition. So 35 is one of my seven years, right? So I'm going through this entirely new transition of womanhood. But where I feel like now, where I didn't have before, is a level of stability and self like, I know who I am.
I've known who I was for a long time, but I was battling outside thought. Am I too much? Am I not enough? And when you hit your 30s, there's this freedom that happens where you're like, this is me.
Terran
This is me. You're going to take me as I am.
Shanicia
And I'm okay with that. So I feel that the older I get, I'm way more grounded in myself than I was when I was younger. But I'm still learning about things I like and dislike. I'm still learning lessons through my mothering, through my relationships, through my work, through my anxiety. Like my daughter and I just went to go see Inside Out 2.
Terran
I need to go see that.
Shanicia
It was for 13 year olds and dealing with anxiety, but me as an adult, I was sitting in a theater with tears in my eyes and I asked my daughter, I'm like, what emotions do you feel like a ruling your motherboard right now, you know, is it anxiety in the driver's seat? But it was a question for myself, and I realized for a while I was leading in anxiety.
I was leading and worry of the future. What's next? Financially are we going to be okay? And that's hard not to do, especially when you have humans depending on you.
Terran
I think a lot of us are driving in anxiety and and living because I know, actually Quinton was just mentioning something about him dealing with anxiety and, and I told him, and it's and it could be easier to tell somebody something else versus telling yourself, but I'm like, well, you're just worried about the future.
But it really is like at that point in time, it really does feel like a real problem, a real obstacle for you. Like, how do I get over that? And, I think that so many people deal with anxiety and of course it leads to stress. And then it's leading to like diseases and it's just leaving, leading to like unstable thoughts as well.
So it's like you do have to find some way to like ground and find some way to like, have peace and just to always go back because I think, like you said, you mentioned the journey. And that's the beautiful thing about a journey. And a beautiful thing about healing is that it's not necessarily in a box. It doesn't have to look particular type of way.
It is really tailored to whatever you're going through right then and there and however, whatever method of confirmation might come for you. My dad said it yesterday. He said what is for you, is for you. That what's for you is for you. And that's the bottom line . What is for you is for you, is going to show up for you, is going to find his way to you, is going to keep on knocking at your door and calling you until you respond to it.
Shanicia
And you can't turn it off. That is a wonderful grounding. Listen, an affirmation, a mantra. You can't turn off what's for you. You can't embarrass it away. You can't anxiety it away. You can't run it off by saying something silly. And, as especially as women, I know you and your husband have been together a long time, but I'm sure you can remember in those early dating stages.
Oh my God, I said this. I'm being too much. I'm a running him away. Oh my God, I'm being too heavy. I'm gonna run him off. Right? And it just doesn't work that way, you know, like, and once you kind of get grounded in that knowledge that there's nothing you can do to scare off what's for you, so just show up and be yourself.
You have nothing to lose. One of my really close friends went through something very traumatic and in that she lost a relationship and she, I constantly heard her saying to herself, like beating herself up like, I know I was too much. I was focused on me. I wasn't giving into this person the way that I should have.
But in that space, that's that. For better or for worse, whether you're married or not. Like if you can't take me at my worst, if you can't take me when I'm going through that hard time, then it's just not supposed to be.
Terran
That's facts.
And even just even like me and Quentin, we have been together ten years, again prior to having a child. And I even tell some people that I know like that are just recently married or what have you, they talk a lot like how relationships can fall apart, like after having a child because of, you know, I think, again, it's the isolation on one side.
You feel like as a woman that you're dealing with this and you got all this, that you have to carry on. And on another side as a man, you're like, well, I got to provide and do this. And, you know, it's not.
Shanicia
Girl it's not even that deep all the time. Y'all got a screaming baby in the middle of when y'all used to be able to be freaky in the middle of the day.
Terran
Okay, let's just keep it real.
Shanicia
Surface and simple. You were going from, especially even if you have other children. A newborn is so demanding and your body is not the same. And he looking at you like I'm gonna hurt her. The baby's breast milk squirting all over the place. The sexiness is not there anymore. I know it's hard.
Terran
And then you're trying to find it. You're trying to get that sexy back in and you know, shout out to the to the guys who make their women or their spouses or make women feel beautiful after having a child, because you could just feel, you know, like you said, you just truly feel like who you look at yourself in the mirror and be like, who am I?
I know I cut my hair like after I had Eden, just because, like, my hair just was ugh to me.
It was like, yeah, I was like.
I don't know what to do with my hair. It's not like looking good. And I want it to to feel good. And even now, like 11 months later, trying on clothes and stuff, I was like, I realized that my body might have been a little bit more swollen after, you know, giving birth. But I guess when I looked in the mirror, I probably didn't necessarily see the swollen.
But then when I look back now, I'm like, oh, I was swollen. That's why my clothes weren't fitting like that. But it was like, okay, you did just like...
Shanicia
Have a baby. And I think that there is a social media is such an interesting place to me, because it's the one place you go to that tells you to accept your beauty. Don't compare yourself to others. You're fine the way you are. We say all the right things were so politically correct on the internet, but what you see in reality is the exact opposite.
We're in such a high state of anxiety is because all we live in is a comparative state. And when it comes to motherhood, you got women that are having babies and five days later they're online in a bathing suit. Like talking about their bounce back there, I forgot I don't even there snap back. I'm like, I hate it.
I don't even subscribe to that. And in my mind the whole time I'm like, are you still bleeding in your postpartum underwear right now? Lay down for 40 days. And so we're in this state where and this is what motherhood, this is in relationships. This is in business ownership. You can spend ten months cooking this child. And as soon as it pops out, people are like, what's next, right?
What do you what to do next? What's about to happen? So a lot of that anxiety happens from us not knowing how to actually rest, and black women? We're always talking about race and still don't know how to race. I'm like a big part of my life is resting. I will disappear, I will disappear, I will pop up over here and I'll do what I need to do, and then I will go and I will go be quiet.
And we don't know how to do that because we are so tethered to how we appear online, how we show up. What do people think about us? What's going to happen if I don't post?
Terran
I gotta be boss mode.
Shanicia
I gotta be boss mode.
When we when we did move out the country, I this was last year I took a break from Black Moms blog. I think I posted less than ten times that whole year, and I hadn't done that in a decade. But I was so overwhelmed and so exhausted. I walked away from a lot of money. I walked away from some amazing opportunities.
But the reality is, is that I was burnt out. I was done, and there wasn't too much further I could go if I didn't check in on my mental health. And I've seen women online and I've seen business owners just push, push, push, push, push. And they burnout and they end up in the hospital. They end up divorcing. They end up, having miscarriages. They end up mentally stressed out because they don't know how to take the actual risks that we're always preaching and actually doing it. We're really good at making it look like we're doing something, and in actuality, we're not really doing it. We're doing it for the camera. But what does that look like to turn around and actually do it for yourself?
We need permission to sleep, to be still. And as black women, when we're filling out of control, we get mad. We get our fear, makes us upset. We start not at everybody around us. I've seen it with the women I travel with when they don't know what's going on. Down to the second of the day, they start freaking out and I'm, that retreat host that will check you in love. - Shanicia Boswell
Terran
So how do you do this? How did you walk out and say, let me start retreats and let me hold space for other people? Like, how do you act on it?
Shanicia
I could give you the technical answer or I could just tell you the truth. I just did it. I don't know how else to say it. I had a friend that lived in Colombia. I went to go visit her with her kids, and I came, and at that time, I was I was in that precipice like that, that cross space of martyring for motherhood and getting out of it to rediscover who she she was.
I was going to the gym, growing braces. I was like, I'm about to get fine again. I'm a senior citizen. And I had started to travel and it really did something for me to make this jump. I'm this small town girl from Kathleen, Georgia. I didn't get on a flight. I was 18 years old and I had like done little things.
Like I did a study abroad in Egypt in college and but here I am with my six year old and a whole different country. And I'm like, yo, this feels amazing. I love this. And so I just got this idea. I was like, I'm going to start a company. Like, that's literally what happened. And I started doing some research and I just put it out there.
And I think aside from that story, there's a lesson in that, because I think most people think that they have to have their eyes completely dotted, their t's crossed. Everything has to be in this type of alignment for something to work out. And the best way that businesses like mine work, because it's hard work, it is built off.
A passion is built off of love. authenticity a lot of times is built off of connection. it don't have to be perfect, but it needs to hit the heart. And so at the time that I launched the retreat company, where my synergy was, and I think that's all the energy around you, everything was working in my favor for me to bring women into this space that felt like I did.
And I think at this point, we've done close to 23 retreats, and the women that join, they're always kind of looking at me like, oh my God, you've done this. And I'm like, no, you did this. Because we're both here in this space together. Our energies are aligned to where this is feeling the way it feels because you are open and you feel safe enough.
So I had to do the technical things, but I always knew that in creating retreat spaces, my energy is what is going to engulf that space. I have to create that safe container no matter where we are, whether we're on the beach, in the jungle, or we're in a villa in Tuscany, like I have to surround that space with love.
Terran
So what are some of the things that you do, on the retreat to help these women to connect with themselves and to just you know, ease their nervous system and to kind of go, not go over the anxiety, but to go through that and get to the other side. What are some of the things that you guys do?
Shanicia
I'm going to tell you a funny story really quick. So I always have battles with husbands because I don't know what y'all think we'd be doing on retreats.
All y'all going over there to party. Y'all going over there to meet men. Y'all going over there doing witchcraft. I have heard the gamut of things that people think that we're doing, and all we're doing is resting, laughing, crying, sitting in Sister Circle and having conversations.
Like a lot of our workshops, and I do two different types of retreats, I do workshop workshops, style retreats, and I do it venture like travel retreats. Right? So most of the retreats that you see we do in Colombia are self reflection retreats. I liken it to six months of therapy in five days. We are sitting in a circle, we are meditating, we are doing mirror work.
We're giving women a place to be seen and heard and yell sometimes. Think about your everyday life. What was the last time you had free space to like, scream real loud?
Terran
It's been a minute, but my baby screams real loud and sometimes I just scream with her. So we just scream it together like that.
Shanicia
Like being able to scream. Having somebody else cook for you. The location, the setting, the freedom. When we go to Colombia and we do those retreats, we take our shoes off at the bus. You don't put them back on till you leave. You're not around other people. Some of these women are so free they're walking around completely naked just because it's outside.
There's nothing sexual or romantic happening in that way at all. It's we provide freedom, honestly. It's just the freedom to just not put on makeup, not have to show up for anybody and just be free. That healing, in my experience, has been people have been in therapy for years, and they've never felt that and have went home and made some really pivotal, life changing, like changes in their life.
Now on the other end of that, we do a lot of retreats because not everybody needs that type of heavy, right? I don't need to sit and cry in a circle. I need to go climb the Tower of Pisa. I want to go see, you know, the giraffes in the safari. I want to go do that because that's healing as well.
And so there are many different mechanisms to heal yourself. And one thing I try to do on the retreats is just create that for what a woman needs during that time in a safe space with other women who look like her.
Terran
And that's exactly what we need. I mean, again, that's just healing. You are out here doing the healing.
So at what point we're almost done, but at what point did you. Because I was starting to see that you were doing, like, mommy and me retreats where moms can connect with their daughters and the daughters get to travel, and then they're also being exposed to healing spaces.
And actually, as I thought about, us getting ready to have our conversation the other day, I just thought about, like, me just growing up with my mom, and I think about my mom, like, buying me, Iyanla Vazant's Don't Give It Away. And different things like that. And I didn't start. I actually didn't even notice the impact until now.
Recently, like, she was buying me this stuff when I was Cam's age, when I was like ten, 11 years old. And I'm probably like. And I remember I still got my books. I was journaling in them and everything, but it really didn't. Like I said, it just sat with me years later. But I thank my mom for actually even just taking that time to create that space.
And that wasn't even something that, of course, me as a little girl, I didn't know, you didn't know what was going on, and I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know that I needed that, but like, my mom knew that I needed that. But of course, growing up, there were really no spaces that were facilitating that.
Shanicia
We started the Mommy and Me Retreat series three years ago, and I have been doing retreats at that point for about three years, and my daughter was like, where's my retreat?
Basically like and Cam and I travel quite a bit together, but, she was asking to kind of come into this space, and I believe that you can't know peace if you don't teach your children. And so a lot of things that we were doing in our own home life, from mere work to affirmations to breath work, I've seen a positive impact on that on my own child, when she's having an anxious state and we have to sit and just breathe together when she's having, you know, confidence issues, you know, we're in front of the mirror.
She's coming up with her own words of affirmation. And it's like you say, you think back to your own childhood and the things that you might have needed. I think about the fact that for a lot of us as adult women, we didn't learn self-worth, and some of us don't know self-worth until we were, you know, 30 years old, 40 years old.
You know, the ones that were looking might have learned it in their 20s, but you're still learning to get this confirmation affirmation from outside sources. And so, in my mind, I'm like a part of this trending word or this trending phrase of breaking generational curses. The reality is, it's this deep connection to healing the inner child. And if you're already a mother, there's a healing in your inner child when you heal your child.
Or you can't really prevent all the trauma because you're going to traumatize in some way, right? It skips a generation. You're super conservative. Your child wants to be out there. You're out there, your child wants to be home, right? It's always going to kind of skip over. But if you can create a safety space where your daughter can come to you and communicate with you and share with you, and a lot of time that takes us as mothers, being vulnerable with our children and looking at them and being like, when I was your age, this is what was going on when it comes to sex, when it comes to puberty, when it comes to our relationships with our mothers and so on.
The mommy and me retreat, keeping in mind that we're not just dealing with the adult women, we're also dealing with children. It can feel very light and then it can feel very heavy. I leave it up in some ways discretion of mothers, some of the topics. But we provide the space, we provide the capsule to where, whatever it is you need to communicate with your child.
I'm not going to sit in front of them and talk about sex if that's not where you are with your child, but we're going to provide the capsule for you to have those open and safe conversations with facilitators that are also there to support you through that.
Terran
Wow. Okay. Well that's good. Thank you for holding that space. And then so you turned that into essentially a book as well, a guide for moms to be able to give to their young girls as well. And recently you just hosted a Period Party.
Period parties, nursing parties. You just do everything as far as like just holding space for black women, for young black girls and just bridging that connection there as well. I think, even just listening, it seems like you just open up this space for black women to be able to even tap into their inner child, into their young womanhood as well.
Shanicia
Yeah, it's a lot of play. It's healing. The inner child is healing yourself. And we are still children. Looking at women frolic and have a good time is childlike. It's fun. It's you know, we do our photoshoot sessions and it's a space for women to just be free and, you know, decorate and adorn themselves and have a good time.
And so most of my business is deeply rooted in healing myself and healing my daughter and making sure she doesn't have these issues. So when it came to puberty, that was a huge part of it. And once again, when we talk about representation, we have the books and there were no little black girls being seen. There's a portion in that book that talks about the rites of passage, of sitting in between your mama legs on Saturday morning and getting your hair done.
That is something that is unique to the black experience. There's something about our bodies that's different. I think also remembering that these are children, right? Keeping it light enough for them to follow and understand, but also for it to hit home. And so the Girls Guide to Puberty is a book that, to me is like the rites of passage in the same way.
Oh, Sis, You're Pregnant! was a recipe passage for a lot of first time moms. This is for our girls, for us, by us. And it's still very, you know, scientific, but it's very relatable to the point where our little girls could look at this and be like, okay, I'm growing breasts. What do I do now? What does this mean?
I'm getting taller. My emotions feel like this. What does this mean? You know, my friend is white and she's got blond hair and it's straight. What does this mean about me and my looks? All of these things are issues that our girls have. And our children now are being raised by social media. So it's important to tap in with them and figure out what that is.
Terran
Well thank you for doing that. That's so important. like you said just getting them especially during that age where they become a little bit more influential, dealing with social media, but just reminding them of their self-worth and, even what you were mentioned about Rites of Passage.
Shanicia
All of this encompasses who we are as women and as mothers, and we need to be seen in all of it.
You can find Shanicia on Instagram @shaniciaboswell
Learn more about The Self Care Retreat
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Purchase Oh, Sis You're Pregnant! on Amazon
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