 We all have a purpose in life, but finding it and tapping into what it really is, is often a trying journey.
As mothers that journey becomes even harder. We focus our energy on caring for our children and others, and the journey to finding our purpose for life is clouded by the day to day of being a mom. But when all hope is lost, in comes Shama Dominique of Mommies With Purpose! I had been following Shama for a little while and was beyond excited when she accepted the invitation to be a part of Mompreneur Mondays. And our first encounter did not disappoint. Driven by God to find her own purpose, Shama saw that women, mommies in particular needed that motivation and guidance to also find their purpose in life and truly live in it. Starting as an event designer with her husband, Shama didn’t originally see herself as the inspirational force that she is today. She was dedicated to making the designing business her thing until she started dabbling in creating a platform for moms.
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 Have you ever felt stressed out? Job, family, life in general getting you down, making you anxious, paranoid, angry or scared etc.
What if I told you that these feelings are normal and you aren’t alone. What’s more important to know is that help for your mental health is available, important and doesn’t make you a crazy person. It actually makes you smarter. We are human and we have to protect our mental state. For that I am so thankful for people like my childhood friend Brittany Bronson. Brittany is a wife, mother, friend, sister social worker, therapist and much more. She’s making major moves to eliminate the stigma of mental health. Especially for people of color. While mental health is important for all people, people of color have suffered through mental health issues for decades refusing treatment. Much of this comes from the idea that therapy isn’t needed, or pure denial that they are suffering from any mental condition. Another major problem is accessibility. There aren’t as many therapist in the areas where people of color primarily reside, and the nearest ones are often outside of the budget for the people in these communities.   Hey Mama! What’s your birth story?
If you haven’t given birth yet, how are you envisioning that heartwarming day? We all have some idea of what we want delivery to look like when we’re expecting our child. Whether it be our first, second or tenth! However things don’t always go as planned, some of those things can be avoided if only our voices were really being heard. I don’t know about you but I certainly knew how my body was feeling from the beginning of my pregnancy with my daughter until the end. Even with my recent miscarriage I kept feeling that something was off and unlike with our daughter I had this fear of losing our second child, well before it ever happened. But I didn’t feel empowered to tell anyone. After my first pregnancy, and the doctors not listening to me when I said I was ready I didn’t believe they would listen to me about something being off about my second pregnancy. The problem is that this happens all too often to women. And while miscarriage was hard some moms never make it home. This can all be changed. And that’s where this week’s feature Nicole Grant-Williams comes in. Nicole also noticed the problems in our hospitals. Women dying when they didn’t have to. Babies having no mother because a doctor didn’t simply listen, or do an extra check. After her own journey she started to research alternatives to birthing. And it led her to becoming a Doula, and starting The Well Mommy and The New Jersey Doula Association.  Have you ever read a caption or an email and thought “Well, that was well written!”?
I know that I have, several times. As an entrepreneur, I’ve even kept a few and researched how to make my own emails better. Well at the time I had no clue that many of those amazing emails and captions I was reading were curated by a professional copywriter. Not the person who was sending the email. Crazy right?!? Copywriting isn’t easy either, they have to make us feel like it’s coming straight from the brand that we’re expecting to hear from. They also have to make that brand happy with the messaging that’s going out to their audience. It’s a lot of work, so imagine balancing a copywriting business with motherhood and being a woman in general. That’s what Tara, founder of Ms. Methodical does on a daily basis. But Tara wasn’t always a copywriter. Like many women Tara went through a variety of careers and businesses that led her back to her passion of writing. Pre-COVID she ran an in house daycare. Prior to that she was working as a legal administrative assistant, something that she hated but was good at. It certainly wasn’t her passion. Fashion...we all have our own view of what it is. Each of us has a style, a look and trends that we like and others we don’t care for too much. But are we all represented in the giant world of fashion? No...unfortunately we are not. That’s in part why I was thrilled to meet Ellen Mason of A Fashionating Life. Not only do I love a good pun, I also love seeing women make spaces for themselves and expanding the representation that we see at large. You see Ellen is a 40+ year old mama to two boys ages 10 and 17, a creative soul and a fashionista. She realized that women in her age group were heavily underrepresented in the fashion industry, specifically the influencer space. It’s not like we suddenly stop wearing clothes or caring how we look and feel so why aren’t there more women 40+ being showcased in the hottest trends, or setting trends themselves? To me that answer was easy. Our society teaches us that youth is where beauty is and the fashion industry is directly related to the beauty industry.  But that’s all changing thanks to Ellen and her business partner. They are standing up and saying ENOUGH! Enough under representation of middle aged women. It’s time that women over 40 feel fashionable and empowered to strut their stuff just like they did in their 20s.
So you’re probably thinking...why would Alena this 29 year old care about 40 year old women and fashion? Well one day I’m going to be 40, God willing, and I don’t want to be stuck feeling like I cannot still be cute and feel good about the clothing that I’m wearing just because of age. So I celebrate what A Fashionating Life stands for and is working to change.  I had literally 0 intentions of making an article about myself for Mompreneur Mondays. But my computer and zoom had other plans. Originally I had an amazing mama in the health industry lined up for a feature but due to a technical issue regarding the recording of her interview, I had to make a last minute decision.
Mompreneur Mondays is very important to me and the last thing that I wanted was to drop the ball on the series on the 3rd episode, all because a recording wasn’t saved. So after scrambling to figure out what to do I realized “Hey genius, you’re a mompreneur too! Just interview yourself!”. And yes that is literally how I talk to myself when I finally come to a realization, that’s actually quite simple, and then I laugh at myself. Anyways, that’s how this particular feature came to be. My name is Alena Michell and I am a Mompreneur. I own Mom Coach Wife and the subsidiary brand The Balanced Mom. My mission is to empower women who have children to embrace that they are more than just a mom. This mission comes from my own personal experience. I found that I was loosing myself in motherhood and that I really just wasn’t happy. My lack of happiness was definitely spilling over into my two closest relationships. That with my husband and daughter. Now I wasn’t a bad wife or mother, even looking back on those days I know that. But I also wasn’t giving them my best because I was exhausted, lost and frustrated. The frustration, was 100% my own fault. I kept making excuses that I couldn’t go to the gym, because I’m a mom and who would watch my daughter (granted I hadn’t asked anyone). I couldn’t manage my blog or create a youtube channel because I didn’t have enough time, yet I had time to binge watch Netflix, which I still do from time to time. Essentially I was full of excuses. And those excuses were only hurting me and suppressing my ambitions. I knew I wanted to make a change but I was fighting what I already knew I needed to do which was to create some structure in my life. After reading The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, I had a lot more hope. Immediately after finishing the book, I started to reflect on my days and saw so much wasted time. No wonder I didn’t feel like I had time, and like nothing was really getting done!  Do you have boundaries?
How loose are they? For me boundaries were the hardest part of creating balance. I was accustomed to saying yes, and constantly bending for other people, while making little to no time for myself. Among other things, setting boundaries and saying no to what didn’t serve me anymore freed up so much additional time, I never knew I had. So when I met with Mercedes of Three's A Charm Custom Designs and we talked about boundaries I could totally relate. Mercedes is a single mom to 3 amazing children. Parker, age 9, Ayden, age 6 and Kylan age 1. That didn’t stop her from creating her custom design business after receiving a sub par rolling tray that she realized was a complete waste of her hard earned money. In fact, her children are the inspiration behind the business name and the logo's colors. Knowing what it took to create these custom gifts and create a higher quality, Mercedes set off to work. In the midst of a pandemic, with two of her kids home for virtual learning and a 1 year old to manage she leveraged co-parenting to make her business idea a reality. Starting in March 2020, just as COVID was rearing its ugly head throughout the world, she purchased the tools and materials needed. One machine that went unused until August. 3’s A Charm creates a variety of custom gifts. From these adorable Santa Claus footprints I personally fell in love with during the holiday season to cups, blankets, pillows and so much more. If you can dream it, Mercedes can customize it. One of her first products was in honor of our essential workers. Being that they were out and about while we stayed safely quarantined at home. Mercedes created custom travel mugs for them to take with them on the go. She didn’t stop there, she continued to test her creativity with sublimation, and other customization skills.  At the end of 2020 I had the pleasure of beginning to meet and chat with several mompreneurs in preparation for a segment called Mompreneur Mondays, coming to the blog, Youtube and Instagram. Every Monday you will meet one of these amazing mamas and be encouraged by their journey in business and in motherhood. Today is the first day of that segment and I’m happy to introduce you to one of the Boss Moms I had the opportunity to chat with,The owner of Dynamic Legacy Apparel, Nisha. We had an amazing conversation and she dropped some gems for the mothers out there looking to start their own business. You can watch our conversation on my Youtube Channel.
The bubbly mom of one is a humble yet confident serial entrepreneur. In addition to her clothing apparel Nisha is also a travel agent and in the process of expanding the Dynamic Legacy name. All the while, working full time in corporate America. How many times have you set a goal? How many of those goals have you accomplished? For those that went unaccomplished do you know why? It’s time we got real with our goals and our intentions behind them. It’s great to have goals, really it’s amazing. Goals show us that we are working towards something, that we see where we can improve/change.  They give us purpose, or at least give our purpose some direction. Some of them are personal, some are professional but regardless they are amazing to have. Wouldn’t you agree? As amazing as they are we don’t always accomplish the goals that we set for ourselves. We talked about this a bit in Resolution Time. You’re probably thinking that I’m going to say that all goals could be accomplished...and while that’s true that all goals could be accomplished, it’s not realistic. Sometimes when we set a goal and have good intentions to reach it, our lives get set in a different direction and that goal no longer lines up with our lives. For example, if you set a goal around your job and later received a promotion, or an opportunity that results in a complete change in your career. That goal is likely to change and therefore be one of the goals that went “unaccomplished”. But what about the other unaccomplished goals? Why don’t we reach the end with them?  Here’s to the first article of 2020! How are those resolutions going? Was social media part of your 2020 resolutions/goals?
Keeping up with social media can be a real pain sometimes. Trying to post frequently while having relevant content that your audience actually engages with. Posting regularly without becoming repetitive. Because of this struggle, there are countless platforms for planning and scheduling your social media posts. You may have seen ads for them and be wondering; “Should I be planning my social media content?” If you’re a business owner then that answer is a definite YES!!! Not a business owner? Then it’s not necessary but could still be useful for you if you want to create structure around your social media or just free up some time. I’m going to get into why you should be planning your content in just a moment… First I want to address the elephant in the room. The platforms I mentioned earlier; there are a ton of them, you can usually get a free trial to test them out. Some offer a free plan, but there’s usually some restrictions or limitations to the free plans. Most of the platforms allow you to plan and schedule your posts. However, some are just for planning and you have to manually post. This is due to algorithms that prevent them from posting on your behalf. You can also do all of this for free! And you won’t have to worry about getting blocked or shadow banned for using bots. You can learn how to do that here. Before we move forward, let's discuss the difference between planning and scheduling. |
Alena MichelleAlena Michelle is an accountability coach and mompreneur. Becoming a mother opened her eyes to the sad reality that many mothers loose their identities in motherhood. Throughout her own journey to find herself Alena learned that making herself a priority helped her to become a better mother to her daughter and a better wife to her husband. |
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