Let's Be Real: Mama Journeys

Diane Cherico is in Midland Park, New Jersey and a therapeutic massage therapist and mother of 2. She started the journey of massage when she had to leave her abusive husband (and father of her kids).  She wanted to be a registered nurse but didn't have the money or time to go to school for it. Her kiddos are 40 and 35 and she has always been shocked by how fast it all goes. Her biggest challenge...

Chris Livezey is an author, speaker and mindset coach.  He is also a real estate investor. He was born and raised in the Philadelphia area but now lives in Florida.  Back in 1999 he set the goal to be a motivational speaker and took the path to be an investor so he can go out and change lives. His dream to be a motivational speaker started all because he was pigeonholed into a place where his teac...

Melissa Rod is a budding author, a nanny who married her last employer who had a little boy. Her book is about a man she thought was her dad but wasn't. Her mom doubled down and said she was switched at birth!  This caused her to write a book about her experience. When she started nannying for her current husband, his baby was 13 months old. She has six children now from ages 33-19.  Her biggest m...

Toni King is a Texan mom who has a goal to help the world navigate medicare.  She has experienced being a part of the "sandwich generation" where we are caring for our kids and also our parents.  She was talking to a gentleman who was confused about his benefits and his experience made her realize she needed to help more people with Medicare.  She wrote a book called Medicare Survival Guide and yo...

Stacy Price is a Colorado native and the mother of two angel babies. She splits her time between Colorado and Virginia, working as an accountant and volunteering with several nonprofits, including serving as a Director on YANA's Board.   Stacy experienced her first pregnancy loss at 22 and, due to age and circumstance, grieved quietly and without support. After years of difficulty conceiving, she...

Caroline Kalicki's focus is making moms to be the best human they can be (not just mom). "Where are YOU on that list of things you are doing." If you don't take care of YOU first, there is no room to take care of others.  Her wife and her took 5 years just to have her first. It was a long, heartbreaking journey and had miscarriage and 17 IUI's, they were finally successful through IVF. These 5 yea...

Katie Dwyer is a mom of a very big spirited 8 year old named Hazel Rose. She lives in NYC and today released her third album! She runs participation classes for babies and mamas. She is working on building confidence in children through music. She writes all of her own music that she sings. She grew up singing in youth choir and really enjoyed music but reading music wasn't her thing because she p...

Y ara N. Ortiz is the owner and CEO of Bookkeeping Consulting Services and founder of Money Moves with Yara, and is a mama.  She is a financial consultant working with small businesses and nonprofits to get their books in order. She's also a master personal financial coach who works with single moms to help them manage their finances to fit their lifestyles.  She believes in experience over educat...

Sabrina Wright-Hobart is an advocate for women in crisis through the Crisis Center and also a breast cancer survivor.  She was diagnosed at 37 years old and has been a huge advocate for care for women experiencing that diagnosis. She has always dedicated her life to nonprofit support with mamas and women in need of domestic violence resources. All of her programs are evidence based and anonymous....

Julie Vera is a mom of two and the host of the Mom Walk Collective, a free space for mamas to walk, get to know each other and walk together.  She has started a consulting business where she helps moms who need some operational efficiencies in their own businesses.  She wants moms to set up a path for success by helping people on the operational backend.  The Mom Walk Collective was created in Cal...

Mackenzie Kryzer has a 9 month old daughter and is adjusting to working full time for AllHealth Network working in the substance use/mental health world. She is in Colorado but moved from Minnesota and wasn't really sure she wanted to be a mom all of her life. She was born with a 10% chance of survival. She was in the hospital for 3 weeks after birth because she was born with diaphragmatic hernia...

Mehri Relin has had a fitness company, operating out of NYC and Denver.  She works with women throughout their pregnancy, postpartum journey and beyond.  The idea is to address how your body changes throughout all of those times through the life of a mama. She runs that program still but is also a therapist working with many different populations. She started working with children and worked on ho...

Emily Redondo is an author, a stay at home mom with four kids who are teenagers and young adults. She worked as a nanny, care salesperson but since she was married she really wrapped her identity around being a mom. She became a mom when she was 23 and the last when she was 34. With her first, she was a single mom and moved back home for help but with the other three she had a different support sy...

Luba Patlakh Kaplun is a mom of three, speech language pathologist and a small business owner called Kidology. She is also an advocate for parents with children with IEP's.  She became a mom at the age of 28 and she has three under the age of 10, the loves of her life. She was born in Ukraine but immigrated to the US when she was 2. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is her hometown and where she currentl...

Dana Dose, THE Family Nutritionist Pro sees patients nationwide where she works with them online to reduce the stress of making meals and being nourished. She has two kids and became a mama at the age of 33.  Her biggest challenge of becoming a mom was figuring out her new place in the world and doing it without any sleep.  She lost her lifelong best friend 2 months after the birth of her first ba...

Alison Beder Solway is an Canadian mom of 4, a fitness professional with an online fitness platform called www.absfitness.ca . Her new book is called The Miles we Run and can be found HERE . She had a long infertility story and wrote a book about it to help explain the obstacles and hurdles that she overcame with that journey. With fertility, anything can be "normal" because every body is differen...

Jean Alfieri is an author, speaker and a dog fan. She is in Colorado Springs and works with Pikes Peak Animal.  She is a step-mom of a little boy and he was the "best part of th deal" when she married her husband. She learns so much from her adult step-son and believes that we can learn so much from our kiddos if we are open to hearing it. She wrote a book about how to handle the loss of a pet. Sh...

Jamie McClung is focused on making mamas a priority in their own life. Her number one focus is self care because that was the game changer for her own life. "Beauty and health from the inside out" as a mom of 2 boys 17 years apart is a huge part of what she talks about with her clients.  The excuses people, especially mamas, make about how they cannot do self care for whatever reason is something...

Emily Markley is a Clinical Psychologist, a nonprofit Executive Director and a mama of 3.  Her nonprofit, Ardent Grove is a partner of YANA's and is doing amazing work in our community. As a mama of three littles, she started having her babies at the age of 32 after struggling with fertility for 2 years. She always knew she wanted to be a mom and the rest of her goals and path came after that as s...

Gerard Wouters, a therapist in Holland who specializes in all things therapy. 98% of his clients are women. He is a dad of a little girl and his therapy was covered by their insurance in Holland but as of 2010 it is not.  He developed a kind of therapy that is based on the Taoist religion.  This monk took one look at him and knew everything Gerard needed and invited him to stay for five weeks.  Af...

Kimberly J. Ward has been many things but being a mom has been her favorite title!  She has written a book, lived on a boat for 2 years and became a mom at the age of 35. She was a late bloomer and had her first baby late in life but now is loving watching her daughter become an adult (she is turning 21 this year).  She says the best things she has given her daughter are roots and wings and Nikki...

Kathy Allen is a mom of a 56 and 55 year old as well as her first great granddaughter!  She is a nurse and has started a group called the gutsy nurses.  She was the second oldest of nine kids so she was very well prepared to be a mom! Her mom ran a daycare so she was very ready to be a mom!  She thought having only 2 and a step son so three in her home and her challenge was to not be so responsibl...

Barb Stone is all about creating things from life stories to be able to help people on their journey. She left her career 6 years ago to become a leadership development coach to help teams on their path. She has found that we all need some guidance and she loves to do that with a vast amount of people. She has published a book called "Lessons to Drool About." Sometimes we get into a victim mindset...

Jeni Golomb is a mom of 2 boys ages 19 and 16, a wife of 25 years and a Harvard MBA with a new adventure in a marketing start up nonprofit. She was 28 and 31 when she had her kids because those were the same ages her mom was when she had kids. She thinks that putting your children's needs ahead of your own is how you create amazing humans and if you are too young and don't have a completed frontal...

Beatty Carmichael is a dad of three adult children, missing littles running around and married to his wife for 32 years. He and his wife have never had a large argument!  He comes from a family of doctors and decided he wanted to pivot into helping people have blessed lives. As a business owner, you don't always know what you are doing so it's a learning process every day so he looked at parenthoo...