078. The Harmonious Dance of Motherhood and Entrepreneurship

Ever wondered if you can truly balance a thriving business and the demands of motherhood without sacrificing either? Today on Return to Radiance, I, Danielle Venables, share my personal journey of managing a business while raising young children. We challenge outdated corporate ideas of professionalism, offering insights into creating a more flexible and forgiving work-life balance. Hear about my early struggles, the subconscious programming driving the separation of professional and home life, and how my business has transformed since my third child joined our family. We'll discuss the unique dynamics of juggling dual family businesses alongside my husband's demanding schedule and the importance of allowing space for interruptions and imperfections.

In this empowering episode, we focus on celebrating the resilience and strength of entrepreneurial moms striving to excel in both realms. I emphasize the importance of giving ourselves grace during challenging seasons and embracing the beautifully imperfect aspects of our lives. By showing up authentically and rejecting perfectionism, we can reclaim our power and normalize the presence of children in professional settings. This new paradigm of leadership encourages women to honor their unique journeys and share their wisdom. Tune in and discover that you don't have to choose between being a successful entrepreneur and a devoted parent—you truly can do it all.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Return to Radiance, the podcast with one core purpose to remind you of your innate power and essence. I'm your host, danielle Venables, an Akashic guide and soul coach, here to activate, heal and empower the new wave of soulful CEOs to become radically aligned and unapologetic. In these episodes, we will be diving into all things mystic, soul level transformation, the new paradigm of leadership, business, energetics, awakening, healing and more, as well as holding potent conversations around connecting deeply to your personal power and owning your truth. If you are here for it all, be sure to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. While I'm confident the discussions in this podcast have the power to change your life, these episodes are for information only and are in no way a substitute for individual medical, legal or mental health advice.

Speaker 2: 0:59

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Return to Radiance podcast. If it is your first time here, hello. I am accompanied today by my little sidekick, my three-month-old son Walker. He is refusing to nap for more than about five minutes at a time. So he is here recording with me and it feels like the perfect timely theme for today's episode and that is talking about bridging the gap between motherhood and entrepreneurship.

Speaker 2: 1:40

This is something that in the beginning of my business separate from my marriage, separate from my home life I wasn't allowing space for all of those things to kind of intersect and that was actually creating unnecessary stress and unnecessary chaos at times within my life, within my family, and also creating resistance in terms of showing up fully in my business if I knew that there was a possibility of being interrupted by, specifically, a family member. So it sort of created a paralysis of sorts, because it was almost like I was acting from a place of wanting to seem like I didn't have kids when I was working in my business. And this goes into like layers of professionalism and like the programming that we have around what is professional, what isn't, how do we show up professionally for our clients? And, as a result, because I was so tied to. Because I was so tied to these ways of like old school professionalism, like corporate professionalism, uh, where you wouldn't bring your baby to work, um, you know you're expected to stick your kid in daycare and show up and work as if you didn't have kids and then you know, at the end of the day, go home and do the family thing. And that was so deep in my subconscious programming that I was really struggling and almost trying to maintain this like hard separation between having kids and having a business. And so with that, like I'm sure some of you will resonate with that and also it's ironic because the other half of that is that a lot of us are doing this because we want to spend more time with our kids, because we want the time, freedom and the financial freedom and to not have to have them in daycare five days a week and to nurture them and raise them differently than maybe what we grew up with. So it's just, it's ironic, as I think about it, just how much my subconscious programming was playing into this belief that I had to keep kids and work completely separate.

Speaker 2: 4:53

Now I want to add like a little disclaimer here that obviously kids can be unpredictable, they can cause interruptions, and I think it's really important to gauge and be in tune enough with your own family, with your own kids, with your own energy around it in terms of how distracting it might be to have you know your kids present when you are working. And some of us may want just that, that separation and that ability to just work uninterrupted. And so it's important to like gauge where you're at for yourself and really dive into what feels completely right for you. But I'm speaking to those of you who are not needing, but looking for a permission slip to show up in the imperfect, to show up in the potential for interruption and not have it take away from the potency of your work or of what you have to say or the work that you're here to do in the world, because at the end of the day, they only stay this little for such a short period of time. You blink and they're 14, and then you blink again and they're graduated and moved out and you're a grandma. So it's it's one of those things that you have to strike a balance, and only you will know what is truly right for you. But for me, I had to do a lot of subconscious work to start to allow myself to play in the realm of what if I didn't have to hide my kids from my business, what if I didn't have to have that wall up, and what if I could still show up powerfully and amazingly and create impact without having to lock my bedroom door and keep the kids away and etc. So I want you to just like, as I'm talking and sharing, I want you to just like sit with, like what feels right for you as you tune into this. Um, and also I'm going to go a little bit more into how my business has shifted since having baby number three, because that's another factor. So a little bit of backstory if you're new into my world or if you don't know the intimate details of my family situation.

Speaker 2: 7:26

My husband essentially works full time. We are, we run two businesses, so we've got my business and his welding business and so he's gone quite a bit. He usually works 12-hour days. Sometimes he's away in camp or in another city working for any period of time. From about 2020 to 2023, he was working in camp six days a week and only home on Sundays, so I was basically single mom in it six days a week, just because that was where the work was and that was what needed to be done at the time.

Speaker 2: 8:09

And so, with that, I was the only one at home with my daughter. I was the only one dealing with my older son, who is in school, but you know, from 3.30 when he got home until bedtime, it was just me, and then, after bedtime was recharging and I very much. On one hand, I'm really proud of everything that I built in that time and on the other hand, it was very exhausting, was just burnt out. I was tired and maybe I didn't have the space or the capacity, um, to grow my business the way I wanted to see it grow, um, because at the end of the day, like I, I had to be there for my kids, right, um?

Speaker 2: 9:05

And so with that, when we found out that we were expecting number three, it was very much like things have to change. The work situation has to change. There's no more working away for extended periods of time and only being home on Sundays. Support and I. It was a little bit edgy to ask him to scale back um what was working for him and was what was working for us financially, um, in order to support me better, but it was something that, going through this third initiation um of motherhood with our third baby, I knew that I needed and this is work that I've done extensively with my mentor around taking up space in the family, about making space for our own energy, our own desires, our own, you know expansion within the family and the way that that impacts, bless you, the way that it impacts the kids, the way that it impacts the relationship, all those things and that's all work that we can do in the Akashic Records.

Speaker 2: 10:25

It's actually really beautiful stuff to work on, because anytime that you recalibrate or want to take up more space or get more visible, there's actually these threads, obviously, that your kids pick up on energetically and it can bring up their stuff. And it doesn't take me saying it, a lot of you will know that there are karmic ties within the family, right, and so when one of us up levels, it can create these impacts from that karma that can cause a little bit of chaos. And so if you're a mom and you've had those moments where you're like glancing into the future or you're glancing into like getting what you've wanted or expanding in a new way, that feels so fun and exciting and then all of a sudden, your kids get sick or one of them starts to act up, or you know, all of a sudden bedtimes suck and you're not sleeping anymore and it's like sort of that push-pull and those up-level pains. That is related to a need for the entire family to recalibrate alongside you, and so that is a portion of the work that we do in the Akashic Records and in the Akashic field, when you work with me privately specifically, as well as I've added working through the initiations of pregnancy and birth and postpartum integration as well. So for anybody interested in that kind of work, I do have spaces for you, specifically in my one-on-one containers right now.

Speaker 2: 12:04

But to get back on track, but to get back on track, there's just there's a lot when it comes to business and motherhood, like there there's so much. I feel like I've been talking forever already and that's really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the complications that we may face as mothers, compared to somebody who's single or somebody who doesn't have kids or someone who only has dogs, like there are layers to this that are so much deeper, um, that aren't modeled and that aren't like realistically portrayed. When you look at mentors online, there are very, very, very few women who lead with a baby on their lap, who lead with their kid playing in the background, or siblings screaming in the background, or you know the unglamorous side of parenting that we all deal with, no matter how good we are at concealing it. There are very few people who actually show that online. And when I mentioned from 2020 to 2023 in my business, trying to compartmentalize and conceal my family from my business, trying to keep that separation so like harsh and boundaried, it was because all that was modeled to me at that time were either the mompreneur coaches who motherhood was like at the forefront of their business. They served moms, they worked for moms and even then their kids, I think, were in daycare, because he didn't see much of them anyway. But it was either that which I didn't supervise with, or it was, yeah, single coaches who were traveling the world and living the digital nomad life and, you know, hadn't had kids and were doing plant medicine ceremonies and all the things, and there's nothing wrong with any of that. But those were the people in my circle. And so the people that I chose to follow with the successful businesses who I like kind of wanted to model my business after, whose success looked similar to what I was looking for. They were all either single or coupled up, but without kids, and that unconsciously programmed me, um, to not want my kids to have any part of my business. And they still don't Again. Like there are boundaries, there are things in place to minimize interruption and things like that.

Speaker 2: 14:58

But I'm also giving myself a hell of a lot more grace, especially in the seasons where my husband has been in camp and things like that, or the seasons where I've got been in camp and things like that, or the seasons where I've got a little one who is a little unpredictable, although very chill and easy. Um, you know, I've I've had to make space for my business in my in my life and my life right now. My in my life and my life right now. The season of my life that I'm in is raising young kids, and I guess I'm just here to like be that model that shows you that you can do both and you can have both and you don't need to take a step back, you don't need to take a year off. I mean you can if you want to. Again, they're only young once but you don't need to hide parts of your life, the less than ideal, the less than perfect professional parts of your life, um, and and try to act like those don't exist.

Speaker 2: 16:02

Right, and in fact, I think that the more of us who normalize this not saying you need to have your kids pictures all over your social media and stuff, but to simply not, like, exile them from existence when you're working in your business um, can be a really powerful reclamation of just how incredible we are as women. Right, we don't have to compartmentalize the way that a lot of men do. Maybe that was a little sexist, but you know what I mean. You know we can do it all. We can do the homemaking, the homesteading, the baby raising, the business growth, the spiritual healing. We can do all of it because we are so multidimensional and incredible and there are no limits to what we can do and the only limits are the limits we place on ourself. So if that limit is, I can't do this because I have a baby, I can't show up on my podcast unless my baby is napping, um, you know, and there have been days where I haven't shown up and recorded because things just weren't going to plan that day and like that's okay too, but, um, you know I, I could have said, okay, I'll, I'll record an episode next week.

Speaker 2: 17:22

You know I, I could have said, okay, I'll, I'll record an episode next week. And instead I made the decision to show up as both a mom and an entrepreneur, right here, right now, um, and gave myself that permission to just to just be, to just talk, to take the pressure off of what are people going to think, what if it's not professional enough? And to really rewrite like, what does success look like? And to me, success is showing up to share your message, even if forces outside of yourself and situations outside of yourself, such as your kids, are not 100% perfect. Right, I'm not subscribing to this ideal perfectionistic mentality. I am showing up anyway. I'm committing to all of the things that I've committed to in my life in this season, and I'm going to continue to do so, no matter what that looks like life in this season. And I'm going to continue to do so, no matter what that looks like, um, today it looks like a kid eating his fist on my lap and drooling all over me, and that's okay. So all of that to say if you are a mom, if you are going through a season of life that is requiring a little bit more of you, um, and you're still really feeling the call to show up in your business, full permission to do so.

Speaker 2: 18:53

I really really feel like we need more women who are showing up in these new layers of authenticity, um, in these new layers of power and really being who they came here to be, and not sacrificing their own joy and fulfillment and impact in the world, um, in the name of, you know, parenting. We don't need to choose. We don't need to like self-sacrifice in order to be a good parent. In fact, he's quite happy just sitting here listening to me talk about things that he has no idea what I'm saying, um, but we get to do it all, we get to be it all, we get to have it all, and this really is, to me, the new paradigm of leadership, the new paradigm of business, um, and these are the things that that I stand for. These are the things that I believe in wholeheartedly.

Speaker 2: 19:45

I don't believe in holding back just because you have certain things that aren't picture perfect or Instagram perfect or whatever you want to call it right. You are powerful beyond measure, and the depth of wisdom that you carry as a mother, as somebody who's gone through the initiations of pregnancy and childbirth and the postpartum period and that transformation and just the depth of your feminine essence that comes through these initiations. You have so much important stuff to share, so much wisdom, so much power to share with the world, and it is a damn shame if you are not out there doing just that. So that's what I've got for you today. Now he's chewing on my thumb. I hope you have a fantastic week ahead.

Speaker 2: 20:43

If this resonated, leave a comment if you're watching this on YouTube, or reach out to me on Instagram at I am Danielle Venables, or on Facebook if you have me on there, and let's just connect. If you decide to show up baby in hand, tag me. I want to see it. I want to see women leading in the fullness of who they are and owning the season of life that they are in, because when one of us rises, we all rise together. So that's all I've got. I hope you have the best week and I will talk to you next time. Bye for now.

Speaker 1: 21:23

Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this podcast, it would mean the world if you'd take a moment to download a couple episodes and rate the show to help it reach more like-minded leaders. If you loved today's discussion and decide to share it, be sure to tag me on Instagram at Radiant Soul Coach to help expand the ripple effect of this podcast.