When “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Bozoma Saint John arrived home recently after a busy travel week that took her to four cities in seven days, there was a bottle of champagne waiting for her. It had been sent by a girlfriend.
She hadn’t won an award. There wasn’t anything in particular to celebrate per se, but it was a “just because” gesture, a reminder to engage in some self-care after all she had been balancing. With both her growing success as a marketing executive and entrepreneur and her expanding public persona on “RHOBH,” she’s at a point where she has real agency.
“I think that women right now sometimes feel like you can only have a few titles, and I’m like, ‘No,’ we can have every title we want.”
This, she admits, doesn’t happen on its own for a working mother.
The 49-year-old reality TV star sat down with theGrio ahead of Mother’s Day to discuss her motherhood journey, how she’s arrived at this point in her life and career, and how she hopes to be celebrated this year.
While Saint John, who is mom to a 17-year-old daughter, Lael, whom she shares with her late husband, is very successful in her own right, she has gotten there and maintained her momentum through her village. It’s a group she has cultivated over the years, people she can call on in need and in joy, and who know when a bottle of champagne arriving is exactly what she needs.
“The group chat is the most important platform that there is,” she said. “Being able to have community with people who understand you deeply, who are in your corner regardless of what is happening outside, who you’re able to be honest with, is the real game changer.”
Saint John said she’s in several different group chats, including one with other moms where she can seek advice, be honest about her hopes, dreams, fears, and frustrations, and ask for help.
“I can drop in there and be like, ‘Hey, somebody send me something on DoorDash.’ You know what I mean? Like, I need some dinner,” she explained.
Another group chat, filled with friends dating back more than three decades, is where she turns for reality checks from people who have seen every version of her through the years.
“[The chat] allows me to be my freest and most full self and also get the affirmation, the support I need,” she said.
Still, Saint John acknowledges how hard it can be to cultivate this kind of network. She recalled being widowed when her daughter was just four years old while working for Pepsi-Cola as head of entertainment and music marketing, and how difficult it was to build friendships with other moms in her daughter’s orbit.
“I didn’t have enough time, if I’m being totally transparent, which makes me emotional,” she admitted. “I didn’t have enough time to connect with these other moms. They were going to coffees and brunch, and I was like, ‘Shoot, I got to get to work.’ So I didn’t have the time to make those friends. So it required extra work from me to choose the few.”
The village, she said, doesn’t have to be massive; it can be as intimate as two or three people you can depend on when it counts. Finding them required “extra work” and vulnerability, including being willing to admit when she needed help, like asking during school bake sales if someone could pick up an extra box of brownie mix.
“Accepting help is a very, very tough thing for highly ambitious women, especially highly ambitious Black women, because we are not supposed to ask for help. We’re not supposed to not be able to do it,” she confessed.
The village, the marketing executive, whose resume includes Apple Music, Netflix, and even Spike Lee productions, said, isn’t just about support. It’s there for the wins, too.
“It’s very important for us to recognize the help that we need from others, but also the celebration we need,” she said.
This year, the celebration Saint John wants for Mother’s Day does not involve “burnt toast,” she said, teasing.
“I don’t want anybody making me no burnt toast, okay? Those days are long gone,” she said with a laugh.
Instead, the hair and beauty entrepreneur and reality TV figure would prefer a celebration that truly lightens the load. She doesn’t need to go out for her favorite meal when it can be ordered in, or to run errands for essentials from the beauty supply store. At the time she spoke with The Grio, she had just partnered with DoorDash for a campaign highlighting how the service can help ease Mother’s Day and offering select deals with Ulta Beauty, Sally Beauty, JD Sports, and Old Navy.
Thinking about Mother’s Day, Saint John, who has been open about her fertility journey as she prepares to expand her family with her fiancé, Keely Watson, also knows firsthand what it’s like when the day arrives and you’re not where you hoped to be in your motherhood journey.
Before welcoming her daughter, she experienced a pregnancy loss that came after celebrating Mother’s Day as an expectant mom. So when she was pregnant again the following year, this time with her daughter, she remembers feeling scared, worried she had celebrated too soon. Ultimately, grounding herself in what defines her womanhood carried her through.
“For everyone and anyone who is suffering on Mother’s Day because you’re grieving a loss or you have been trying to become a mother, and haven’t, I think it’s really important to remember the beauty of our womanhood, that the definition of our femininity does not rest on whether or not we’re able to have children,” she said. “You know that the ways in which we care and nurture for ourselves, for our friends, for our communities, for our uncles and our dads and our cousins is as worthy.”
She continued, “The idea of motherhood has been so specific … Having a living, breathing child who’s able to bring you burnt toast—that is not the definition.”
