When I first came across Avery Woods on TikTok, it was through a reel of her toddler daughter Stevie recapping her day via a hilariously snarky voiceover. Of course, the real voice behind the voiceover was Woods herself, and that brand of funny, raw, all-too-relatable parenting quickly catapulted her to the upper echelons of social media moms. Well, that and her laidback day-in-the-life vids, humorous GRWMs, Target shopping trips (often with Stevie or son Ziggy in tow), and travel vlogs with her husband, David.

As her platform has grown, life has inevitably evolved from those early days. Woods left behind her full-time job as a pediatric ICU nurse — the job she originally went viral for sharing (although she’s retained her license and has volunteer trips planned). And David, who wore his police uniform at the couple’s wedding because they couldn’t afford a tux at the time, was able to retire and join Woods at home. She’s now closing in on 3 million followers across her socials, hosts her own Cheers! with Avery Woods podcast, and has partnered with brands like DIBS Beauty and Adidas.

Granted, internet fame comes with its thorns, too. We all know people love to talk sh*t, and by my observation, Woods has gracefully navigated her fair share of prolific sh*t-talkers. But if you ask her (and I did), the positives always outshine the negatives. She’s just happy to get the chance to share life with her loyal following of “besties.”

Scary Mommy: Was there a specific point where you realized this had kind of taken on a life of its own, and you wanted to pursue it?

Avery Woods: A lot of people don’t know I did influencing for a lot of years before it ever became full-time for me. It started just very micro, and then I was contracted with the biggest scrub brand in the United States, Cherokee Uniforms, for about six years. So, I thought all people followed me for was nursing content. I never, ever expected to leave nursing, especially because I just love it so much and still do.

Once I started posting more lifestyle things and my content started taking off outside of the hospital, that’s when I was like, ‘Oh wow, people follow me for me, not just because I’m a nurse.’ But it wasn’t until February of 2023 — I remember I gained about a million followers in one month — that I was like, ‘Wow, I think this could be really big.’ My husband and I were at dinner, and I was like, ‘I think our lives just changed.’

SM: A million followers in one month is wild!

AW: Yeah. I just left nursing in October of 2023, so we’re coming up on a year. A lot of people also don’t realize that I was working two different nursing jobs in addition to influencing. I worked in the pediatric ICU and did aesthetic nursing on top of trying to grow my social media full-time. So, it was a lot but now here we are, and I’m so grateful.

SM: Fans love your day-in-the-life vlogs, but what was a day in the life like for you before?

AW: It was a lot different in that I was definitely away from my kids more. I used to work three 12-and-a-half-hour shifts every single week, so I was gone in the morning before my kids got out of bed, and I was home when they were already down. And then, on my days off, I was trying to build my social media brand and contracted with other brands.

So, I worked really long hours and was on my feet a lot. I worked at a Level 1 trauma center in a pediatric ICU. We did open heart surgeries, we had traumas, but I was also the S.W.A.T. [supplemental work and transition] nurse a lot, which is the nurse for the entire pediatric tower. I remember being nine months pregnant, waddling around, walking 16,000 steps in a day.

In that sense, it’s different. I do miss that side of nursing a bit, but I’m so grateful that I have been able to be home with my kids so much more as they’re little.

SM: Well, let’s talk about those kids because they’re so freaking cute.

AW: Thank you.

SM: What does a typical day in your family’s life look like?

AW: Stevie’s in school only three days a week for three hours. So, on a normal weekday, we will wake up around 7 — the kids usually wake us up. Make coffee, pack their lunches for school and their school snacks, and their backpacks, and then we will drive the golf cart if it’s not too hot.

We live in Arizona, so now that the weather’s cooling down, we’ll take the golf cart because their elementary school is in our neighborhood. We just take a little side road to get there, and the kids love it. We’ll drop Ziggy off at kindergarten first. And then Stevie’s class doesn’t start for 30 more minutes, so we’ll take the golf cart to the little neighborhood park. She’ll play for 30 minutes, and then we’ll drop her off at school. My husband and I will go to the gym, and then usually I’ll try to get an hour or so of work done if I can. Sometimes I’ll have a meeting with my team, and then we’ll go pick up Stevie from preschool.

Two days a week, she has dance as well; she does tap, jazz, and gymnastics. And Ziggy starts golf in December, so he is very excited about that. He did dive over the summer, so they’re always in some sort of activity, which I’m grateful for because I want them to try everything and then choose what they want to do. I don’t ever want to force them to do something.

Wednesdays are early release days, and we take the boat out to the lake. [It’s] our favorite place in the world because we have no cell signal. We completely disconnect. So, we’ll hang out, we’ll wake surf, we’ll go out on the lake until sunset.

Then, if it’s a lake day, we go home and order from our favorite pizza spot because that’s the day we don’t cook. But usually, five to six nights a week, we’re cooking dinner together as a family. We’ve been doing Home Chef because we got tired of prepping our own ingredients, so we kind of went the lazier route… but it’s still cooking.

My kids are in bed after getting bathed and dinner, around 7, and then my husband and I usually watch a show, get in the jacuzzi, build Legos together because we’re nerds, or watch Harry Potter. Then we go to bed by 9:30 because we’re so tired.

SM: I love all that evening nerdiness.

AW: Oh yeah.

SM: Negative opinions tend to follow fame. How do you balance staying positive, which is sort of your ethos, and responding to that?

AW: One hate comment for every 100 positive comments isn’t going to bother me because I know it’s more of a reflection of them, not myself.

I also think some people have issues being happy for others. I’ve been able to leave a career that’s very overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated to this life where I’m able to work from home and make a lot more money. I was able to get my husband off the street as law enforcement and have him be home with the kids. I know what life was even just a year ago: my husband risking his life every day at his job, and to put it very morbidly, I was putting children in body bags after they had died on a weekly basis … My husband and I have seen the worst in the world, and just waking up every day to have healthy kids is something I’m grateful for — let alone what I get to do in my career.

Mentally, if I let it affect me, I would not be well. In the beginning, when I blew up really fast and was on everyone’s For You Page, that was when I first started seeing hate, and I was like, ‘Wow, these people are so mean.’ It really did affect me. I would think about it before I would go to bed. I would try to change my content to acclimate to, almost taking it as constructive criticism, but then I got to a point where I was like, ‘It doesn’t matter what I do; everyone’s going to have an outside opinion. I’d rather just post content that makes me happy and block people who are negative.’

SM: The other part of being a person on the internet — especially someone like you, who’s really open about building a community — is creating healthy boundaries. How do you do that?

AW: There are a lot of people who have been around and seen so many stages of my life — before I had my firstborn or when I was in nursing school and graduated and started working in the PICU — and so I’m so grateful that they’ve stuck by me no matter what. Also, it’s important for me to just stay humble and keep my core values the same. My husband and I did not come from a lot, and so we try our best just to plan for the future and focus on who we are as people rather than the fame side of it.

I would rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I’m not.

Boundary-wise, I do feel I am definitely my true authentic self on the internet, which brings hate because I don’t have a filter. But I would rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I’m not. I always tell people, ‘If you stop me in person, I’m going to give you a hug. I’m going to talk to you, and I’m going to be the same person.’ Because that really is who I am online. I’ve met a lot of people in the public eye who aren’t the same, and I always promised myself that I would be the same person online that I am, myself.

I think people take that as oversharing or recording every part of my life when, really, I show maybe two to three minutes of my entire day on social media. When I’m with my kids, I really do try my best to live in the moment. And if I’m even doing a morning vlog, they don’t see a tripod in the kitchen. They’re just hanging out with their mom and getting ready for school.

Unfortunately, there are people who have leaked our address and the layout of our home. We’ve had issues in that sense where we’ve had to get lawyers involved and get that removed from the internet. So, I’ve created boundaries in the sense of location, like making sure my kids’ schools are private.

SM: I find it fascinating how much people can feel like they’re owed every detail of your life…

AW: It is interesting when people who are, like, OG followers or fans see your life change — meaning seeing me leave nursing and now do this content creation — and they love to say, ‘Oh, you’ve changed.’ I’m like, ‘My career and my life have changed tenfold.’ And I think we all evolve, but am I a different human being? Do I have different core values? No.

I think I’ve definitely evolved and adapted to what this lifestyle is now, and I might not be as open as I once was because of the backlash that I received and the safety that’s been compromised of my family and my children. But internally, I’m still Avery. I think people just see that surface level and automatically think you’ve changed. But to be frank, they don’t know us as human beings. They think they do because of what you’re saying, but in reality, they don’t.

SM: Katie Anderson and I recently talked about how, when she started, there weren’t a lot of other parenting influencers out there. So, I’m curious: Since we’re in the era of parenting influencers now, who else do you follow or look up to in that space?

AW: I mean, Katie’s one, I love her. I think she has that don’t-give-a-f*ck energy, which I really appreciate because that’s very much myself. The outside noise when it comes to motherhood is wild to me because everyone’s going to raise their kids different, and it’s really none of anyone else’s business, especially when I’m like, My kids are doing great. My kids are fine. And if they don’t want to picture taken or they don’t want to be in a video, they don’t have to be … my kids aren’t child actors; I’m not going to get a paycheck for my kids to be in an ad. And if they ever were, they have their own bank accounts that would go straight into for their college fund.

Who else? Allison Kuch, love her. She’s a good friend. Aspyn Ovard, love her so much. She’s such a queen. She’s coming on the podcast, and I think she’s done a great job at, again, people assuming they know every part of her life when really she’s like, ‘I show you what I choose to show you. You have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes.’

Oh, my friend Amber Fillerup. I think she’s also done a great job because she has four kids and started this massive business, Dae Hair, and she started out with just content creation like I do. So, I look up to her a lot as a mother and a businesswoman, too.

SM: Is there anything else that you want people to know or just want to put out in the world?

AW: Just be positive. Be happy. I think in this day and age, people just need to understand that they have control over who they follow, and if they feel tempted to leave hate on someone’s page, it’s more of a reflection of them. They need to understand that they can just block and control who they see. Because if someone is seeing my content and feels negative about me or themselves, I’m like, ‘Please block me.’ I want you to be on social media so you can find a happy place. And if I’m not that happy place for you, that’s OK. There are so many other people out there.

That’s really it. I’m just happy to be here; that’s my vibe.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.