In this interview, I am excited to share a deeply personal and reflective conversation with Amber Lilyestrom, a transformational branding and business strategist, writer, speaker and host of The Soul Fueled CEO Podcast. Amber has also been a coach and champion for me as I’ve created Mother’s Quest and leads a community of soul-fueled CEO’s that has become an important source of support.
From the moment she answers my first question, you will experience how Amber brings this combination of simultaneous vulnerability and crystal clarity. She brings those gifts along with her own trial and error experiences as an entrepreneur and mother to help visionaries, leaders and what she calls “disruptivators” turn their passions into heart-centered brands and thriving businesses.
It was the birth of her daughter, and becoming a mother, that caused her to proactively design her life and business after working for 10 years in collegiate athletics marketing for her alma mater, the University of New Hampshire. And, it is her desire to seize life, new experiences and new opportunities that led her to become Mrs. New Hampshire 2016.
In our conversation, Amber shares how speaking our truth allows us to live joy-filled lives. She opens up about her traumatic experience as a childhood survivor of sexual abuse, how that event shaped her relationship with her mother, and how it also shaped her own journey in motherhood and business.
I loved hearing about how Amber lives her E.P.I.C life by coming home to herself and therefore coming home to the ones she loves. I left the conversation grounded and ready to let go of judgment, to live my truth and to design my life.
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Do you enjoy this podcast and want to support more meaningful conversations such as these? Visit the Mother’s Quest Patreon Page to become a regular patron or visit this link - www.mothersquest.com/be-a-supporter to make a one-time donation.
In this interview, I am excited to share a thoughtful and honest conversation with wife, mother, freelance television anchor/reporter, volunteer for philanthropic causes and entrepreneur, Erika Greff.
Erika lives in the heart of New York City with her husband and two sons, ages 13 and 12. I came to know her over the summer, when we were both grieving for the loss of our mutual friend, Leslie Fischer. Erika and I talk about how her boys comforted her the day of Leslie’s funeral and wanted to take positive action in Leslie’s honor that day.
In our conversation, she shares the ways in which she and her husband have encouraged her sons to focus on empathy, gratitude and daily acts of service, which her sons document on a website they created called budgetphilanthropist.com.
We also discuss how Erika has found herself at a career crossroads, after 18 years as an on-air correspondent for PBS’s Nightly Business Report. And, how freelance journalism has given her an opportunity to engage herself and her boys in conscious decision-making about the projects she pursues.
She gets honest about her new entrepreneurial passion, a media company to inform children about the news in their world. And she shares how she perseveres through frustration to find the path to her vision, even going mountain-climbing with her boys to symbolically face the fear of failure in her new venture.
I hope you get inspired, as I did, about consciously instilling the values of kindness, empathy and acts of service in your children. And that you realize you are not alone if you too are struggling to make a new vision become real.
I feel enriched by the generosity Erika so freely shares and excited to explore the resources she recommended to become a “financial grownup” and to cultivate daily kindness in my children. I am grateful she and I have connected and I know our friend Leslie would be too.
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Do you enjoy this podcast and want to support more meaningful conversations such as these? Visit the Mother’s Quest Patreon Page to become a regular patron or visit this link - www.mothersquest.com/be-a-supporter to make a one-time donation.
In Episode #7 of the Mother’s Quest Podcast, I am honored to bring you this intimate, inspired conversation with Jenjii Hysten, a mother, coach, and community leader who I deeply admire.
I have known Jenjii for almost a decade now, through my connection with her husband Franklin. But in recent months, Jenjii’s raw and vulnerable sharing about what it is like to be the mother of two black boys and fear for their safety, caused me to move past my worry of saying or doing the wrong thing and reach out to her in a whole different way.
Our honest conversation about the ways in which we’ve stepped out of our comfort zones to live out loud and forge connections with one another based on our common humanity, as mothers of sons, was one of the most powerful moments I have had yet on the Mother’s Quest Podcast.
Jenjii is an advocate, teacher, student, facilitator and a voice for the voiceless. She was born in Los Angeles but says that Oakland raised her. She studied Interdisciplinary-Studies with an emphasis on Urban/Economic Development at UC Berkeley, holds a CompassPoint Executive Director certificate and is an ordained minister.
In her early 20s, she worked with the Children's Defense Fund for a program called Freedom School and says it saved her life. This is where she learned the beauty of Servant Leadership, which is one of her core values. As the Founder of SOS, Saving Our Sisters Saving our Selves, over the course of 10 years, she served hundreds of girls throughout the Bay Area. In her 20+ years working, Jenjii has served as a Program Director, Executive Director, Dean of Students, Curriculum Designer, started New Life Ministries with her husband Franklin, and is currently the Co-founder and CEO of Hysten Consulting, LLC.
I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. I was struck by the concept of rhythm, and how it can manifest in our lives, our children, our bodies, our communities, and perhaps most importantly, our collective humanity. I hope you will leave the conversation, as I did, inspired to think about the ways in which you can find your rhythm and live out loud in your own E.P.I.C. life.
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Mother's Quest is a podcast for moms who are ready to live a truly E.P.I.C. life.
Join in for intimate conversations with a diverse group of inspiring mothers as they share how they are living an E.P.I.C. life, engaging mindfully with their children (E), passionately and purposefully making a difference beyond their family (P), investing in themselves (I), and connecting to a strong support network (C).
Learn More at www.mothersquest.com
Join our community of mothers to light the way and sustain you on your quest at https://www.facebook.com/groups/mothersquest/
In this episode, I was honored to have a conversation with my children’s holistic pediatrician Dr. Elisa Song, founder of Whole Family Wellness, creator of the online resource Healthy Kids Happy Kids and an amazing mother to her daughter and son.
If you tuned into Episode 5, you know Elisa gave me permission to replay her interview of me from her Thriving Child Summit, where we talked about my motherhood journey with my older son, how Elisa became a key part of the puzzle to help him thrive, and what led me to create Mother’s Quest. In this interview, I got to turn the tables and learn about the influences that shaped Elisa and how she approaches living an E.P.I.C. life.
Elisa is a board-certified, Stanford-, NYU-, and UCSF-trained holistic pediatrician. In 2005, she forged a daring path, by going out on her own and founding Whole Family Wellness, an integrative pediatric practice in Belmont, CA – one of the first and most highly regarded holistic pediatric practices in the country. She’s also a lecturer for the Center for Education and Development in Clinical Homeopathy (CEDH), Academy for Pain Research, Institute for Functional Medicine, and Holistic Pediatric Association, among others.
Through Whole Family Wellness, and now with her online resource Healthy Kids Happy Kids, Elisa helps thousands of parents, like me, get to the root causes of health concerns for our children. And, she helps us understand how to heal them from the inside out, utilizing conventional pediatrics along with functional medicine, holistic nutrition, homeopathy, acupuncture, herbal medicine, and essential oils.
In this conversation, Elisa and I talk about how the legacy of brave women in her life, making courageous choices, impacted her and her sisters and set them all on a path to become healers and helpers. Her grandmother and mother, who both came to America from Korea, instilled independence, strength, and “grit” in her, which she relied on to follow her passion in integrative medicine. We also talk about connected parenting, the importance of scheduling special time with our children, and the need to prioritize our own health and well-being, something Elisa and I admit we both need to focus more on.
I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. Elisa is such an inspiration and source of wisdom and healing for my family. I am thrilled to share her with you.
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