After her first baby, Rachel Selman discovered something infuriating: there was no roadmap for getting back to being herself physically. Six weeks of rest, then you're "cleared"? Her body had other plans.

So she became a pelvic health specialist and wrote the current US guidelines for return to activity postpartum. Yeah, you read that right.

After losing her daughter Maddy to cancer at just 14 months old, Philadelphia mom Jackie Didio channeled her grief into purpose. One month after Maddy's passing, she founded the Madelyn James Pediatric Cancer Foundation: an organization providing deep, wrap-around financial and emotional support specifically to families with babies facing cancer.

Riley, a Winston-Salem–based mom of two (ages almost 4 and almost 6), is the co-owner of The Mom League, a community-driven space helping new moms feel less alone in the wild, wonderful, and very loud postpartum chapter.

With a 19-month-old running laps around the house and another baby due in February, Emma runs Self-Employed Solutions, a bookkeeping and payroll service that's equal parts financial lifeline and sanity-saver for small business owners across Charlotte. But this isn't your typical  bookkeeping firm with mahogany desks and judgment. This is bookkeeping that actually gets it.

Through Bash Custom Piñatas, Bridgett creates one-of-a-kind designs based on customer visions—characters, logos, themes—that level up any celebration from "meh" to "wait, can we NOT break that?"

When I launched Half Full during my maternity leave with my second daughter, Sloane, I didn't have a grand business plan or a perfectly mapped content calendar. What I had was a deep, bone-level need for something I couldn't find: a community of women who understood.

Meet Jasmine Nieto—a Durham mom who went from classroom teacher to children's author while navigating an unexpectedly chaotic first few months of motherhood. Between an emergency C-section, a NICU stay, and contracting hand, foot, and mouth disease right as her debut book launched, Jasmine somehow managed to write a second book (which just dropped!) while building her board game enrichment business and keeping her five-month-old son, Paolo, thriving.

Meet Lindsay Sheldon, the artist behind The Paper Darlings, a DC-based mom of three who's turning feelings into art you can hold, see, and keep forever. Her mixed media illustrations capture the invisible threads between mother and child and honor the people, places, and pets our hearts never forget.

Erica Witek always pictured herself as a mom plus career woman in healthcare, but that all went out the window as soon as she had her son.

This story is about my incredible mother. It still doesn’t feel right that this is her story, but here we are. Watching her strength and resilience in the face of adversity over the last year and a half has been humbling, to say the least. 

Kerri Flanigan is a Charlotte-based wellness coach, yoga/fitness instructor, and retreat host helping women rediscover their strength and joy through mindful movement and community. 

Charlotte mom Allie DaDabbo is proof that motherhood can spark creativity instead of silencing it. After having her son, Miles, she turned her natural “eye for content” into The Content Friend — a wedding and event content creation business that helps couples relive every candid, behind-the-scenes moment without ever missing the fun.