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The Road

A Day In the Life of an Instagram Mom

It's not as easy as it looks.
All photos by Bunga Atikha

Cinta Ruhama Amelz is a true 21st century mom. Her family and friends call her Tara, but to her more than 50,000 followers on Instagram, she’s Mama of Snow—a beauty and fashion content creator and an entrepreneur.

If she’s not at a beauty or fashion event, you can almost always find her at home, going back-and-forth between working and taking care of her young daughter Snow.

“People always ask me how I balance my family and work,” she tells me. “Sometimes I find that I don’t have that balance, and I’m sure all mothers feel this way. Sometimes when you’re busy with work, you’ll worry about your child. But when you’re playing with your child, you can’t stop thinking about all the work you have to do. There’s no end to that. You just have to juggle.”

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For her, home is where she spends time with her family, and but it's also an office where she hustles for work. Her work consists of taking pictures of products to review on her blog, documenting her life as a mom, and curating pieces of writing to help empower Indonesian women on woop.id. It all sounds like she’s living the dream, but to get there, it most certainly wasn’t a walk in the park.

After graduating university with a degree in advertising, Tara told me that she found out the industry wasn't for her. She survived in an advertising agency for exactly six weeks before landing a position as a stylist at a women’s magazine where she spent five years working up the ladder.

People seem to have this misconception that being a content creator is an easy job. It’s not. Especially being an Instagram mom. Tara tells me that you have to learn to ignore people’s opinions about your parenting methods. People will judge you when you capture moments with your child, but also when you don’t. And this is way more difficult than you think. After all, she is more than an account with hundreds of thousands of followers. She's also a human being.

And for Tara, the biggest hurdle is herself.