Metro Roundup: Briarwood’s Boo Mama

Sophie Hudson started blogging in 2005 as a creative outlet. Mom to a two-year-old son, she would read other blogs at night and decided to create one of her own. Thus, Boo Mama was born.

“It was a real slow ramp up,” Hudson said. “I started the blog on a whim because there was no mental space for me to process or be creative...I thought, I’m going to try this blog thing so I set one up.”

She spent the next several years blogging at Lifeway women’s events and got a behind-the-scenes look at how they worked. One of the things she quickly learned is the importance of being involved in the community where she lived.

“I have really tried to value and prioritize our lives here in Birmingham,” Hudson said. “It means more to me than anything.”

Now 15 years later, Hudson has come a long way. She has 15,000 followers on both Facebook and Twitter and over 28,000 on Instagram. She recently released her fifth book and is already working on the next.

Growing up in Meridian, Mississippi, Hudson went to college at Mississippi State (and is still a huge fan). After she and her husband David got married, they lived in Baton Rouge for a few years. They felt like they were far away from their family and decided it was time for a change.

“We said if we could live anywhere, where would we want to go?” Hudson said. “Birmingham just kept coming up and finally we thought ‘Let’s just go see.’ We flew here in April 1999 and drove around and by the time we left, we had a contract on a house. It felt like home.”

Hudson had applied for a few jobs and accepted a position at Briarwood Christian School. She spent many years as an English teacher before shifting to being women’s advisor six years ago. She just started her 21st year there and will have a new role this year as Director of Student Activities.

In addition to writing books and being on staff full-time at Briarwood, Hudson also hosts the Big Boo Cast podcast. It started back in 2007 with her friend Melanie Shankle, who she calls her “first internet friend.” They were both writers, had one child and would spend their kids nap time talking on the phone. Hudson’s husband suggested the two started a podcast to which she replied, “Ok, how do I do that?”

She went to CompUSA and bought a microphone and they recorded their first one the next day over iMessage. The podcast was sporadic for the first ten years, Hudson said, but now it’s consistent each week. She and Shankle record on Monday afternoons, then she spends Monday and Tuesday nights editing. One of her recent guests was Mississippi State football coach Mike Leach and she described it as one of her favorite things she’s ever done.

“My favorite thing about being part of a team is working for something bigger than ourselves,” Hudson said. “Melanie and I are better as a team and have created more content together than we would have ever done individually. She’s a great source of wisdom and accountability and her friendship has been a real gift.”

It was while folding clothes one day in 2011 that Hudson got the idea for her first book, “A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet.” It was something her grandfather used to say, and she wrote the book about her Southern family. While writing it, she had the idea for the second book, “Home Is Where My People Are: The Roads That Lead Us to Where We Belong.” That book is about God working in our lives through unlikely people and circumstances.

Book number three, “Giddy Up, Eunice: Because Women Need Each Other,” focused on seeing the people that God puts in our lives. Her fourth book was a journaling devotional, “Loving God Wherever You Are.”

“I had this devotional book when I started college and loved the process of writing things down,” Hudson said. “When I was working with girls at Briarwood, moms would ask me for recommendations for a devotional book and I decided I’d like to write one. It’s probably my favorite book that I’ve done. I’m currently working on my next book now that follows upon that.”

When writing her fifth book, “Stand All The Way Up: Stories of Staying In It When You Want to Burn It All Down,” Hudson spilled a glass of Crystal Light on her computer about 20,000 words in and was unable to salvage any of what she had written. She had to start over and said it ended up being a different book than what it was.

“It’s not what I thought it was going to be, but I’m proud of what it is,” she said.

Five books in, Hudson said she there was a point in time she thought she would never write a book, but has since realized doing that writing books is her favorite thing.

“I love the puzzle of writing books, it’s like an essay on steroids,” she said. “It’s fun for me to figure out the structure of the book and I really enjoy it.”

Hudson hopes that through her stories, women find encouragement and hope in the everyday, joy-filled moments of life. While she is going to continue writing, she said she plans to scale back her speaking engagements for the next few years. Her son, Alex, is a junior at Briarwood and she wants him to enjoy his last two years of high school.

“It’s always so fun to go speak somewhere and meet people in other places, but where I really want to be is here,” she said. “I just want to be planted here for the next couple of years.”

For more information about Sophie Hudson,visit boomama.net.