Motherhood Inspiration: Lisa Druxman
This week we spoke to Lisa Druxman for our Motherhood Inspiration Interview! She is the founder of @Fit4momhq which is a fitness franchise for women. It was started 19 years ago when her son was born. Over the years they have added several different programs for women in every stage of motherhood and grown so much. They're all about fitness for moms, connecting women and the strength of motherhood. They have almost 300 franchisees and nearly 2,000 instructors across the country.
- Who are you a mom to? Jacob 19 and Rachel 15!
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Tell us about your life outside of motherhood. I love being outside which is easy in San Diego. running, gardening, hiking, walking my dogs. I try to get outside each and every day! I'm pretty happy with pretty simple things and just going slow. I try to meditate every day and try to savor every single day instead of living for weekends.
- How has becoming a mother changed your life? How hasn't it? My entire life and business revolves around motherhood now. Motherhood has made me realize the precious value of time. It's ironic because I knew nothing about motherhood when I became a mom and that's why I started Fit4mom. I wasn't looking to start a business but I was really just looking for somewhere where I could ask questions about sleep, and nursing and all things motherhood related. So that is why I started our own community which is very much our Fitmom village now. Now, everything I do evolves around motherhood. I really believe in the power of moms and how important it is to raise healthy moms so they can.
- Did you work before having kids? If so how did having kids change that? Yes, I was the General Manager at a large health club. I was working 60 hours per week which didn't really fit well with becoming a mom. I didn't want to go back to work and leave my baby. So I created a business that revolved around him. I wasn't looking to start a business. I was looking to meet other moms and help them get back into shape. Apparently I wasn't the only one looking for that because it took off and I didn't have to go back to work after all. I would take my child out for a stroller walk every day and it was the best hour of our day. I was moving, he was loving being outside, I was learning how to turn my stroller into a tool for a total body workout, and I remember it like it was yesterday, a light bulb went off and I realized, I bet there are other moms who would like this. So I started my first class in San Diego and I had 4 moms attend. But apparently I wasn't the only one looking for both fitness and community because it did take off and by the end of the first year we had 12 Stroller Strides locations and over 1000 moms participating. We started getting requests from women all over the country and realized this was something that was needed. It never imagined it would turn into what it is today and it just goes to show that you take a step at a time and little by little it becomes a lot. For more information about fit4mom go to Fit4mom.com to find a class near you!
- How do you balance the constant chaos of motherhood? In addition, how do you prioritize self care? It's been a hard lesson learned. I even wrote a book about it! The Empowered Mama. It's about how to reclaim your time and health. In short, it's about prioritizing what's most important to you and reverse engineering your life around those things. The book is all about how I redesigned my life and how I rearranged things so I didn't live in overwhelm and so I could reclaim my life and my health and myself. For a lot of people it's really tied into what is the minimal effective dose of self care for you. It's easy to get everything done for everyone else and then there is nothing left in you. I would recommend that you prioritize your self care and block that out in your life and then build everything else around that. Check out more details about the Empowered Mama podcast on iTunes! Or grab a copy of the Empowered Mama Book here.
- Tell me about your "Life's Messy Moment" story. Too many to count. So much of my life was spent just going too fast and not paying attention to the details because I was doing too much. Funny (but not at the time) were stories where I bought front row tickets to Disney On Ice without realizing it was the Spanish addition. The whole family was looking forward to it and when we first walked in and they greeted us with "hola" and I was a little confused. And yes I did make my family stay for the whole thing because ice skating is a universal language.
- If you could give one piece of advice to a new mom what would it be?Once piece of advice I would give would be to have a plan to get help. Don't try to do it all yourself. Plan it ahead of time whether it is with your spouse or your mother in law, or your mom, but plan a head to accept help. Speaking of a village, there are so many communities in other countries where when you have a baby, you are cared for. Nowadays, it's not like that and we don't have a village or always have family around us. As a mom we are doing it all and it's just not realistic. So if I could change anything about new motherhood it would be to focus on mother care and maternal care.