Founder of a nearly decade-old wellness practice and a radical self-care ritualista, Latham Thomas is the epitome of her namesake Glow Maven.
Her doula and lifestyle expertise have allowed her to be the go-to guru to celebrity clients like Rebecca Minkoff, Tamera Mowry, and Venus and Serena Williams. She and her services acted as a vessel of empowerment for Grammy-award-winning recording artist Alicia Keys who cited her as the woman who helped her remind her of her power and glory as a woman cultivating and bringing life into the world. She breathes life into women in an effort to help them rise from the ashes of their former selves and into the divinity of their best selves. If you haven't heard her name before, you better get familiar.
Latham Thomas is the name behind the brand Mama Glow, a lifestyle brand and website that acts as a resource for new and expectant mamas looking to lead a healthy and holistic life. MamaGlow.com is a source that mamas can use in order to be inspired, educated, and partake in holistic services.
The Columbia University graduate is the best-selling author of Mama Glow: A Hip Guide to Your Fabulous Abundant Pregnancy, a wellness guide for expecting mothers that teaches women the ins and outs of self-care principles – the biggest of which is the act of mamas taking the time to “mother themselves first". Admittedly, I'm not in the market for a doula, but Thomas in all of her doula dopeness glory appeared on my radar this past summer as she and Angela Simmons gave #glowtips throughout her pregnancy.
What resonated with me the most about Thomas, her mission, and her aura is that she can speak to all women and give us guidance in our lives on our spiritual, wellness, and physical journeys. She is devoted to appreciating the magic of the mundane things in life and practicing mindfulness. Thomas is a powerhouse of positivity that every woman deserves to be put on to. And now she is a best-selling author of a new book: Own Your Glow: A Soulful Guide to Luminous Living and Crowning the Queen Within.
We all deserve to grow and glow.
Read on and get inspired by her journey as an entrepreneur, becoming a soulful doula, becoming a mama herself, and birthing her Mama Glow brand to help keep all mothers out there glo'd up.
What sparked your interest in becoming a doula and yoga teacher?
I was led to doula care. It chose me. I was already working with many expectant mothers in my last practice, we offered nutrition, culinary support, yoga privates, and classes. Clients started asking me to attend their births because they wanted my nurturing touch to extend beyond the yoga mat into the delivery room. I had a Vedic astrology reading where the guru told me “You're supposed to mother the mother." I knew exactly what he meant—I needed to take the practice to the next level and become a doula.
I started practicing yoga in college and shortly thereafter completed my 200-hour teacher training.
When I was pregnant with my son I would attend regular yoga classes and found them to be too restorative. I wanted to develop a prenatal practice that would challenge women as they prepared their bodies and minds for the demands of labor and motherhood. So Mama Glow Yoga was born.
How does yoga play an integral part of the pregnancy journey?
A dynamic prenatal yoga practice will support your health and well-being throughout pregnancy—as well as prepare you mentally, emotionally, and physically for childbirth by building strength and flexibility in the body, a sense of well-being, and relaxing the mind. And perhaps most importantly, it helps keep you comfortable. It helps to increase blood flow and alleviates some of the discomforts associated with pregnancy.
When I was pregnant with my son, my yoga practice was my saving grace. I developed my own prenatal practice that made me feel strong and capable. I learned how to tune in to what was happening in my body and ease my mind through meditation and deep breathing. Yoga also informed my birth ritual from beginning to end. I was able to relax into my breathing techniques at the onset of contractions, and I visualized the baby moving farther down the birth canal during each contraction. I knew that every sensation was taking me closer to bringing the baby into the world.
"Birth is our rite of passage, and Mama Glow is our birthright."
What prompted you to start Mama Glow? How did you grow your following?
When I was pregnant with my son, who is now 13 years old, I noticed there was such a gap between the client and the practitioners. It was hard to find grounded, credible yet affirming information and people who would support me in the birth I dreamed of. I saw a need to celebrate the experience of pregnancy and motherhood, to elevate birth. I've been inspired since the day I gave birth to my son Fulano. Mama Glow, maternal wellness, and wellbeing isn't an interest, it's a lifestyle, a rubric to live by. I committed myself to growing a brand that served a larger purpose—to transform the way women perceive their bodies, to help women reclaim their bodies as sacred and give birth in an empowered way on their own terms. When my baby was sleeping, I would dream up ideas, write, and work on what would become Mama Glow. What started off as meet-ups in my living room and a film festival turned into a booming practice. I grew the following organically by just spreading inspiration and love, giving a peek into my world.
Our brand mantra is: “Mama Glow" is an abundant, radiant energy that comes from within. Birth is our rite of passage, and Mama Glow is our birthright—to walk in grace, power, and wisdom, to have understanding, reverence, and trust in our bodies. The act of standing in your power ignites a force within that glows from the inside out. It's a personal style that reflects confidence, beauty, radiance, and balance.
"The act of standing in your power ignites a force within that glows from the inside out."
Can you speak to the importance of minding what you put both on and in your body pre- and post-pregnancy?
It's just as important to mind what you put on your body as what you put in your body during pregnancy and postpartum. Pregnancy is the perfect time to mix it up with your beauty regimen. Pregnant clients often ask me what beauty products they should be using to cut down on their chemical exposure. What passes through your skin can potentially pass through the blood-placental barrier to your baby, so it's worth cleansing your vanity cabinet and stocking up on high-quality products. If you are intending to get pregnant, this is an essential part of the process that so many women overlook. There are countless brands out there loaded with chemicals that aren't so great for you, and certainly not good for your baby. Remember your skin is your largest organ, so you want to clean your beauty routine.
Pregnancy is a delicate process that is driven by the hormone estrogen. Common self-care and beauty products contain ingredients that disrupt the hormones and can contribute to health problems long term. We have a non-toxic pregnancy guide that you can consult to make better choices during pregnancy and with your newborn.
What's the connection between spiritual and physical wellness during pregnancies?
Your spiritual well-being is directly correlated to your physical well-being. If we are not well in body and mind, we can not be spiritually fulfilled and vice versa. Developing a spiritual practice during pregnancy is a great way to honor the sacred process underway and it helps provide fortitude for what's to come.
Does yoga during pregnancy help with postpartum depression?
Prenatal yoga helps to restore peace of mind and the meditative breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which controls our stress response sending happy hormones into our bloodstream- helping to boost our mood. It can be a great tool to help mothers battling with postpartum depression. Yoga is about union, about connection, slowing down, tuning inward and choosing to engage with yourself on the deepest level, listening to your needs, and using the movement as expression.
Yoga allows us to find peace and calm when we can't calm our newborn or we're running late for a meeting. When you align your body, mind, and inner spirit above all else, you not only set the tone for your day, but your personal practice can help you support others in your life.
Featured image by Earl Gibson III/Getty Images
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Skylar sees things differently. At the time, she was shooting content on her iPhone. Temi came into the picture with a new perspective, an understanding of tech, and, eventually, a camera. “He doesn't give himself enough credit,” Skylar says. “He wasn't just my tripod. He wasn't just standing behind the camera and going ‘click.’ He was giving advice. He was giving me insight to how I could look at things from a different perspective. And I was like, 'Oh, he’s an artist.' I think it was maybe a heartbeat of that kind of energy of like, ‘Baby, can you take this picture?’ And it turned so quickly into, we're partners. We can work together in a way where we're advancing each other's creative thinking.”
The pair often says they’re two sides of the same coin. Skylar is an Aquarius. She attended art school, paints, and loves poetry. She’s more than happy to let the couple’s management firm and agency, Kensington Grey, handle their admin work. And, she loves to sleep in. Temi, on the other hand, wakes up early. He’s a Virgo. He loves a to-do list and regularly checks in on the couple’s brand partnerships spreadsheet to make sure everything is on track.
Because his storytelling was steeped in his love of technology, he didn’t always think of himself as a creative person. “Where I [am] the dreamer who wants to pluck things out of the sky and spend all day with my head in the clouds, Temi [is] so good at grounding me and helping me figure out how to make things make sense on paper. We just work together in such a complimentary way,” Skylar says.
It’s been more than six years since Brooklyn-based couple Temi and Skylar started dating, and nearly four since they cemented their working relationship. On TikTok and Instagram, the couple’s travel, fashion, and home content regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. They’ve worked with brands such as Coach, Aesop, Away, and Liquid IV, bringing their vibrant perspectives to every campaign they execute. Still, nearly two years since both Temi and Skylar committed to full-time content creation and creative directing, the couple says their romantic connection remains their priority.
“We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting,” Skylar says.
Working from home can make it hard to separate work from personal life for any entrepreneur. It can be even more challenging when your business partner is also your lover. Temi and Skylar had already used couples therapy as a tool to help them effectively communicate with one another. When they ran into challenges while working together, their therapist helped them set physical boundaries to help combat the issues.
"We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting."
“It actually took us doing very specific physical things to create boundaries between work and play in our relationship,” Skylar says. “So, for instance, we will only have conversations about work when we're out of bed or we're at the table or in the office. Initially, when we started, we had to light a candle to say that, 'Okay, this is a space where we're connecting, we’re not talking about work.' We needed really hard boundaries at the top. And then it became a little bit more organic.”
The boundaries have been crucial to implement, especially because the couple began working together so naturally. When the pair first met, Skylar was NY-based a social strategist for BuzzFeed and was using content creation to drive business to her lingerie company. She was shooting her own content. Temi was working for Microsoft in D.C. He’d recently traded in his DJing equipment for a camera. “I've always loved taking pictures,” he says. “Even when I was a kid, my African mother would wake me up at 3:00 a.m. [during a] party, and be like, 'Come take the family picture.'”
Growing up, Temi says he watched his parents support each other and be the true definition of partners. He knew he wanted the same for his own relationship. But, the couple also wanted to make sure they were being financially responsible. The pair didn’t quit their traditional jobs until they’d saved up two years' worth of their cost of living. And, Temi received his Master of Business Administration from New York University with the knowledge that it could either help him advance in his corporate career or be applicable to his business with Skylar.
Temi and SkylarCj Hart @hartbreakToday, they say their working relationship is more of a “quiet dance.” They still implement some of the boundaries they learned in therapy, but they also lean into their natural strengths and deep love for one another. When we speak, Temi has planned a date for the couple to see Princess Mononoke in 4K IMAX and added it to their Notion so they can factor it into their busy schedules. “I fully plan to date for the rest of my life,” he says.
Skylar says the couple doesn’t just wait for date nights to check in with one another, though. This often happens in the mornings, after Temi has made her peppermint tea and poured himself a cup of coffee. When they ask each other how they slept, she says, it’s not just a “nicety.” It’s a genuine question meant to foster connection.
“A lot of it happens during the day in the midst of work. We'll stop and we'll hug. Or we’ll slow dance in the kitchen,” she says. “Sometimes it's hard to set a whole date night when you have 7,000 things going on. So, we must grasp these moments and check in when we can. And I think it's become so organic to us that I actually didn't even realize how often we do it. But all day long, we're like, 'Are you good? I felt like your energy shifted,' because we're best friends, we just know. We just feel it happen.”
What’s better than being in love? Building wealth while doing it. Watch Making Cents here for real stories of couples who make money moves together.
Featured image by Cj Hart @hartbreak