For Elizabeth Hubley, motherhood is a full-time job. In addition to raising her own children, she’s also the director of the Mama Love Collective, which offers support groups and social events for new mothers.
Hubley started out as a prenatal yoga instructor and initially created the collective as a six-week program so her students could connect with each other after they’d had their babies.
It’s been nine years since then, and not only is the collective still active, but running it is Hubley’s career. She works with a team of other mothers to organize and host “circles” focusing on a variety of topics, including prenatal and postpartum care, single motherhood, raising neurodiverse children and more.
Hubley lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband, Sky Brandt, and two children, Caroline (9) and Aiden (6).
How did you start the Mama Love Collective?
After I had my daughter in 2015, I was teaching a prenatal yoga class. I had to teach this whole class about birth and postpartum and what it’s like to actually have children. Before you have kids, you don’t really know what it’s like, so I was sharing my journey as a parent with them.
My work at the time was mostly teaching yoga. One of my students came up to me after class and told me that she was pregnant but had no friends—but wanted to make some connections. She loved the class but felt awkward going up to other people there and trying to bond over both being pregnant. She asked if I could help set up a group for them after they had their babies, and I agreed to do a six-week session.
I brought my daughter, who was 6 months old at the time, and it was amazing. And it just kept going. We actually met for two years, because many of us worked part-time or from home.
It really started on a whim, and I brought a lot of my background in maternal mental health coaching and yoga coaching into it. It’s been almost nine years, and now the bulk of my work is teaching baby yoga and circle yoga classes.
What are your responsibilities as the collective’s director?
I do all of our scheduling, so I work with our facilitators to coordinate what people want to offer and what the community is interested in. We have different therapists who work with us in these circles. We have art therapists, doulas, acupuncturists; and a lot of what I do is background-checking them and scheduling for them to come in. I lead many of the circles as well. And I take care of all the business-[oriented] stuff, like accounting and marketing.
Is there anything that sets Mama Love Collective apart from other maternity groups?
I think one thing that’s great is we can offer things that are many different areas of expertise. We have a group for single moms that’s run by a single mom, [and] the pregnancy circle is run by a doula who is in the pregnancy world, as opposed to someone who just has one area of expertise. All the therapy workshops are incredible. I’m not a therapist. And being able to provide the community of people that we’re working with lots of different options has been really wonderful.
How has being involved with Mama Love Collective affected your parenting style?
We’re basically all small business owners who are working together. A lot of us don’t have regular, full-time employment, but we support each other as parents, as humans and through groups where we share resources. We have one group where we talk about cultural conditioning and being a parent in society and an advocate and all that, and facilitating that conversation reminds me of the work that I’m doing with my kids. Even just hearing how other participants are parenting and their strategies is incredibly helpful.
What do you want your children to learn from you?
One thing we talked about a lot in our groups and collective is that there’s not one right way to be and one way to be a kid, or be a parent or be a mother. I think it’s letting my kids kind of explore lots of different things they want to do and not making them feel like they have to follow a certain path.
Family Favorites
Meal: We do this thing we call “fancy sandwiches,” where we get a baguette and a ton of different toppings, so everyone can make whatever they want.
TV Show: “Is It Cake?”
Local Spot: White Oak Bowling Lanes
Vacation Spot: Colorado, to go river rafting
Activity: Hiking, family dance parties
