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Intro:
Welcome to the "Wellness in Every Season" podcast, where we embark on a transformative journey towards achieving total wellness, even in the midst of overwhelming moments. I'm your host, Autumn Carter, and I'm thrilled to have you here.
This podcast is a sanctuary for all mothers out there, and we extend a warm invitation to anyone seeking guidance and inspiration. We believe in fostering an inclusive community where we learn and grow together, supporting each other during life's challenging transitions.
Join us as we step out of survival mode and discover the path to thriving, embracing wellness in every season of motherhood. From sleepless nights to new beginnings, we'll explore practical strategies, share heartfelt stories, and uncover the transformative power of self-care and self-love.
Together, we'll unlock the wisdom, strength, and resilience within ourselves, reminding one another that we're never alone on this beautiful, yet demanding, journey. It's time to prioritize your well-being and reclaim your joy, one season at a time.
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EPISODE INTRO |
Autumn Carter: Hello, welcome to wellness in every season. This is episode 54. And today I have with me Shee' Fisher. She is a consultant and a grant writer for small businesses and nonprofit organizations. And this is something that I have a passion for. So I'm really excited to have her on and I will let her further introduce herself.
Shee' Fisher: Thank you, Autumn The name of my company is Divine Inspiration Business Services, LLC. I have approximately two and a half decades, 25 years experience in the industry. I specialize in nonprofit organizations, but I do work with small businesses, woman owned, veteran owned specifically. I do work with all small businesses, but I, it seems to be that most of my clients are women owned or veteran owned or minority owned, here we are.
Autumn Carter: And talking with you yesterday, I can see why you are a magnet for people like that. you have such a big heart. And your passion shows that you really want to help the more of the underdogs and
I love that.
Shee' Fisher: Thank you. I really love what I do. And like I said, I think that's why I started concentrating more on the non profit or community based organizations because My heart's desire is to help people and if I can help people who are helping other people then you know I feel I've served my purpose, but I definitely want to help improve this world that we live in and help people to make changes in their community.
And that's one of the reasons why I branched out on my own.
Autumn Carter: I remember the name of the class that I was trying to tell you yesterday. So the name of the class that I took that was mind blowing for me is called social innovation and. It's exactly what you are doing, where you are helping other businesses who are either helping other people, the community, or they are helping the environment, which are two of my big passions. So I love that. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey?
Shee' Fisher: I was working for a fairly large consulting company. They had offices in a few different States and they really, the owner really took me under his wing and helped me put knowledge and education into practice and helped me to refine the craft.
And, with time and experience, you're refining as you go along as well, but it really impacted me. What I did not like is that as his company grew, he started forgetting about small businesses. The nonprofits that were seeds or startup organizations that did not have as much money or resources, but they still needed help.
He was more interested in dealing with the larger nonprofit organizations and midsize to larger businesses that could already afford to, hire someone to do what what needed to be done. He didn't care about educating his clients. He wanted to complete the task and move on to the next one.
That really bothered me because I really enjoy helping people to learn. I want to educate my clients and the people that I encounter. I don't want you to leave me the same way that you came to me. I if nothing else, I want to share knowledge with you and point you in the right direction. I did not like how he was turning away people that couldn't slam a 10, 000 check on the table and say, let's get going.
If somebody came in and said, Hey, I have 2, 000, 2, 500. I want to get started. I want to start my organization. What can you help me do with this? He would say, Oh, I'm sorry. We're not taking new clients, which was totally not true. And I said, no, I pride myself on being honest, but I also pride myself on helping people.
If this is the direction that we're going in, I don't want to be here anymore. So I started this journey towards my own business. I did quite a bit of freelance work and contracting with different companies until I landed here with divine inspiration and I believe that every good and positive idea is inspired and it has a place in this world.
And I'd like to help you find that, so that's why most of the people I do work with don't have a lot of money. They don't always know exactly how to go about doing what needs to be and I help you get started with your paperwork, structuring and organizing your business or your nonprofit organization. And I also help you to find the funding for that.
Autumn Carter: I'm having so many flashbacks to that class from what you were saying. That's amazing! And when I was taking this class, there are a lot of resources out there, but they had me go here and here. And a lot of the resources that we were reading from were actually from Europe. So I thought that was interesting.
I know that you and your business, are now international. And I think that's so exciting.
Shee' Fisher: Yes, this is very new to me. You and I spoke a little bit about my social media journey, which has been very interesting because I'm, almost 50 years old. And so it's always been word of mouth.
Somebody that I did work for says, Hey, You should call Shee' because she can help you. And that's just how it's been. But lately I've been noticing that there's quite a few influencers out there that give you a little snippet of information and people are lost and they don't know, they take that little bit of information.
They don't know what to do with it. And they try to follow the advice of the influencers thinking that is all the information they need. And there's unfortunately a lot of folly. I started getting on social media more and building myself up on social media so that I can connect with more people.
And it's been amazing because people from different countries have been contacting me, Canada different parts of Africa, India., Pakistan. And they've been contacting me, asking me, can you help me? Can you show me which way to go? Is there funding available for me? What do I need to do?
How can I get started? And so that aspect of my businesses is very new. I'm really excited about it. And I really want to help people no matter where they are.
Autumn Carter: This is a question that I normally ask towards the end, but you brought it up. So tell us how we can follow you.
Shee' Fisher: On Facebook, it's divine inspiration business services, LLC. I do have a website dibs today. com D I B S T O D A Y. com. If you have questions or you want to get in contact with me and speak directly with me, you can schedule an appointment, you can send me your questions also on my website.
It discusses some of the different services that we offer and it also shares information about fiscal sponsorships and different things that most people are not aware that's available to them. There's some pretty cool resources on the website as well.
Autumn Carter: What other things would you like to Let people know about the non profit world? So I have this idea. I'm not sure where to go next. What can you tell me?
Shee' Fisher: One of the biggest things that I'm really excited about is fiscal sponsorship. I just threw it out there in, in the last question that I answered, but to elaborate a little bit, sometimes we don't have the funds or the knowledge, or we're not prepared or ready to actually dive in and have our own nonprofit organization.
But like the idea of project that we discussed last night that you have, somebody might say. I have an idea for a project or I want to start my own nonprofit, but I'm not ready yet. Fiscal sponsorship allows you to do that under established and matured nonprofit organization. So you don't have to have your own nonprofit organization to actually operate as if you are one, you can go under their umbrella.
And I have several nonprofit organizations that I've been working with for a while now that have we've come to an agreement and they're willing to allow the right people to come in under their umbrella and start operating their own nonprofit organization with the covering and kind of the guidance of some people that are experienced and have been in the industry for a while.
It also allows you to obtain funding before you even have your 501 C three or whatever nonprofit designation that you have. And it also allows you to do a project if you don't want to have your own nonprofit organization but you have an idea and you want to collaborate with one or more other organizations, you can do that through fiscal sponsorships. So you have quite a few options and there are resources available to you, even if you don't have all of the funding that you need to get started, or you don't have the knowledge that you need to get started.
Autumn Carter: That's crazy. I could work on my project sooner, but. Time and mental space. That's a whole nother story.
Shee' Fisher: Yes. You do have to have that. You have to have a little bit of time and definitely the mental capacity because, as moms, we always have so many things going on. I saw a little cartoon the other day and it showed a woman sleeping not actually sleeping in bed, but there was a whole list of things that were going through her mind.
And it said, this is what a mom looks like at night when she's supposed to be sleeping. And she's I have to do this and do this. And are the kids okay? And what was that noise? And tomorrow I have to make sure I do this. And what about this? And then the dad is sleeping. I thought, yeah, that's very true, that's very true.
Autumn Carter: And you homeschool your kids. How do you do it all?
Shee' Fisher: My son just turned 13 about a week and a half ago, and we've been homeschooling for about two years. I have two of my grandchildren a few days a week and they are homeschooled. There's some days where I'm, always running behind and always running late.
It's a matter of really finding your own niche with the homeschooling. When I first started homeschooling, I thought that I had to duplicate the exact system. that my son was in when he was going to school every day. And so I tried to mimic that entire setup and I failed. I thought, what am I doing wrong?
They have, this and then they have a break and then they do this class and they have a break. And it was frustrating for him. It was frustrating for me. And then I discovered unschooling. I'm very career focused. My son wants to deal with cars and be in mechanics. So we're very career focused.
I see his electives pertain to his career path. We do still do, the same classes that he would need to do if he was going to school. However, it's not always Monday through Friday we're going to do history from 8 a. m. to 9 a. m. and then we'll do math and then we'll do science and then we'll do this and that.
Some days we have a history day. Some days we have a science day. We are able to go outside and explore and that be part of whatever lesson that we're going through, whether it's horticulture, or this week we might be looking at reptiles or amphibians or different things. You learn to incorporate the world around you and it's actually amazing.
I'm not going to say I'm perfect at it because I'm far from perfect. We all have these days where we're like I don't know what I was thinking. But. At the end of the day, I have seen a huge difference in my son improving academically in certain areas that he was struggling in because we're able to focus more on those areas.
If I know that my son has challenges in math, then we might use a bigger block of time every day on math to get him to where I believe that he should be and according to where he should be. As opposed to if he's doing great in ELA and he's advanced in ELA, then I don't need to spend the same amount of time on ELA with him as I do with math because math is the area that he needs that extra help in.
Oftentimes our teachers are, the classrooms are so full, even if a charter school or a private school, now the classrooms are so much larger than they used to be. They don't always have that one on one time with the students that they actually need. And we're able to do that here. When we first started, we did personality tests and learning style tests, just so that I could understand the best way to help my child.
So that I'm not trying to teach him in a manner that would be more challenging for him. He is very active. It's okay for him to be active. It's okay for him to be a kinetic learner, there's different ways for each person to learn. My, one of my grandsons is extremely animated and I find myself acting out certain subjects that I normally would not act out, but it's okay because that's how he learned.
If I can act it out and I put on a little show for him during the lesson, he can tell me literally everything that I wanted him to learn. My other grandson, he loves music. We sing some of the things that he needs to memorize. So you have to be very creative.
And you have to be willing to, be a mom because as a mom, we do silly things sometimes that might be silly to another grownup looking at us, but to the child, this is great. My mom is singing and dancing with me and I'm grandma. I'm Mehmeh. So I, yeah, I'll sing and dance with you. Let's do that. It's okay. We're still learning and it's fun. Learning should be fun. I enjoy learning. I want them to enjoy learning too.
I
Autumn Carter: love that you really come to their level. And I think that's really important as parents, whether we're homeschooling or not.
Can you explain unschooling? Because I've heard that term several times. So talk about unschooling and then a little bit more of your journey, if you wish.
Shee' Fisher: Sure. Unschooling in a nutshell is taking the pressure, the tradition, and strenuousness out of homeschooling. Like I said, I tried to take the classroom setting where there was, okay, the alarm's going off, it's time to switch to 10 minute break. Take that out of it and say, let's let everything flow organically and fluidly throughout our day, and let's adjust the curriculum to accommodate.
Your child's learning styles, there's strengths and the areas where they need improvement. So that's basically it in a nutshell. And not saying, I'm hard nosed about, we have to be at 11 o'clock is time for science and we have to do science at 11 o'clock and it has to be this lesson.
My son loves reptiles. He's had a bearded dragon for years. She recently passed away, but when we were learning about reptiles, obviously she's a reptile and it was great because Sassy literally sat on his shoulder the whole time during our lessons and that made it fun. You know what I mean? So that's part of the whole unschooling thing because you are taking this great big world that we live in and we're bringing it into the classroom.
I know that theoretically was the idea, in your traditional school to bring the world to the classroom. But now sometimes because of size and teachers are super overworked and, just so many different factors. Unfortunately, the kids don't always get that.
Autumn Carter: I know that is something that my husband and I have been very mindful of and we try to bring extra lessons in at home and we're more willing to try to teach our children because we don't have them all day long for learning, and the pandemic taught us how much we needed to step up our game at home.
We bought some science books. We bought a microscope and several other smaller things for our oldest who was a preschooler at the time because preschool suddenly shut down. Too many S's at one time. At the end when he went to kindergarten, he was above average because he had the one on one care from both of us because during part of the shutdown, my husband was home too. So he had a double dose of us plus siblings.
Shee' Fisher: Yes. Yes. And it makes a huge difference. And you've seen that firsthand. So it can be very frustrating.
I hear from other moms that want to homeschool. They're afraid. They say I'm not qualified. I'm not a teacher. And I say, I'm not a teacher either, but I'm a mom. As a mom, we're teachers. We're teaching our children every day, all day. We teach them from the time that we first hold them in our arms until they're you know, they go off into the world to go to college or do they get married. We're teaching them constantly.
And with the grandkids, it's a whole different level, because I hear you didn't do that with us, mom. Yes, you're right. Now I know a little bit more, and but yes it's different. I really enjoy it.
I enjoy being a grandma and yes, I'm still, have one at home. So that's very interesting, but, I really enjoy it. I love the kids. They make me so happy. I learn from them all the time.
Autumn Carter: Hearing a little bit more about you personally and professionally, it seems like your whole focus is on people and helping people.
Shee' Fisher: Yes, it is. And, it's funny when I was little, people would say, what do you want to be when you grow up? I would always say, I just want to help people.
My father was in ministry. And we had people coming to the house all the time and people would be in need and he would say, sure, come on in, we can find room for you. And so I grew up with that. To me, our family was extended because people that came into our home, they became part of our family. As I got older, I think when I was a teenager and I got my first job, there was a gentleman on my job and he didn't have any family and he had just moved into town.
He was my friend and my coworker. And I said, what are you going to do for Thanksgiving? He said, Oh, I'm going to get a TV dinner, Turkey one. And I said, no, you're not, you're coming to my house. It's funny because when we went back to work the next day, People were like, what did you do?
And he's Oh, I went over to her house. And they were like, Oh, didn't your family have a problem? I said, no, I bring people home all the time, but that's how I grew up. We help people. And I think that trickled over for a little while. I thought about, Oh, I could be an attorney and I could help fight for people's rights. And I can, be the voice of children and people that are, not heard. And then I thought when I got older maybe it would be better if I was, a counselor and then I can help people heal from their, challenges and trauma in life.
Because so many of us have experienced trauma, some people have experienced trauma and don't even realize that it was actually trauma. Would that they experienced. So I thought this would be good because I can help them and they can live a better life and then they can be better parents and better friends and neighbors and wives and husbands and all of that.
Then I somehow ended up on this path and I really enjoy it. I eventually will have my own nonprofit organization, but in the meantime, I really enjoy helping people with theirs.
Autumn Carter: I see how it all connects though. All of your interests, they have all connected here. Tell us what your dream non profit is.
Shee' Fisher:
I want to have a community, but it's gonna be agricultural. It's going to be a ranch. And we'll have some equine therapy and some education. I would love to have a little school on the property for those parents that want their children to be homeschooled. And I want to focus on recovery, but not just, we think about recovery as addiction recovery.
We need to recover from different things. We need to recover from trauma. We need to recover from, tragedy that has happened in our life. Grieving, I lost my mother last year. My mother passed and I thought that I was okay. But then I realized, Oh, my goodness. All of this time I've been grieving, but my grief has been not traditionally what it looks like.
I guess everybody grieves differently, but some people are stuck in the same stage of grief for 20 years. So they've never quite been able to make that transition from I'm devastated right now and I miss this person terribly. I don't know what I'm going to do into that place of healing. I'm so glad to have had them in my life, they have affected me positively, and I miss them, but I'm not devastated anymore. I want to be able to help people with that transition, because I believe whether it's trauma, or the loss of a loved one, or a tragedy that has happened in our lives, I believe that we can get to a place of healing and a place of we're not barely making it and I'm still secretly devastated. We can get to a place of now I'm on the other side of it.
Shee' Fisher: I can encourage others and I can help others. Because I went through this and I, it wasn't great that I went through it, but I want it to have served a purpose. I want to be able to help others. it happened to me and I've dealt with it and now I can move on. I want it to be, it happened to me, I got through it, look at me, I'm whole and healthy now, and now you can too.
Let me help you through this.
Autumn Carter: You really like things to have purpose and meaning in your life.
Shee' Fisher: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Autumn Carter: I was thinking about that earlier today, there's so many people that go through life and it's what gets them up in the morning. Do they have a purpose? Do they have some higher calling, some meaning
I need to have that. I need to be helping people. I enjoy helping people. And it sounds like you have the exact same need and desire. And it's fun to hear your dream and the reasons why. And it's true that we all have trauma, but we don't often realize that's what it is, and grief and trauma are very close friends.
Is there anything that you want to leave us with as we close out our session today, our episode today?
Shee' Fisher: I want to let everybody know that they have options. There's resources available to you. Don't panic. Don't allow the anxiety to take over your life. I know that sometimes as moms, we get to a place where we say I'm more than a mom.
My kids are getting older. I'm not just Bob's wife. I'm not just the children's mom. I have these dreams or these desires, these aspirations. And I want to be able to do that, but I don't know how and people start to get discouraged. And I want to encourage everybody today to not give up. There's a time for everything.
I'm a strong believer in that. And there's resources and people here to support you and don't allow finances to be your final answer. Know that with or without the finances, there's options available for you.
Autumn Carter: Thank you so much for being on today, and I loved getting to know you yesterday and today as we prepared for this. I look forward to seeing you continue to grow and where you end up being. I'm definitely going to follow you on social media to see where you grow.
Shee' Fisher: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I've really enjoyed our chats.
As the soft hum of our ending theme fades into the distance, I want to leave you with a gentle reminder that our journey together continues. Next week, we'll be delving into a topic that touches the heart of every mother – mom guilt. This silent companion of motherhood, with its complex blend of emotions, often walks alongside us unnoticed, yet deeply felt. Together, we will explore its intricate layers, understand its roots, and most importantly, discover how to navigate through it with grace and self-compassion. So, I warmly invite you to subscribe and join us for this heartfelt conversation. It's a moment for us to share, learn, and grow together, as we shed light on what to do about mom guilt. Your presence is not just valuable; it's essential in creating a space where understanding and support flourish. Until then, take care and keep embracing the journey of motherhood with all its ups and downs.
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Outro:
Thank you for joining us on this week's refreshing wellness discussion. I'm Autumn Carter, your guide through the seasons of motherhood, and I hope you found inspiration and valuable insights during our time together.
If you resonate with the topics we explored today and want to continue your wellness journey, I invite you to follow me on Instagram at Moms Wellness in Every Season. There, you'll discover a wealth of ongoing wellness tips specifically curated for moms like you.
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If you have a specific topic you'd like us to cover in more detail or if you're interested in a free coaching consultation, don't hesitate to reach out. You can send me a direct message on Instagram or visit my website, wellnessineveryseason.com, to send an email. I'm here to support you on your wellness journey.
Thank you again for being a part of our vibrant community. I'm genuinely excited to connect with you, hear your stories, and continue this important discussion in the weeks to come.
Until next time, remember to prioritize your well-being, embrace every season with grace, and always strive for wellness in every aspect of your motherhood journey. Take care, and I can't wait to catch up with you soon.
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