Before the 200,000+ followers, before the viral videos, and before anyone told her she was doing something worth watching, Jessi Meeks was just trying to survive. She had three little kids, a house that looked like a house, and a scrolling feed full of perfectly matched outfits, Pottery Barn playrooms, and activities that required a glue gun and a color-coded bin system.
"I just wanted to bring the realness back," Jessi says. "If you see a picture of my house, I'm not cleaning up the background. You're going to see it exactly as it is."
That honesty landed. A couple of videos went viral, and the Cherokee County mom, a former Mill Creek Middle School science teacher who raised her kids in the shadows of the North Georgia mountains, found herself at the center of a community of mothers who were, for the first time in years, desperately exhaling. Today her Instagram bio says it all: life with three kids is part survival, part sitcom. Her mission is to lower the motherhood bar so parenting can be fun again.
Q: What inspired you to start sharing your motherhood journey online?
A: It just kind of started as something fun. Then it took a couple of viral videos to become an actual job. Once I started making content, I had to find my angle, what I wanted to be known for. At the time, I noticed everything was so perfectly curated. Every kid was matching, and the rooms looked like they were from Pottery Barn. It just didn't feel real. I wanted to bring the realness back, like, you're going to see my house exactly as it is. My kids probably won't match because they dress themselves. An "activity" at our house is me handing them a bowl of rice and calling it a sensory bin.
Q: What advice would you give a busy mom trying to keep joy at the center of family life?
A: Lower the bar. Peel away everything that doesn't matter, like matching outfits or elaborate activities. All the stuff that just takes up brain space. What you're left with is the stuff that actually does matter: the fun parts of motherhood, just spending time with your kids, whether their clothes match or not. If you forget shoes, oh well. I've done that many times. We get somewhere and I'm like, okay, why don't you have shoes on?
"Peel away all the things that don't matter. What you're left with is the stuff that actually does."
Q: What would you tell a brand-new mom who's overwhelmed right out of the gate?
A: When you're a brand-new mom, you stress about so many things: germs, making sure the diaper bag is fully packed, the car is locked and loaded. There's a joke that by the third kid, sometimes they have clothes on and sometimes they don't. As a baby, you've got nothing (for them) in the diaper bag and you're handing them a spoon at a restaurant to play with. We can take that attitude and apply it to a first kid. So many moms would truly enjoy those baby months so much more without all the added stress.
Q: How do you personally manage being a screen-time influencer while keeping your own kids off devices?
A: It is a very hard thing to balance. I use the Brick app to lock myself out of my phone. During the school year, I do the majority of my content work while they're at school, so I'm not setting a terrible example. My kids don't have any devices yet, and they're just now getting to that age where they're like, well, you're on your phone. Teaching that to a seven-year-old is very, very hard. Modern motherhood as an influencer is definitely still something I'm figuring out every single day.
You can follow Jessi's real, unfiltered life with her three kids, her husband, Tyler, and the world's most mischievous black lab on Instagram.
Follow Jessi @jessimeeks — people already know the bar is right where it belongs.