'This Is Enough': From Burnout To Breakthrough, Bellmore Mom Creates Off Duty Moms Club

BELLMORE, NY — After years of mental and physical burnout, a young Bellmore mom is helping other moms reclaim their identity and find community again.

Bellmore resident Genevieve Kreindel is hoping to inspire more moms to get together to put themselves first to avoid a loss of identity and mental struggles that many mothers feel.

The group came together last year in November, after she decided to change her life.

“My story is not special,” she said. “Many moms unfortunately suffer the same thing – the COVID burnout, the lack of community.”

Before she made the life-changing decision and formed Off Duty Moms Club, her mental health faced a downward spiral.

Kreindel lived in New York City for more than 8 years, and after moving to the suburbs in 2018, she faced a cultural shock. Her entire lifestyle changed and she felt a loss of identity. A year later, she became pregnant and then COVID hit the world in 2020.

She had to attend all of her sonograms alone while her husband waited in the car, gave birth while wearing a mask, and dealt with postpartum difficulties without a mom-empowered support network as she dreamed of. All of the activities she had read about, hoped about, such as mommy and me classes, taking her baby to the park, meeting other moms and sitting together on a bench to chat, never happened for her.

“All of that was ripped away from me,” she said. “So I kind of went, I'll call it a very slow free fall, because it's not like the burnout happened all at once. It was a very slow free fall and descent into pretty intense burnout, you know, again, a byproduct of being a first time mom and just having a huge shake up to my life, but doing it without my community.”

The new mom had to forfeit the first Thanksgiving, first holidays, first birthday – all of the events she wanted to be surrounded with, and celebrated with family. Even those mundane, yet new to her, experiences, such as getting her child a shot, or just having family over to help. She wanted to call up her mom and ask her to come over, but that was taken from her.

“I would love to say that this slow, free fall was a quick process, and that I snapped out of it, bounced back fast,” she said. “That was not the case for me.”

It was a four-year free fall of her mental and physical health deteriorating – worse and worse – year after year. Her passion for hobbies had vanished. She loved to read books, go to the park, hit the gym, try different restaurants.

“I had a very full life,” she said. “But I became a very shell of a person. I felt burnt out every single day. My outsides matched my insides. I felt terrible. I looked terrible.”

Even her doctors noticed and had become concerned with her health, telling her that things need to change.

“It unfortunately took me those four very long years of a slow free fall, until one day I said, 'this is enough already.' I'm very much the kind of person that when I decide to do something, I do it hard.”

The journey of growth began in September 2024 and she described it as the hardest work of her life – she was thankful to have her husband by her side, supporting her every step of the way. She said he has been there for her in so many ways, especially emotionally.

“I decided to really be accountable and honest with myself and my husband, who was always my biggest supporter,” she said. “He had been encouraging me to take the time for myself and put myself first and do these things like I wasn't ready to do that yet.”

Pushing herself to take walks, getting back into a gym regimen, developing hobbies again – these were all activities she was rediscovering through a new lens and realized how desperately she had missed them. She wasn’t craving her old life, but instead, working towards being a different person.

“I have a child now,” she said. “My priorities are different. I'm a lot busier, but I'll say it's a Genevieve 2.0. I reclaimed my health, physically and mentally.”

While focusing on the new version of herself, she lost 70 lbs. in the process and rediscovered her social life, which is where Off Duty Moms began to stem from.

“My social life is busier than ever,” she said. I've made a lot of new friends. I've strengthened my old friendships. I truly feel like I'm reborn.”

Although she was about to hit her goal weight, she felt bittersweet at the accomplishment. She wanted to keep pushing herself past her boundaries.

“It's not something someone prepares you for, because when you come close to hitting your goal weight, it's kind of like a letdown,” she explained. “Now it's just maintenance. Now it's just the rest of my life.”

She’s an entrepreneur at heart and comes from a family of entrepreneurs and so she wanted to combine her story with a new passion to connect with other moms who may have been experiencing a similar situation.

“My story was something I wanted to share transparently and vulnerably,” she said, adding she wanted to encourage and grow other mothers’ lives outside of motherhood. “Maybe they're not ready. Maybe they need a cheerleader in their corner to give them that little push.”

This is especially important as March is International Women’s Month and Off Duty Moms Club has a few activities and events for women to connect.

“Being a mom – being a woman – you're stigmatized for putting yourself first,” she said. “You are expected to put everyone else's needs before your own. You're expected to take a backseat in your own life. And quite frankly, like that's not the life that I want for myself.”

Not only is being active in the community and spending time with other moms helpful to self-discovery, but it will also help the people around you, she said.

“In choosing myself first and putting myself first these last 16 months, I am healthier than ever,” she said. “I truly was putting myself on the back burner. I’m a very hands-on mom, and I think a big part of that is because I feel confident now. I can go to the sports classes with him and do push-ups and burpees, and he can climb on my back.”

Both her and her husband have an active social life without each other and together, and her entire family is benefitting from her physical and mental health improvement. Being able to support her son and cheer him on, and most importantly, lead by example, shows her growth, she said.

“I would not have been able to do that 17 months ago,” she said. “That illustrates the power of choosing yourself first and letting your child see what that means, and showing them that ‘mommy deserves to be healthy. Mommy deserves to be with you and do the burpees and encourage you to do the burpees too.’ I say to him, ‘movement is good for our bodies, our hearts and our minds’ and he repeats that mantra back.”

Kreindel said she will continue to have those conversations because she wants to have a long and beautiful life.

“I want that for my family too,” she said. “For me to demonstrate that first, because moms are very much the nucleus of the family, they're going to buy into it too.”

At the time when she was mentally struggling, she didn’t realize she wasn’t alone. Many moms are the ones who carry a heavy mental burden for the family, she said.

“I forgot to pack my child a snack for the day, do laundry, run to the supermarket, make a playdate,” she said. “It's all of those things that are just hit after hit after hit.”

Off Duty Moms Club is both an online and offline venture aimed at encouraging moms to put themselves first. Kreindel creates inspirational and aspirational content that touches on topics including how to alleviate mom guilt, how to have confidence as a woman, and more. It also has social events for local moms to meet. She said she wants the platform to be a place where she can share honest and vulnerable posts – she wants full transparency.

“I'm never here to portray something that feels inauthentic or feels impossible to someone,” she said, adding she’ll show the ‘realness’ behind a photo, such as standing in a little pink pilates outfit in front of a busted mirror. She wants to encourage moms, and women, to post selfies.

“I poke fun at myself because I'm not here to be a fitness influencer,” she said. “I'm here to be a mom. I'm here to be relatable.”

She posts all of her public events on her Instagram. Some events are ticketed and others are free, such as mom walks. Along with events, she also recently rolled out her first capsule collection of jewelry with a small business.

Recently, she shared a piece of content about a hard day where she had to learn to give herself grace.

“I would be lying if I didn't say I have down days,” she said. “I think anyone who is human and who is honest can admit to the fact that we all have sad days, bad days, frustrated days, days where your mojo just is down.”

For Kreindel, mental health priority is now a non-negotiable, and she puts in the work every single day. If she’s having a down day, she said doing some gentle movement, such as a walk, or doing some reading or taking a bath or even chatting with her husband or her mom can help. She now has those tools.

“It is something that I actively work on every single day, so that when I wake up in the morning and I am having one of those down days, it doesn't feel like such a huge thing,” she said. “I know that because I have done that work – and I am stronger than I have been maybe ever – that I can get through anything.”