Tag: women wednesday

Woman Wednesday: Aide

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Q and A with Aide from Tijuana, Mexico, living in Rosarito Beach

“I used to sabotage myself with negative thoughts, which put me in a very low vibrational state.”


Q: What are you passionate about? 

A: I’m passionate about learning new things every day and improving the ones I’ve already learned about. I love simple things such as going to the beach for a walk or a swim, biking around my hometown, sharing moments with family, working on my business, dancing and singing karaoke, and planning the next traveling adventure. Also, I have started a business with a couple of friends called Mujer Salvaje-Fractal Cristal. We sell quartz and other minerals. Our intention is to spread awareness about how powerful minerals are as a tool for expanding our consciousness. It all started for me when my now-business partners showed me their mineral collection, and I was completely amazed by it. They gifted me some minerals that I wore as jewelry and also as a decoration in my room. Minerals helped me while I was struggling with a huge depression. I am so grateful for their help that I decided to start selling them and talking about how great they are. I feel like my biggest passion is to help myself and others.

Q: Can you tell us more about the minerals. Which are most popular? Which do you like best?

A: Minerals are Earth’s DNA. I love learning more and more about minerals because they are a beautiful element from Mother Nature. I have also used them as tools for meditation. I love wearing my labradorite necklace because I feel protected and more in tune with myself. The most popular sold items are minerals used for protection such as obsidian and tourmaline. After those, it’s amethyst, agate, and pink quartz. I think that the reason why minerals such as obsidian and tourmaline are the most popular is that people feel like they need something to protect themselves. Energetically speaking, these minerals are protectors and help absorb dense/negative energy from others and from their own negative thoughts. We tend to be our worst enemies by thinking negatively about ourselves. Therefore, I’ve met many people wanting to change their thought processes, and have more positive lives.

Q: What were your younger years like?

A: I was born in Tijuana, Mexico, and was raised in my current hometown Rosarito Beach, which is located 20 minutes south of Tijuana. I have always been a beach lover and started surfing in my early 20s. At the time, I was still not sure about what to study in college. But thanks to my love for the ocean, I decided to study fisheries biology with a marine emphasis. I did some years in community college in San Diego, CA, and then transferred to Cal Poly Humboldt in Northern CA to finish my bachelor’s degree in science. I am thankful for that experience because it helped me learn so much about our natural world. That’s why I feel like I am now dedicating myself to the mineral world. This current business I have combines my passion for science, spirituality, and art.

Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?

A: I have learned so much about myself and how to treat myself with love and respect. I used to sabotage myself with negative thoughts, which put me in a very low vibrational state. Ever since I lost both my parents and my dear grandmother, life became harder to enjoy. But, thanks to using minerals as tools for meditation, I have realized that I have to enjoy the present. Our loved ones who have passed are and will always be living in us. This is the time for us to shine and thank ourselves for everything we are.

Q: What does feminism mean to you?
A: Feminism means to me, a support system for women to share their experiences and to feel like we are protecting each other. We are not alone.

MORE ABOUT AIDE: I am a dual citizen (Mexican-American), and I speak fluent English and Spanish. I would like women to ask as many questions about minerals and help each other live the present to the fullest!

Thank you for your precious time.

Thank you for reading!

Woman Wednesday: Shaliah

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Q and A with Shaliah from Dolton, Illinois

“I’ve always had a “plan B,” but there are so many others who weren’t prepared for their lives to change in such a way [during the pandemic].”


Q: What are you passionate about? 

A: One of my biggest passions in life is helping others. I’m a licensed financial advisor. I love what I do simply because I’m able to educate my potential clients on ways to create generational wealth for themselves and their families.

Q: What were your younger years like?

A: I grew up in a very close-knit family. Education and religion were two things that were at the top list of importance. I’m grateful for all the lessons learned because it helped me to become a better person and who I am today.

Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?

A: 2020 was a huge wake-up call for me, and I’m sure for a lot more families as well. I was laid off from my job of 15 years. Luckily for me, I’ve always had a “plan B,” but there are so many others who weren’t prepared for their lives to change in such a way. My advice would be to never solely depend on one stream of income. Keep multiple streams coming in in order to keep your family afloat.

Q: What does feminism mean to you? 

A: Being a woman, I think, is about being strong. It’s about continuing to move forward in all of life’s endeavors. I definitely have to keep a positive mindset and stay 100% committed to making all my life dreams a reality. I have two daughters that look up to me, and I want them to grow up stronger and better than I am. I love to see my ladies succeed! There was once a time when women were told we couldn’t do certain jobs or we couldn’t make a certain amount of money, but look at us now! Kudos Ladies! Let’s keep it up! God Bless.

Thank you for reading!

Follow me on Insta here. I’d love to connect with you! 🙂

Thoughts, questions, or comments?

Let us know! Comment below! 🙂

Woman Wednesday: Natasha

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Q and A with Natasha from Washington, USA

“You can be incredibly skilled or invest in learning the best strategies, but without the right mindset, you still won’t get the result.”


Q: What are you passionate about? 

A: I’m passionate about finding ways to play and making the most of my time every day. I love spending time being a mom to my three-year-old son, cooking, SCUBA diving, and my work supporting other entrepreneurs.

I help entrepreneurs tap into playfulness in their business to elevate what they sell and how they sell it, so they can create massive visibility, make consistent sales, and have a whole lot more fun! Some things I’m currently working on in my business that I’m excited about are launching a networking container that will include a retreat to a fabulous location. I’m also building out a new program for people who want to work with me in a group or short-term capacity. It’s amazing because it allows me to support more people by having an impact at multiple price points.

In my personal life, I’ve started taking harp lessons. It’s so much fun! This is my first time playing a musical instrument, it’s never too late to learn. Also, I love to travel! I’ve visited over 40 countries. My new ones this year were Costa Rica, Senegal, The Gambia, Cape Verde, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Herzegovina. My favorite things to do when I’m traveling are to wander the streets and make new friends, take food tours, and watch my son take in the world.

Q: What were your younger years like?

A: As a kid, I always wanted to be a writer and a performer. I loved to sing, act and tell stories. So, it’s really perfect that now I get to do all of those things in my business, and teach other people how to grow their impact by telling their own stories. I really loved and excelled in school. And in my childhood, I always received the message that the path to success was to go to school and get a good job. So I did exactly that, went to a great school, and got a great job, but it didn’t make me feel successful or fulfilled. 

I knew I needed to do something different, but I didn’t grow up with many examples of entrepreneurship, especially successful black female entrepreneurs. That’s why supporting and guiding that community is so, so important to me. I want to share the knowledge I didn’t have and inspire more women to build something of their own.

Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?

A: Mindset is greater than skill set. When it comes to growth and success, winning the inner game is crucial. I experienced this when I was transitioning from being an employee to an entrepreneur. I brought my employee mindset to building a business and it held me back for the longest time. But once I hired a mentor, he helped me rewire how I was thinking. Within six weeks, I made $20k in sales. And within a year, I had a six-figure business. 

You can be incredibly skilled or invest in learning the best strategies, but without the right mindset, you still won’t get the result. Those limiting beliefs will still hold you back, and you’ll get stuck at the same point, the same level of success, over and over again. If you want to have a breakthrough, you have to have a mindset shift first. I’ve seen it for myself and my clients, it always works this way. 

Q: What does feminism mean to you?
A: Feminism, to me, means having choice and opportunity. For women to have the ability to choose what feels aligned and right for them in every area of their life, without barriers to their happiness, success, or fulfillment. The choice to be a mom or not be a mother. The choice to work or not to work. The choice to be feminine or not feminine. The choice to follow a faith or not follow it.

And for those women to have every opportunity that’s afforded to men. The opportunity to grow, to be a leader, to flop and make mistakes, and to see themselves represented in their media. That’s what feminism looks like to me. 

MORE ABOUT NATASHA:

I’d love to share the mantra I live by, it’s been the mindset that’s made everything possible…

Be bold. Play first. Live Free.

Thank you for reading!

Woman Wednesday: Allison

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Q and A with Allison, Denver, Colorado

“I believe that if we let ourselves be paralyzed by our fears, we’ll never achieve our full potential.”

Q: What are you passionate about?

A: I’m passionate about documentary filmmaking because of the ability to connect people through stories.

I’m currently touring the film festival circuit with a documentary about two elderly, married entomologists.

I’ve filmed digital content for clients like National Geographic, the BBC, the Travel Channel, Lonely Planet, NBC, and a host of others.

Steve Jobs famously said, “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.”

The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation to come.’ I fully believe that!

Stories have such incredible power to inspire, to reveal our shared humanity, to bring about positive change, and to create empathy and emotion (humor being one of my favorites).

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I’m also really passionate about helping female entrepreneurs acquire the skills to create their own video content from home.

With the development of the COVID-19 coronavirus, I think a lot of women [have been] working from home, doing more video conference calls, and trying to incorporate DIY video into their business to bring in clients.

I wanted to help other women continue to succeed with their businesses!

So, I recently began sharing the knowledge I’ve acquired over the years from big-budget film shoots and digital storytelling content and modifying it to help women create high-quality DIY videos from home.

I’m really dedicated to helping them learn to make videoes and storytelling their business ally.

I’m passionate about showing them not only learn how to use gear but also how to map out the story arc, messaging, and branding in each of their videos and conference calls with clients; how to develop a strategy before they begin putting up videos; and how to map out the way in which each video plays into the larger story of their business.

Once they have that knowledge and skill set, they will have such incredible power to inspire and connect with clients!

Q: What were your younger years like?

A: I was a major introvert as a child. I was very quiet and spent an enormous amount of time reading.

I loved stories, and I read everything from Roman mythology to the history of Dorothea Lange, to the latest science fiction novels.

At 15, I began taking summer school classes at Stanford, and I later received both my undergraduate and master’s degrees from Stanford.

My early fascination with storytelling influenced my decision to become a newspaper reporter after graduation.

After a time, I transitioned to telling stories through film and video and incorporated the skills of a print journalist into my approach to documentaries and digital content.

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Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?

A: When I first picked up a camera, I remember being very intimidated by the technical aspects of it.

And I remember being similarly daunted by all of the logistics and crafting of a story arc when I made my first film.

But I believe that if we let ourselves be paralyzed by our fears, we’ll never achieve our full potential.

I steadily acquired the storytelling and production skills and the knowledge of film gear, and I would love to help other women out with that—especially female entrepreneurs who are working at home and need to incorporate DIY video into their business.

I definitely empathize with how video can initially feel very formidable. My message is: Don’t let that fear paralyze you! There are so many ways to DIY it.

And I’m more than willing to help anyone out that needs advice.

There are many statistics about the power of videos and storytelling, but for me, it all comes down to the ability to connect with others, to inspire and motivate them, and to foster our shared humanity.

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Q: What does feminism mean to you?

A: To me, being a modern feminist means supporting those who identify as women, lifting each other up, amplifying our voices, and having the right to personally choose how we live our lives.

I also think it’s crucial to consider feminism through an intersectional lens if we want the movement to be truly inclusive and representative of the voices of women of all races, classes, religions, abilities, and orientations.

Thank you for reading!

I’d love to connect with you!

Woman Wednesday: Valeria

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Q and A with Valeria, born in Budapest, Hungary, living in Costa de Sol, Spain

“I will spend the rest of my life with myself, so self-care and wellness for “my time” both physically and mentally have become a focal point.”


Q: What are you passionate about? 

A: Awe my passions! My passions embody different paths: First, about my and your health, functional fitness, and how we can all age gracefully…I know it is a huge challenge for all of us to stay fit, flexible, and healthy.

I am an avid hiker with my puppers, and I love my CrossFit classes (both of which tighten and shorten my muscles and ligaments). My yoga really helps to balance it out and reverse the harmful effects of aging, but with that said, I am more interested in taking ownership of the health and aging of my body and mind (than nailing the perfect headstand or arm balance).

I have been doing yoga for the past 25 years and teaching for the last 15 years and have been fortunate to have studied under Baron Baptiste, Ana Forest, John Friend, and my beloved teacher, Shiva Rea.

Teaching yoga led me to study to become an Ayurvedic practitioner. I owned a yoga studio in Vancouver, Canada (I lived there for 30 years), and after classes, I had students come up and talk about their health concerns.

As a yoga teacher, I could only help so much, so I decided to embark on the journey to become an Ayurvedic practitioner. Ayurveda can be traced back some 3,000 years and is the sister science of Yoga.

My second passion would be about animals, by way of example my pets serve as a comforting escape like they do for so many of us…almost meditative at times. Lots of work, but also immense fun!

And a third passion would be as simply articulated as “my time.” I will spend the rest of my life with myself, so self-care and wellness for “my time” both physically and mentally have become a focal point as does continuing forward with a work-life integration (more realistic than a work-life balance in my mind).

As far as what I’m working on, my focus has been to create affordable, accessible, and easy-to-follow yoga classes and Ayurveda recommendations that we can all do in the coziness of our own spaces.

As the on-demand membership continues to grow on my website, I now continue “spreading the word” about my on-demand yoga classes (yin–restorative–flow) and Ayurveda articles to help you and me with a work-life integration; after all, “We are all in this together, stay strong, healthy and flexible.”

Also, as I get quite a few questions about how to begin yoga as a counter-balance for training from runners, swimmers, cyclists, bodybuilders, CrossFit participants, physique contestants, I have started to bring together a six-part, three-video yoga series aimed at beginners, those coming off an injury, in rehab, or those who just want to revisit some of the fundamentals.

Q: What were your younger years like?

A: Growing up in communist Hungary meant we could not travel at all, but my dad was a diplomat and so, we were stationed in different countries (Russia and Iraq).

We were privileged to see different parts of the world. I really think that was such an advantage compared to many of my friends living in Hungary. For this, I feel I had a very lucky childhood.

I was privileged to meet and have fun with other children of different races and nationalities–a formative time of innocence to shape a young mind that has embodied my life to this date. That really opened my eyes and framed, I am sure, some of my passions and formed the yogic idea of acceptance in varied forms at a young age. My dad, now 91 and still plays tennis every day, is very open-minded and loving like my mother.

Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?

A: I got quite sick at the age of 45; that’s when I discovered Ayurveda. Ayurveda is preventative medicine.

The great thing about Ayurveda is that its treatments always yield “side benefits, not side effects.”

What I would like others to learn from my story is to stay fit, flexible, and healthy, and find for yourself your own work-life integration toward your own self-care and wellness in whatever form it takes shape–and remember to enjoy the journey despite the ebbs and flows.

Q: What does feminism mean to you? 

A: To me, feminism is that we all need to find our own individuality. We can accomplish and enjoy a lot on our own, but of course, it is beautiful to be in a relationship to share your life with somebody.

Thank you for reading!

Namaste,

Valeria