I spent my early years in Greenwich Village and Chelsea. My parents rented a bare loft on 14th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues for $300 a month. My father built out rooms and made me a loft bedroom with a window that looked down onto the living room where a trapeze hung from the ceiling. There was a double backyard that we accessed by climbing out our window where we played baseball and Frisbee. This apartment was one of the loves of my life. It's the last place my parents lived together and it's the last place I lived as a child and felt like things would be okay.

When we lived in that apartment, my mother was the best mom in the world. She was the mom who made the rag rug for our coop nursery school that we all sat on for circle time. She was the mom who invited all the kids over to our house to make crafts or hired a theater student from NYU to teach a kids' drama class since none were offered. She sang as we walked down the sunny side of the street, turning 1970s NYC into a beautiful and peaceful place. She played her trumpet along with Louis Armstrong in the living room, and taught me and my sister how to do the Charleston in the kitchen.

There are many reasons why it all ended, but it doesn't really matter. We got kicked out of that apartment because we didn't have enough money to stay there and my mom moved us in with her boyfriend. She stopped doing crafts and hiring teachers and singing jazz. Instead, we started going to esoteric avant-garde music performances in Soho. We stayed up all night at the New Wilderness Foundation's Summer Solstice Celebration in Riverside Park and sat in on rehearsals of the Ocarina Orchestra. Kid-centric parenting ended and we were jettisoned into a world of strange adults and alien encounters.

Mothering is a crazy thing because we think of it as the act of nurturing our children. But even if we stop actively caring for our kids, we are still mothering them and these non-acts may have just as much impact on them, if not more. When my mother stopped coming home for dinner, I learned to become resourceful, independent and brave. When playdates were swapped for arts encounters, I learned to stretch myself in new ways. (I still believe that hours of boredom is a very powerful force for creativity.) And I don't think it was an accident. My mom believes self-reliance is incredibly important and she believed that we could handle ourselves, even as children.

I am so incredibly grateful that I had those early years when my mother was totally present and showed me how to be a super-cool, community-centric, nurturing mom. But I also know that the end of all that brought another huge opportunity for me. As my mother pulled back, she also pulled back a curtain and showed me a big, big world with so many different people doing cool stuff around every corner.

My mother taught me to be fiercely independent, incredibly hardworking and always in search of cool things. She also taught me to be nurturing, community-minded and all about my kids. She is the original Mommy Poppins and the inspiration for this site. She may not be practically perfect in every way but I always felt loved, and know that the gifts she gave me helped make me who I am. Her belief in and love for me turned what might have been a stunting situation into one where I could grow. I believe a mother's love makes all the difference.

Mommy Poppins is much bigger than just me now. We have many moms who share their passion for parenting, seeking out exceptional experiences with their kids and curating those experiences for other families. I hope that we help other families discover all of the amazing things to do that open up the world for their kids to see the creativity, curiosity and cool culture all around them.

Aren't we all Mommy Poppins? Maybe not practically perfect, but giving our children the best that we have and helping them explore the larger world?

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms from all us moms. Thank you for being part of our community.