In 2017, pregnant and gallery hopping through Chelsea, Elise Peterson asked herself a question that would reshape the next six years of her life: Would she still be someone worth hanging out with once she became a mother?
Peterson was an artist and writer in New York City. Her entire existence had revolved around her own creative pursuits. She was terrified that motherhood would erase that person entirely. So she did what made sense at the time: she started talking to women she admired about how they'd navigated the same fear. Those conversations were transformative enough that by 2018, Peterson launched a podcast called Cool Moms, born from uncertainty and a desperate need to know she'd be okay, and that her son would be okay too.
What started as audio storytelling evolved into something bigger. The podcast became a live talk show, then a cultural moment. After every event, her DMs flooded with messages: This got me through postpartum. This felt like a real friend. People were hungry for something genuine, something that acknowledged the messy reality of motherhood rather than its Instagram version.
But Peterson wasn't showing the full picture online. While she posted about Erewhon runs, she was paying for them with an EBT card. She was navigating single motherhood without collapsing into tired stereotypes. She was watching financially stable, partnered mothers struggle in identical ways, all of them suffering in silence. The shame of it all was relentless. The more honest she became about what she actually needed to survive and thrive, the more she realized her story wasn't unique at all.
That realization led to a partnership with Sarah Kim, someone who'd been building community the same way Peterson had: not for views, but for real impact. Together they imagined something radical: a retreat where mothers could spend an entire weekend being held in all the ways they actually needed, not just the polished two-hour event version.
The inaugural Cool Moms Feelings and Finance Retreat took place in May at the Ace Hotel and Swim Club in Palm Springs. Twenty mothers showed up to explore everything from tarot to tax strategy, gut health to investment accounts, spiritual liberation to credit card debt. Emily Benedetto from Abacus Wealth led sessions that became equal parts financial workshop and group therapy. One mother finally paid off a credit card she'd been avoiding since 2020. Another left a tarot reading with tears streaming down her face, having found something that looked like relief.
Author Ericka Hart joined a Cool Moms Live conversation about sexual liberation and raising children in a queer world. Anabel Gonzalez of Good Bacteria shared her own postpartum healing journey. Perfumer Mar Boswell led a scent session where each woman chose the smell she wanted to carry home, and everyone treated it with the seriousness it deserved.
But Saturday night became the thing Peterson keeps thinking about. The mothers had plans to go out. Instead they wandered into the hotel bar and simply never left. A DJ showed up. Lights came on. Twenty women took over the lounge completely, sloshing margaritas, dancing to Britney Spears and Whitney Houston, piling into a photo booth, playing musical chairs like they were twelve years old with nowhere to be. Nobody planned it. It was flawless.
Peterson also spent that Mother's Day weekend with her own mother. Between the workshops and late nights, they had a conversation they'd never quite managed before: about money, about fear, about what she hopes to leave her children. For the first time, they saw each other not just as mother and daughter but as two women who had both been quietly doing it alone for a very long time.
The work ahead is far from finished. That weekend only scratched the surface. The real work, the sustained and unglamorous work of becoming emotionally and financially free, is what comes next. That's what Cool Moms has always been building toward.
Looking back at her 29-year-old self on those Chelsea streets in her mother's Stan Smiths, terrified of losing herself to motherhood, Peterson feels tenderness toward that version of her. Her 37-year-old self is still figuring it out. The difference is she's doing it without fear, and she's not doing it alone. And that, she knows now, is what cool actually means. Not the aesthetic, not the performance, not the illusion of effortlessness. Cool is what's left when you put all of that down. When you're free.
Author Jessica Williams: "The retreat shows what Peterson figured out early: the real revolution isn't performing the perfect version of motherhood, it's admitting you're terrified and finding fifty other women just as scared."
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