The Power of Storytelling - Episode 23
Welcome back to The Power of Storytelling!
Esther, Tamra, and Corina - thank you for sharing your stories, your words, and your journey with all of us.
This month’s episode reminded me that every experience, lesson, setback, and celebration all provide us with an opportunity to learn and grow, and develop greater compassion, understanding, and empathy. No experience is wasted, and everything happens the way that it’s supposed to.
It’s truly my honor to share the stories and provide the space here to share a little bit more about the change makers behind these words. I encourage you to check out Esther, Corina and Tamra after you listen to this week’s new episode.
*Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this episode are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Seek The Joy Podcast.
Esther Molyneux is the founder and creator of She is Found Studio, a British faith-based stationery and self-development brand with a fresh perspective.
Esther’s background is in design and creative problem- solving; taking a seed of an idea and turning it into reality. She’s worked for brands such as ASOS, Kurt Geiger and French Connection, in senior roles as part of their creative and fashion teams. Esther seeks to combine effortless design, luxury and utility.
After a difficult past few years with a lot of change - the breakdown of her marriage left her as a single mom, losing her home, job, and identity. Her relationship with her faith has inspired her to set up her own business to work around motherhood. In this week’s new episode, Esther shares her journey and life’s battles - figuring out who she was, and where she was heading. As Esther so beautifully shares, every individual voice matters, every woman matters, yet as we women we often struggle to walk the life of our choosing, and the sense of freedom that we all deserve. Esther shares the journey she embarked on to find herself again, and the twists and turns she encountered along the way. Esther’s turn around came when she discovered a love, hope and faith in Christ. For Esther, faith was a turning point. It wasn’t a faith in herself or in religion, but as she shares it was a trust in god who loves her as she is. While Esther is in no way religious, she found an intimacy in faith that allowed her to reconnect to herself and find healing - spiritually, mentally and emotionally. Esther’s reflections on how she started to discover her life again, will remind you that we can all embark on our own path of transformation in our own way, when we’re ready.
Today, Esther is a coffee-fueled single mother juggling life with a passionate drive to serve others. She’s spreading messages of love to help women feel less alone in their journey, and encourage women to own and celebrate their enough-ness. She is Found Studio has created ‘Her Collection’ which is a modern stationery edit carefully crafted to combine words of faith, self-development and creativity. Blank pages and empty lines can sometimes be discouraging, so Her Collection uses beautiful photography and layouts that create a bold, stunning backdrop.
“I’m unashamed of my past or how my future is shaping up to be. Yes, I’m still on welfare and my history caused me to doubt myself, and yes I still experience grief, however my soul is free. I believe women should experience a walk of freedom, undeterred by the voices that shut us down and out. We all deserve a space to become women that can grow in love, strength, courage and wisdom. This walk is different and unique as individuals, but a spark of confidence can trigger a life of living in perpetual light full of love, joy and peace.”
Tamra Ryan is the CEO of Women’s Bean Project, a Colorado 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with the mission to change women’s lives by providing stepping stones to self-sufficiency through social enterprise. They believe that all women have the power to transform their lives through employment. So they hire women who are chronically unemployed and they teach them to work by making nourishing products. They learn to stand tall, find their purpose and break the cycle of poverty. Because they believe when you change a woman’s life, you change her family’s life.
As Tamra shares in this week’s new episode, her perspective changed the moment she walked into the Women’s Bean Project and she met the women that the Bean employs. She didn’t recognize the human challenges in running a business whose employees are the neediest among us. She didn’t think about why her employees hadn’t held a job longer than a year, and she didn’t realize that even if a woman had tried to the best of her ability to find a job or turn her life around, there were still powerful forces working against her. The culture she walked into at the Bean Project couldn’t have been more different than her white middle-class upbringing, and the lessons, wisdom, and compassion she’s gained has changed the course of her life forever.
Throughout the episode Tamra shares the stories of some of the women she’s met in her tenure - and every story and experience will inspire you and touch you. Her reflections on the power of the resiliency of the human spirit, the women she’s met at the Bean Project who have faced and overcame insurmountable odds, and how it’s changed her - from being a “hard hearted business focused woman” to a woman who wants and needs to know each woman’s story, will remind you that what we have in common as people, is far stronger than anything that might divide us. Today, Tamra leads the Bean Project’s strategic direction and is instrumental in putting the organization on the national and international map, as a high-performing and impactful social enterprise. She is a former board member of Social Venture Partners-Denver, currently chairs the Board of Directors for the Social Enterprise Alliance and is on the advisory board for the Barton Institute for Philanthropy and Social Enterprise at the University of Denver.
“Through the Bean Project I learned that it’s society that holds certain women back, but I also learned something far more moving about the resiliency about the human spirit. I’ve met countless women at the Bean Project that faced and overcame insurmountable odds. They taught me that it is possible to confront and overcome fear, shame, and lack of self-worth. I have seen how difficult but necessary it is to stare adversity in the eye, and despite setbacks, a path to a new life can be created. I’ve seen the value and impact of a woman believing that she is worthy of a better life.”
Corina Sowada is an empowerment coach who is on a mission to help women find themselves (and love!) again after a toxic relationship. Through her work, Corina helps women dive into identifying toxicity, narcissism and abuse, all to break the cycle. She helps you identify and break trauma bonds and heal from a toxic relationship.
A large part of Corina’s work is helping women receive and step into their feminine energy and power, and learning to love the woman that you see reflected back at you in the mirror. And as Corina shares in this week’s new episode, in order to help other women do this work, Corina had to do it for herself first.
Corina so beautifully shares her journey in this week’s episode, moving from an on and off again toxic relationship for for years, to ultimately choosing herself and her self-worth. In many ways Corina lost herself during that time. She lost her voice, her passion, and optimism. She no longer recognized the woman she saw in the mirror.
Then one day something clicked, and she made the decision to end the relationship. She started to prioritize her health and wellness, and she learned to love her body again. Her mindset began to shift too, and through setting boundaries she started to become Corina again. Corina’s reflections will remind you that we are all capable of choosing the life we deserve, but we first have to get really clear on who we are, and what it is that we want. Through this journey Corina learned to reprogram her subconscious thoughts and beliefs around men, dating, her self-worth, and she learned to lean on her intuition. Today, Corina loves and accepts herself fully, and she has leaned on her own experiences to help women break free from toxic relationships in their lives and step into their worth too, the same way that she has.
“You are in control of your life. The people that hurt you are no longer in control, and they were meant to come into your life for a reason. I believe that life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you and there’s a lesson in every relationship. I had to take a look at every single relationship that I had and figure out what I had to learn from this. That healed so much within me, and when I started to do what lights me up and follow my joy, I started to become more me.”
To connect with Esther and her work, visit her website www.sheisfound.com and on Instagram @sheisfound.studio and Pinterest @sheisfound.studio
To connect with Tamra and Women’s Bean Project you can visit their website www.womensbeanProject.com and you can find Tamra on Twitter @tamraryan and via email Tamra.ryan@womensbeanproject.com and you can find Women’s Bean Project on Instagram @womensbeanproject on Twitter @womensbean and Facebook @womensbeanproject
To connect with Corina and learn more about her work visit her website and on Instagram @corina_unleashed and Twitter @CorinaSowada you can find her Facebook group here and she has spots open for 1:1 coach, you can book a discovery call here
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