Stories & Strategies for Women Podcast
I recently spoke on a podcast: Stories and Strategies for Women hosted by Claudine Wolk. I met Claudine at a local bucks happening event last year, and I was honored that she wanted to have me on her podcast. Claudine highlights women’s honest stories in hopes of motivating and inspiring other women in the process. I am going to highlight a few topics discussed in the podcast, but you can listen to the full episode here.
Finding Success
I am a pediatric nurse practitioner, but I have always been a creative from a young age. I started my Instagram page when we bought our 1860 farmhouse because I wanted a space to document our process of renovation; a newer version of a scrapbook you could say. I quickly fell in love with content creation.
Finding success on social media is going to look differently for everyone but I believe that there are two key aspects:
consistency and willingness to adapt.
It takes time to find success on social media, and it takes consistency through the highs and lows. It is also important to be willing to adapt to all of the changes and find new ways of creating content and interacting with your audience. Instagram was primarily still photos when I started, and it was not until later that more video content and reels were introduced. I did not know anything about sharing on social media, but I was willing to learn along the way, and I have grown a lot in the process.
My focus has always been sharing the whole process of renovation, in real time. Instagram can make projects feel unrealistic, like they happen overnight. I think it is important to share the realistic struggles of home renovation, and bring people along for the journey.
Perfection comes with time, but it is important to celebrate all of the progress along the way.
There is beauty in the process.
Sharing
I share a little bit of everything: home renovation and design, motherhood, tid-bits of pediatric nurse practitioner knowledge, our journey to low toxic living, and life in between. I often get asked for links to certain products I source for our home, and I share affiliate links when I can which earns me a small commission on the purchase, but I also love to source items second hand. I utilize Facebook Marketplace, and I also love to mosey through antique/second hand stores. Whether an item is bought second hand, or went out of stock, my hope is that it inspires a vision in your home even if not perfectly replicated. I always recommend shopping your own home first, you would be surprised the items you can find in those old home decor boxes in the attic that could work perfectly in a space now.
I share about our journey to low toxic living mostly on my Instagram page, @well_livedfarmhouse. I have been slowly switching our products in our home for clean alternatives for the past 3+ years, and I have been sharing the process along the way. The products that we are bringing into our home has even more of an important focus now that we have our daughter. We buy most of our clean products from Young Living because it is a one stop shop for us to get the biggest number of products from one place, delivered to our door which is even better.
My Book: “Someday”
After 14 months TTC, we saw Dr. Martin at Shady Grove Fertility. After a full workup, we were diagnosed with unexplained infertility. Infertility is a very hard process on your heart; it always felt similar to being on a carousel that you cannot seem to get off of. You begin to feel hope as it starts to slow down, and then you feel sadness, grief, frustration as it starts to speed up again.
Music is so powerful, and it can speak to you differently in certain moments or times in your life. We felt very emotionally connected to the song “Someday” by William Beckmann on a particularly hard day one in our journey. I felt a strong pull on my heart after that moment to do something with those words. The next day I wrote a story, and incorporated the lyrics into the second half of that story. I did not know if it would go anywhere, but I continued to follow this pull on my heart to pursue whatever path it was taking me on, and it came to fruition to be this children’s theme book.
This became a passion project of mine when we were going through the process, and I found out that we were pregnant after our second round of IUI just as I submitted the illustrations to the publisher.
I always found that books talked about infertility, but ended with the happy ending. My goal with this book is to provide hope in the wait before your someday is here. It is a book that really relates to anyone whose journey to parenthood looks different than they anticipated.
Cultivating Community
I have met so many incredible people in the process of sharing our journey with infertility on Instagram. Infertility is a journey that makes people feel very alone, especially when they do not know anyone else in a similar season of wait, but unfortunately the reality is that you are not alone at all. I am happy to be a source of contact to chat about my experience, offer support if they have no one else to talk to, or just be a friend in the process.
I can say that infertility changes you, and it changes you as a parent in a beautiful way.
Marketing
I am marketing the book myself on social media and in person interactions. It takes time to self market, but I think that people really connect with the book if they are currently in a season of wait or experienced it 10 years ago.
My goal with the book is to simply get it book into the homes of those who need it most, and be an avenue for support for those who know someone navigating the journey of infertility to gift. I know how helpless loved ones can feel, and this book is a great way to offer support when there is not much to do or say.
Read more about my book writing process here.
Thank you for having me Claudine, listen to the full podcast below.
