Improving the lives of families by providing support through education, communication and advocacy.
Welcome to The Entrepreneur Mamas Page! Here we highlight a different mama that works both in and outside of the home in Central Vermont. Interviews will focus on the challenges and joys of working both in and outside of the home. I hope you enjoy these interviews and that they inspire and uplift you on your own journey of motherhood, and the never ending quest to find balance and strength to pursue your own dreams while being the best mama you can be!
Feel free to suggest a mama to interview for this page, we welcome your recommendations!
Feel free to suggest a mama to interview for this page, we welcome your recommendations!
Linda Wooliever
Owner of VT Fiddle Heads, a raw vegan cafe, online store and manufacturer of filtering bags for wholesale and retail sales
Mama since 1999
Linda Wooliever
What drives you to do the work you do?
In 1995 my mother went through a quick bout with and died of cancer and simultaneously my closest friend/neighbor's dad died of complications due to a lifetime of diabetes. My mother and friend's father both followed and used allopathic medical treatments and at the time I didn't know anything else. I became vitally interested in food as medicine and in the body's innate ability to heal itself because of that experience with them. Since then, I've seen countless people take charge of their lives and their health and I'm driven to be here for anyone who wants to become their own guru (or at least learn about alternative methods of care as well as healthy food.) I love feeding people healthy and delicious food AND showing them how to do this themselves. I love seeing people eat food that makes them light up inside and I LOVE hearing them take charge of their lives in positive ways.
How do you find balance, or attempt to find balance in your life?
I work hard to have time for myself each day: to exercise each day; to be creative when I need to be creative; and to be quiet when I need to be quiet. It's very easy to work all the time when you love what you do and the challenge is to remember to play, to celebrate, to find time with friends and family and to take good care of myself and my family.
What advice do you have for other mamas who work in and outside of the home?
Begin your day each day with something that you WANT TO DO FIRST, always. Then do what you have to do for work and for others. I start the day in some sort of quiet or creative moment and then move to exercising so that I've taken care of myself first and then I feel accomplished for the whole day. Then I get to the TO DO list for work or home done. It's difficult for us mamas to put ourselves first, particularly when the kids are so young. My kids are older now so this is something that I can do with greater success than I could when they were infants and toddlers. If your kids are still young, my recommendation would be to do something sweet for yourself each day so that you remember how to know yourself, love yourself and care for yourself and then when they get older, do this FIRST thing each day.
What is your favorite thing about the work you do?
Meeting the people that I meet is an absolute honor and blessing. I feel honored to hear and/or be a part of their lives and story. I also feel like my cafe is my laboratory for all the important work I have to do to (hopefully) become a more evolved human being. I have been able to work on so many aspects of myself through owning a cafe/store/wholesale business, being a "boss" to the great people that work at the cafe/shop, and with the wide variety of people that come into the cafe or shop at our online store. Time management is something that has to learned quickly too, particularly when mothering is still my #1 job. It's all my favorite and it's not always blissful. There's a lot of mistakes in the laboratory. :-)
How do you think it contributes to your motherhood experience?
Learning about/growing/expanding myself, improving and healing my "stuff" all help to make me a better person and HAS to improve my parenting. I think I'm a much calmer and better parent now because I'm doing what I love and modeling to my kids that I'm choosing to create the life I want. I hope that they see how much work I'm doing to create a better life for me, for them and for the world around me. I am hopeful that I will keep growing and expanding on this journey and my mothering skills will get better and better. I am hoping to be an incredible grandmother one day in the future. :-)
Linda can be found at her cafe/store in Worcester, helping people learn intuitive eating, teaching people how to make food or making delicious food for them at the cafe. She can be reached at 229-4496 or at vt-fiddle.com
In 1995 my mother went through a quick bout with and died of cancer and simultaneously my closest friend/neighbor's dad died of complications due to a lifetime of diabetes. My mother and friend's father both followed and used allopathic medical treatments and at the time I didn't know anything else. I became vitally interested in food as medicine and in the body's innate ability to heal itself because of that experience with them. Since then, I've seen countless people take charge of their lives and their health and I'm driven to be here for anyone who wants to become their own guru (or at least learn about alternative methods of care as well as healthy food.) I love feeding people healthy and delicious food AND showing them how to do this themselves. I love seeing people eat food that makes them light up inside and I LOVE hearing them take charge of their lives in positive ways.
How do you find balance, or attempt to find balance in your life?
I work hard to have time for myself each day: to exercise each day; to be creative when I need to be creative; and to be quiet when I need to be quiet. It's very easy to work all the time when you love what you do and the challenge is to remember to play, to celebrate, to find time with friends and family and to take good care of myself and my family.
What advice do you have for other mamas who work in and outside of the home?
Begin your day each day with something that you WANT TO DO FIRST, always. Then do what you have to do for work and for others. I start the day in some sort of quiet or creative moment and then move to exercising so that I've taken care of myself first and then I feel accomplished for the whole day. Then I get to the TO DO list for work or home done. It's difficult for us mamas to put ourselves first, particularly when the kids are so young. My kids are older now so this is something that I can do with greater success than I could when they were infants and toddlers. If your kids are still young, my recommendation would be to do something sweet for yourself each day so that you remember how to know yourself, love yourself and care for yourself and then when they get older, do this FIRST thing each day.
What is your favorite thing about the work you do?
Meeting the people that I meet is an absolute honor and blessing. I feel honored to hear and/or be a part of their lives and story. I also feel like my cafe is my laboratory for all the important work I have to do to (hopefully) become a more evolved human being. I have been able to work on so many aspects of myself through owning a cafe/store/wholesale business, being a "boss" to the great people that work at the cafe/shop, and with the wide variety of people that come into the cafe or shop at our online store. Time management is something that has to learned quickly too, particularly when mothering is still my #1 job. It's all my favorite and it's not always blissful. There's a lot of mistakes in the laboratory. :-)
How do you think it contributes to your motherhood experience?
Learning about/growing/expanding myself, improving and healing my "stuff" all help to make me a better person and HAS to improve my parenting. I think I'm a much calmer and better parent now because I'm doing what I love and modeling to my kids that I'm choosing to create the life I want. I hope that they see how much work I'm doing to create a better life for me, for them and for the world around me. I am hopeful that I will keep growing and expanding on this journey and my mothering skills will get better and better. I am hoping to be an incredible grandmother one day in the future. :-)
Linda can be found at her cafe/store in Worcester, helping people learn intuitive eating, teaching people how to make food or making delicious food for them at the cafe. She can be reached at 229-4496 or at vt-fiddle.com
Eros Bongiovanni
Dr.Hauschka Esthetician/Skin Care Goddess at Holistica Facials
Mama since 2005
Eros Bongiovanni
What drives you to do the work you do?
I love helping people, even in small ways, feel beautiful. Everyone has beauty. Beauty is not tight skin or frozen foreheads. Dr.Rudolph Steiner said that "Beauty allows the inner self to become visible" and this is what I mean by beauty. A client will come in full of stress, internalizing their daily life responsibilities, feeling tired or cranky and anxious and this is not beauty. Beauty is a feeling and a being. When they leave they have slowed down, relaxed, they smile more and walk taller, and the glow, the radiance has returned to their faces. This is the reward that keeps me going. Its such a high to send them out the door knowing I just raised the energy vibration a bit.
How do you find balance, or attempt to find balance in your life:?
Balance is hard. Every day is a challenge. I sense I am out of balance when I feel an anxious pull that I did not spend enough time with my daughter this day. I have to lie in bed next to her just staring at her. Or, when I get a guilty feeling that I turned down a client booking to be with my family, and I really needed that money to pay my loans or rent at the spa.
I was really off balance when I became a new mom six years ago. I sort of lost track of my self, including my satisfaction with work, in the beginning. All I wanted was to be a mommy. I even went through my closet and got rid of the clothes that I did not consider "appropriate" for a mom to wear. What a crock, as if you change overnight into another person. (If anyone out there has the leopard fur mini skirt I sold at my yard sale five years ago I want it back!) I am still a cool person and I still find reward in my career.
I guess balance is found when you have enough time in the day to see your child"s face AND work as much as you want to get stuff done. Oh, and try to go out once in a while, with your partner or just the girls. It keeps you from feeling old and cranky.
What advice do you have for other mamas who work in and outside of the home?
The best advice I can give other mamas who work outside the home is to be gentle with yourself. Its so common for us to have ridiculously high expectations that we can't possibly live up to. Just do your best. Sometimes I literally say to myself, out loud; "Well, Eros you did the best you could". And I really don't care if the floor needs sweeping or the laundry piles up. The housework is always the first to slack off. I have low standards.
Another mama who works from home (I do all of my data and office stuff out of my home) told me she is really good at compartmentalizing and that is SUCH good advice. Otherwise you will be trying to put together an email promotion while your daughter is attempting to engage you in a puppet show and NEITHER of them are successful.
And don't forget to be nice to yourself and make time for you. You should have time for you every day whether you take a walk or go to yoga or take a bath. If you give too much and don't rejuvenate your soul there will be nothing left to give the others who depend on you. Schedule it, write it in your calender if you need to.
Whats your favorite thing about the work you do? How do you think it contributes to your motherhood experience?
My favorite thing about work is that I help people feel happy but also that my work environment is really mellow, the music is slow, the room is clean, the aromatherapy is amazing, and the rhythm of the treatment relaxes both myself and the client. Some of my clients would be shocked to find out that I am a bit high strung (my husband would be happy to elaborate on that) because I am so zen at work. It is the perfect balance for me, to go into work and slow down and breathe. Because home life is...the family circus. Sometimes its actually fun to escape the family circus and go to work. And its always good to come home. Each one forces you to appreciate the other.
Eros can be found at her spa Holistica in Montpelier, helping her clients find their inner beauty. She can be reached at 224-6650.
I love helping people, even in small ways, feel beautiful. Everyone has beauty. Beauty is not tight skin or frozen foreheads. Dr.Rudolph Steiner said that "Beauty allows the inner self to become visible" and this is what I mean by beauty. A client will come in full of stress, internalizing their daily life responsibilities, feeling tired or cranky and anxious and this is not beauty. Beauty is a feeling and a being. When they leave they have slowed down, relaxed, they smile more and walk taller, and the glow, the radiance has returned to their faces. This is the reward that keeps me going. Its such a high to send them out the door knowing I just raised the energy vibration a bit.
How do you find balance, or attempt to find balance in your life:?
Balance is hard. Every day is a challenge. I sense I am out of balance when I feel an anxious pull that I did not spend enough time with my daughter this day. I have to lie in bed next to her just staring at her. Or, when I get a guilty feeling that I turned down a client booking to be with my family, and I really needed that money to pay my loans or rent at the spa.
I was really off balance when I became a new mom six years ago. I sort of lost track of my self, including my satisfaction with work, in the beginning. All I wanted was to be a mommy. I even went through my closet and got rid of the clothes that I did not consider "appropriate" for a mom to wear. What a crock, as if you change overnight into another person. (If anyone out there has the leopard fur mini skirt I sold at my yard sale five years ago I want it back!) I am still a cool person and I still find reward in my career.
I guess balance is found when you have enough time in the day to see your child"s face AND work as much as you want to get stuff done. Oh, and try to go out once in a while, with your partner or just the girls. It keeps you from feeling old and cranky.
What advice do you have for other mamas who work in and outside of the home?
The best advice I can give other mamas who work outside the home is to be gentle with yourself. Its so common for us to have ridiculously high expectations that we can't possibly live up to. Just do your best. Sometimes I literally say to myself, out loud; "Well, Eros you did the best you could". And I really don't care if the floor needs sweeping or the laundry piles up. The housework is always the first to slack off. I have low standards.
Another mama who works from home (I do all of my data and office stuff out of my home) told me she is really good at compartmentalizing and that is SUCH good advice. Otherwise you will be trying to put together an email promotion while your daughter is attempting to engage you in a puppet show and NEITHER of them are successful.
And don't forget to be nice to yourself and make time for you. You should have time for you every day whether you take a walk or go to yoga or take a bath. If you give too much and don't rejuvenate your soul there will be nothing left to give the others who depend on you. Schedule it, write it in your calender if you need to.
Whats your favorite thing about the work you do? How do you think it contributes to your motherhood experience?
My favorite thing about work is that I help people feel happy but also that my work environment is really mellow, the music is slow, the room is clean, the aromatherapy is amazing, and the rhythm of the treatment relaxes both myself and the client. Some of my clients would be shocked to find out that I am a bit high strung (my husband would be happy to elaborate on that) because I am so zen at work. It is the perfect balance for me, to go into work and slow down and breathe. Because home life is...the family circus. Sometimes its actually fun to escape the family circus and go to work. And its always good to come home. Each one forces you to appreciate the other.
Eros can be found at her spa Holistica in Montpelier, helping her clients find their inner beauty. She can be reached at 224-6650.
