Since its launch in 2016, TikTok has grown to become the sixth most popular social media platform with active users expected to reach nearly 2 billion by the end of the year. While the amount of influence has raised concerns from some parents, one local mother has utilized the platform to not put her concerns with becoming a first-time mom to rest. She is now using it to help others do the same.

Cayla Murphy — or @caylathecreatrix as she is know on TikTok — had been familiar with social media on a consumer level for many years, but first began her foray into content creating when she became pregnant nearly two years ago. Murphy was living in Colorado at the time, separated from her family and not having any immediate connections that were able to relate to her experiences she turned to social media.

“I did not have any friends who were pregnant or really even wanted kids. So, I just kind of dived into TikTok,” she said.

Murphy is the youngest of five children — she said that prior to the birth of her daughter she had never even held a newborn — and soon found that the network of mothers that she found sharing their experiences and advice quickly developed into a community that she could turn to for reassurance. Soon she would begin to chronicle her own pregnancy.

“So I started doing that (uploading videos), just kind of recording how I felt being pregnant. There’s a lot of anxieties that come with being a mom and so it was really important to me to kind of find a sense of community and my community just happened to be online,” she said.

Her uploads remained mostly casual at first, but after returning to Alabama and enrolling in the special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children (WIC) a trip to the supermarket for a bag of black beans and an onion became a turning point in Murphy’s content creation when she attempted to unsuccessfully use her WIC card in the self-checkout lane and resulted in an employee announcing her attempt over the store’s intercom.

“I was mortified. I was so embarrassed because there’s a stigma when you’re on any kind of government assistance. I went home and cried. But then I was I told myself that I’m not going to be embarrassed about this and that I was going to reduce the stigma about it,” Murphy said.

Murphy soon began uploading videos in which she shared recipes centered around items that could be purchased using only a WIC voucher. She was not the first creator to share these types of recipes, but said that she was unique from others that she had found in that her recipes tended to align with her southern roots and were often classic traditional recipes adapted to work with WIC approved ingredients.

She began to grow her following which gained the attention of the National WIC Association who offered her a contract to upload twenty recipes or WIC related content. “I was kind of blown away because that kind of thing doesn’t happen to people like me. It’s such a one-in-a-million thing to be recognized nationally for that kind of thing, it was pretty cool,” Murphy said.

With the birth of her daughter River — who recently celebrated her first birthday — Murphy said that she has now adapted her content to chronicle her current journey as a single, working mother but has become more aware of the content that she uploads involving her daughter.

“I will never be one of those “mommy bloggers” who films my kid having a breakdown or a tantrum. I’m also very conscientious about her safety online. I’ve never done a bath time routine or a video of her in just a diaper or anything like that,” she said.

Instead, Murphy has found a new stigma to overcome as she shows the reality of her own struggles with postpartum depression in hopes that she is able to offer comfort to mother’s facing similar hurdles or concerns with their ability to be a parent.

“That’s another thing that I want to reduce the stigma of: You can have postpartum depression and still be a good mom. It’s not Andrea Yates or nothing, you know. That’s one thing that makes moms so afraid to speak out about it is because they don’t want people to take away their kids, they just want people to help them,” she said.

These videos have allowed Murphy to go from searching for a community online to overcome her anxieties of motherhood, to being the source of inspiration that other moms are now turning to.

“I’ve had hundreds of comments from moms who are either freshly postpartum and are watching my videos while their babies sleep in the recovery room or women who are seven months postpartum and are still going through that,” she said. “I’ve been able to message a handful of different women who have reached out to me who have been struggling and as cheesy as it sounds — like white cheddar cheesy — if I can help just one person, I think I’ve made a pretty good impact.”

Apart from her partnership with the National WIC Association Murphy has been able to partner with several toy company’s like Love Every, Montessori and Waldorf who sends her boxes of toys every few months for River to play with and review. She also leveraged her experiences as a content creator to build her resume which resulted in finding an office job, and offers consulting services to clients wanting to build their own online presence. But for all of her accomplishments and titles that Murphy now holds, the one that remains to be the most important will always be Mom.