Building a Matriarchal Future with Motherful

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

This is gonna be the first time I’m interviewing two people in the same room. I’m kind of excited to see how it goes. I think it could be really fun. Hopefully we’ll keep it more conversational this way. I’ll start out by asking you, and you guys can just decide who goes first and you’ll figure that out for yourselves. But what are each of your relationships with the word feminist?

Heidi Howes:

My relationship with the word feminist goes way back in my life, probably to when I was maybe 12, 11 or 12, when I learned what feminist was or what it meant and of course immediately I was like, yes, I’m a feminist. And then I learned about the word womanist, which in a lot of ways really resonated more for me and then when the conversation turned to intersectional feminism, definitely meant a lot more to me. Intersectional feminism is the way to go. And I was just thinking about how I was really, I considered myself a staunch feminist through my teen and college years. And then I just realized that when I became a mom, I started kind of questioning feminism, not the part about, you know, feminism means, feminist means, you know, equal equality, right, for all, essentially, and equity for all. But I remember in my early years of motherhood kind of being like, am I a feminist still? Like, what does that mean? And just kind of losing a little bit of my identification with that and then coming back around as I reclaimed myself as a woman coming out of those early years of motherhood and being like, yeah, feminist still sticks for me, like, you know, just amplifying and equality and equity for women and for all people.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

Lisa, how about you?

Lisa Woodward:

I also had like an early connection with the word feminist because I was raised by a single mom and also in her, we were really deep into religion and I was just in certain surroundings where I felt like the feminist was not being upheld and I kind of switched. I mean, it was not being upheld and so I wanted to learn more about how to push it to the forefront. We were really deep into church at that time and a lot of things that were happening, I wasn’t approving of, or people around me were pushing. So I feel like that supported me in loving the women, loving feminists. Also I am a teen mom. And so by me being a teen mom and just having to start early raising kids and just pushing for women’s rights and all that I was dealing with. That’s like my relationship with feminism, feminists, and how it started out for me.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that for both of you I hear little pieces around your motherhood journey and how that has affected your relationship with your understanding of what feminism looks like and means and how it shows up for you. So we’re going to talk a lot about mothering. I’m also a mother. I know you’re both mothers. You care deeply about mothering. And this is a business podcast. So we’re going to talk about your organization as a business. But I also want to talk about mothering as it relates to business because for a great deal of people who own businesses, they also have children and many of them are moms and many of them are single moms and trying to navigate those waters. And I’m wondering for you, like what are some of the stigmas that you have encountered yourselves or that you hear from the people that you are serving that they’ve encountered in the professional sphere around being a mother, a single mother and how that shows up in the business world.

Heidi Howes:

Just the pressure, especially for mothers and single mothers to fit into this box where at work, you’re not a mom. You know, your mothering doesn’t exist at work. And the priorities of mothering become, you know, they’re put on the back burner. You know, that’s definitely what we hear. You know, we see the, I want to say the fracturing that mothers go through being in the work environment and then being at home, and being exploited in both places. Being exploited in the capitalist workplace, being exploited at home in this environment and that’s one of the reasons why for us we definitely shifted the values of our business to matriarchal values. And we’ve even started to adopt matriarchal values as our, in our policies and procedures for our organization. So really centering mothering in our work, centering our mothering when we work. And it’s a pretty radical, pretty radical vision. And action that we’re taking and it’s still evolving.

Lisa Woodward:

It’s definitely hard to juggle. I’m always telling people all the time we’re like octopus, just doing so many jobs at once and a lot of things need to change. Our moms need to, moms complain all the time, like they just don’t have enough time to fit everything in and balance it. Being a single mom, if your kid gets sick, leaving to go get them, or just communication during the day if necessary. It’s hard to balance, get sick leave when your kids are sick, or just lots of different situations where the rules of the workplace to fully nurture your kids and be there for them. I was just talking the other day, we’re really blessed to be able to pick the times when we work and free work and leave when we need to support our kids. We both have special needs kids. And so that takes a lot of, it’s a lot of other challenges and space. Some days we can’t even work at all because we need to take a time off, you know going to doctors appointments and therapy and things of that sort so it’s definitely a hard time.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

The dynamics of that we all swim in, you know, the systems that we’re all part of, I think a lot of mothers experience. the burden of caretaking falling on them or the primary burden of that caretaking falling on them, which is why we always hear about, you know, women talking about their work-life balance, whereas men maybe not as much, or about working mothers, but you never hear about working fathers. But for single mothers, it all falls on them, right? It has to fall on them, not just because of the inequities within relationships, but because by the nature of being on your own, you’re having to do it all. And I know a big part of your mission. is around equitable economic prosperity for all. And I took this from your website, which includes paid family leave, equal pay for women and femmes, particularly women of color, acknowledging and addressing racial inequity, access to affordable housing and childcare, food security, workforce policies, and labor force equity. And so I’m just wondering, cast a vision for us of when you think about this matriarchal experience of what work could look like, what business ought to look like for it to be nurturing, caring for women, to make it accessible and equitable for, you know, women and femmes and folks who have children, but especially those that are taking on this primary caretaking roles. Like, what is the vision that you guys are holding?

Heidi Howes:

I mean, I think we are building that vision as we speak, also in our own organization. And like I said, centering our mothering, centering our own lives inside of work. So having child care accessible, maybe on site. You know when we hold our Matriarchs Council meetings, which is a group of matriarchs within our organization who are really advising our operations, we always have child care available. You know, whenever we have the opportunity, we always have child care available to enable moms to be close to their children, but also be able to you know, meet and do what they need to do. So that’s one thing, making sure that child care is wrapped into the workplace and not separate. Also allowing children to be a part of culture. You know, children are present. Children are wrapped in, you know, and around, which I think if children weren’t so othered and considered, you know, basically not human beings, you know, then we would be able to more seamlessly do that in our culture, but they’re so separated, they’re so othered. That’s one thing I think, childcare.

Lisa Woodward:

Yeah, and just being closer to the actual work spot, inside of it, makes it so much easier.

Heidi Howes:

Yeah, flexibility, having flexibility, having hybrid work, remote work, the possibility for mothers, trusting mothers. Trusting mothers because mothers are already leaders. I mean, fathers are as well, but we’re talking about mothers here. So, but mothers are leaders. You know, I think mothers are really seen, looked down upon. They’re seen as weak. They’re seen as less than. They’re seen as, you know. just the underlings really in our society. And we talk about maternal justice a lot because we really feel that mothers are just not even, they’re invisible, you know. And so I think trusting mothers and knowing that mothers are already leaders and giving them that acknowledgement that like you’re already a leader, you know. And we see that. For single mothers, we’re working on housing projects right now here in Central Ohio, affordable housing and sustainable housing projects that will allow single mothers to live in community together. So that they and also to potentially work within those communities so that they can have more of a seamless life that includes their family. Our vision is ultimately to build an eco-village where we have a farm and we also have businesses on site, we have child care on site, a cafeteria, so mothers aren’t so strapped with the labor of cooking alone. You know, the solitary, isolated experience of mothering is extremely lonely, so allowing mothers to come together in a village, that’s a big, big goal for us. Just integrating work and life for mothers and centering mothering inside of all of our organizations.

Lisa Woodward:

And we also care a lot about self-care and just recharging because that’s what’s necessary. We’re trying to amp that up all the time. Our moms just need some time to pour into themselves and get energy back so they can continue to be a super mom and so we try to, in this world, we want to have self care available — massages, reflexology, Reiki, sound baths, just things to generate care for the body. And also a lot of people think, like single moms are so strong, they can take a lot and so that’s like another way to look at it when it’s not really true. I mean, we’re strong, but we shouldn’t be looked at that we can take on everything and never need support because we can handle it all.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

That idea of strength is also a really easy way for other people then to be able to sort of turn away, to say, well, they’re strong, they can handle it. So I don’t have to help. It’s the same thing that we see all the time in the face of tragedies that happen around the world where we’re saying, well, these are resilient. It’s a resilient nation. Are those resilient people? It’s a way to sort of have to say, well, they’ll be OK. I don’t have to think about that. I don’t have to think about my role in the systems that are allowing these things to happen.

Lisa Woodward:

that idea is so true because it’s the flip side of it. Our moms sometimes don’t feel worthy enough to get the help because they’re so independent and strong. So it’s like hard to balance that sometimes.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

Yeah, we internalize those messages and then it feels like if I can’t then if I’m not strong, what’s wrong with me? The shame. I think if you don’t yet have shirts that say trust mothers, I think you need them. I love that. Like, yes, let’s trust mothers.

Lisa Woodward:

We just got shirts, so thanks.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

Good. But you talk about, you know, sometimes mothers are seen as in the workplace, I think, where things are very focused on dollars and cents, they can be seen as a liability, right? Because well, they may have to work fewer hours or leave early or stay home unexpectedly with a sick kid, all of these things that when you’re just crunching numbers seem like a liability. These shifts that you’re talking about also have price tags associated with them. You’re a nonprofit, so it’s a different business structure. But still, for businesses that are listening to that, because the kinds of people who are listening to this, I hope, are founders who are committed to saying, I wanna do business differently. I wanna look at the whole person that’s working for me and how do we, or working with me, and how do we structure things differently? How do we prioritize people? And also, there’s the reality of making money, right? And in your case, there’s the reality of raising money. How do you talk to people about that, about the benefit of these kinds of shifts in the workplace? What are the benefits of trusting mothers, of creating more inclusive workspaces for parents? What do you see as the upside?

Heidi Howes:

I mean, the first thing that comes to mind for me is healing. Healing our society, really. Because when we, especially when we heal mothers, when we center mothers, when we trust mothers, that’s going to be a ripple effect for the generations to come. Because mothers are suffering in a massive way, especially single mothers, especially Black and indigenous and mothers of color are suffering. Mothers are suffering, period. And so their children suffer, you know? And that’s just common sense. It’s just how it works. We’re interconnected. I think there are things that we have to make choices that aren’t focused on dollars and cents anymore. That’s what we need to do. We need to focus on choices that invest in Mother Earth. We’re in Central Ohio today. We can’t go outside because the smoke from the wildfires of Montreal, same you said in St. Louis, um, you know, I’m afraid to take my one 1-year-old son outside for a walk. Today, you know, climate change is real. It’s happening now everywhere. We can’t escape it. Um, we have to make decisions that aren’t based in dollars and cents period anymore. We have to make decisions based in valuing the Earth, valuing ourselves, each other, our children, the things that truly matter, our families. That’s what I would say. And I would say, you’re just going to have to shift your paradigm to recognizing that way doesn’t work, because this is what the reality that we have.

Lisa Woodward:

If the kids are happy, the mom’s happy. Focusing on that is true. It’s truly true.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

And Lisa, what do you see in the mothers that you’re all serving as far as the differences in them when they are trusted, they are cared for, they have the kind of experience that you’re trying to provide? What are the differences in how they’re showing up or how they feel?

Lisa Woodward:

They definitely feel supported in that they have like, they have a collective of moms that are going down the same journey that they are and that they are dealing with the same situations and that we are a community and we do, we have an app that everyone communicates on and so in that app we talk about many things. We post our programming and resources, and it’s a way for our moms to connect, no matter if they have transportation or not to our location. Our moms feel, they just feel supported and happy and joyful that they can, that they are a part of this and they can use the resources just to help them every day to deal with single momhood better. Yeah, they feel confident. We just had a sound bath on Sunday, people feel refreshed. When they come and spend time with us on Sunday, because you can have conversations, you can go to the garden, you can reflect, you can have, you can get food, which is very important. We get food every day from Trader Joe’s. So just having that need filled and you never have to, you don’t have to worry about it. And you can take as much as you want is comforting alone.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

You mentioned having your child as a teenager and I know you both were single mothers, I think now maybe Heidi, you have a partner in the journey, but you’ve both been through that experience. And I’m wondering for you with what you’re building, what difference would it have made for you especially, I think Lisa, in those early years where you were… because being a parent at such a young age is certainly far more challenging, I think, than anything else. So what difference would it have made in your life do you think to have what you guys are building right now?

Lisa Woodward:

Yes, I was a teen mom and I kind of, I pride myself in being a good dig person of information. I’m like a finder. So I was good at finding resources, but I feel like I didn’t have community. I was doing it all by myself. I didn’t have anybody to talk to about different paths that I wanted to take. I was trying to juggle being a new mom and college. So the community is really important in our collective, just having people to talk to and a group of moms, so that would be really helpful. Also all of the amenities as well, food and diaper bank and our laundry soap re-fillery. So that’s very important. The resources and the community I miss, I would have loved that as a teen mom.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

You mentioned collective, you’ve said it a few times now and you’re sort of a tagline, I think, on your website is that the future of motherhood is collective. And I talked in the first episode with CV Harquail about what feminism is. She’s sort of a feminist scholar. And one of the key points of feminism is it’s not feminist first if it’s not intersectional. It’s also not feminist if it’s not collective. And it’s not feminist if it’s not transformational. It has to have those three key elements to really be what I think we’re thinking of when we think about feminists. The vision that we want to hold for feminism. And that collective piece is so important. And in America, especially, we live in a very individualistic world, I think probably because it helps maintain the systems that exist. And so collective can feel odd for people. They don’t know what that looks like. And when it comes to parenting, like this is this thing that you do either alone or with a partner, and then that’s like… We don’t have the, “it takes a village” mentality in America, right? People are very much on their own raising their kids. Why is it so important for you that you think that the vision, that vision for the collective, why does that matter to you? And what difference does that make in parenting?

Heidi Howes:

Yeah, I mean, it’s exactly those things that you just touched on, you know, that is really at the core of matriarchy as well, you know. And to critique feminism, I think that feminism has overlooked motherhood in a lot of ways. And that’s one of the reasons why I questioned my affiliation with feminism when I first became a mom, because I didn’t feel supported in the feminist movement. And that’s why we talk about being a matriarchal organization. That’s why we talk about uplifting the matriarchy and what does that look like? And how do we build a vision of a matriarchal world, right? Because we recognized that like doing it alone is unsustainable, it’s impossible, right? And so we set out to build a collective because we also didn’t want to be a social service agency. You know, that charity thing… We started as a mutual aid organization, we are a mutual aid organization, which is essentially the collective. And we definitely are up against a lot of challenges building a collective, you know, example, just location. So moms live on different sides of the city, right? And it’s hard for moms to get from one side to the other potentially with their children, right? If you have three children under the age of 5, you’re probably not leaving the house very often, especially if you’re impoverished, you know, you’re, it’s probably much harder if you don’t have transportation, right? So I think we just looked at like, if we can do this together, it will be less difficult, right? And then you have the challenges of, you know, of building those relationships. That’s what we’re working on now, deepening the relational aspect of the collective with mothers who have been, you know, the majority of mothers having experienced violence and domestic violence or assault by partners or, you know, just in America. And also the fracturing of community or from religion or from family, from white supremacy, from different things impacting them. So that there’s this, how do we trust one another enough to like… even come into a common parenting space, right, where I feel comfortable with this other mother telling her child, like, no, you can’t do that. Building collective also involves being in the same place together in person, right? And so the pandemic definitely, like, kind of stalled that for us in a way, because we started our organization in 2018, and a year and some change later, the pandemic started and we had to be social distancing. So thankfully we had our app where we could start to build kind of alliances. But I mean, collective, it has to be collective. It has to be, you know, and especially as single mothers, you see that you see that this is unsustainable. And in fact, it’s creating. extreme trauma in mothers. You know, most of the moms who we’re organizing with have experienced and are experiencing trauma and post-traumatic stress.

Lisa Woodward:

All of them.

Heidi Howes:

Yeah, all of them.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

And what we’ve learned through epigenetics about how that trauma then becomes this ancestral thing where it’s passed on through genetics. And so then, you know, for people who are going back to that why part of that why is because it’s not just an individual group of people, not that should matter because that’s also incredibly important, but you’re talking about these changes, don’t just affect one group of people, they’re affecting generations.

Lisa Woodward:

It also gives them skin in the game. Like to be, we have an agreement, our moms sign that they are agreeing to volunteer and give back as well as take. So it’s a great system that we’ve started and it’ll move into our housing as well and be really important.

Heidi Howes:

You know, we’re talking about a collective that’s… has reciprocity at the center of it. So that reciprocity extends also to the Earth, which is where we’ve gone wrong in like severing our relationship to the Earth, severing our respect and honoring of the Earth, and that is directly correlated to our cultural severing of respect and honoring of the mother, period. So as we respect the mother, we respect Mother Earth, these are things that we’re working to rebuild inside of our culture. We’re culture making with our organization, you know, we’re change making. And it’s a heavy lift, it’s heaving lifting, very heavy lifting because, you know, single mothers especially are very, very traumatized, you know.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

That excites me because that’s what this is all about for me. And this is why I’m doing this and why I’m so excited about this. I want to talk to people who are thinking about business as a change agent, whether whatever model of business you have, the idea of it being a catalyst for change and that business can be. And, I think, ought to be a catalyst for that change. And if you have a set of values, then how is your business reflecting that? How is it reflecting those values? And how is it helping to actually make changes in the direction of those values? And you guys are walking that talk, as difficult as it is, and it is difficult. If it was easy, everyone might be doing it, but it’s difficult. But that’s where the rubber meets the road on are you really gonna walk your values, right? When it gets hard. It’s easy to walk your values when it’s easy, but what about when it’s hard? And so I wanna talk more about your business as a business, but to do that, I’d like to hear how it came to be. So if you guys could tell me just a little bit about the journey of how you came together, how you found each other, how you sort of came together in this vision.

Lisa Woodward:

Well, like I said, I was a teen mom and I have three daughters. And during our journey in life, Heidi and I were involved in a training program and we met that way and we started to talk about just our vision of single mom and what’s out there as far as resources and we looked and looked and there wasn’t anything that was specifically for single moms. So we started to just gather information. We decided to make a spreadsheet. And from there, we started to have community dinners once a month to bring together this group of single moms.

Heidi Howes:

I became a single mom in 2010 and came back to Columbus, Ohio. I was in northern Wisconsin at the time, and we met in 2013 at this training. And then we started talking about the single mom journey and, you know, what we were going through and looking for resources. And there really wasn’t anything. There really wasn’t anything specific to single moms. And I had a vision back in 2010 about, well, when I first moved out of the, living with my then partner, I moved into a duplex and there was a single mom next door. And she kind of showed me the ropes, in a way, of single motherhood. Like she had been a single mom for a while. She was actually on the like had fled a very extreme domestic violence situation and was in hiding essentially from her abuser. And she, but we became fast friends based on this, you know, survival. And I had a vision of having a co-living, you know, a co-housing spot. I was like, why don’t single moms just do this? You know, because I actually hadn’t even really thought about single motherhood at all before I became a single mom. You know, it was just, it just hadn’t ever really come into my experience. So, but I was like, why don’t moms just do this? You know, and so I had thought I had that thought and then Lisa and I came together and in 2018, 5 years after we met, we finally, we finally got it started. And like she said, it was just a community dinner. That was the original idea, just bring moms together, having food together because the experience of being a single mother, you can definitely internalize all the shame and stigma around it if you don’t have an analysis, you know, of what’s actually happening in the world. And yeah, so that was the beginning. And we’ve just been collectivizing ever since and listening to moms and building with moms and figuring out how to answer the needs that are there, filling the gaps.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

And you’ve been building and adding on more and more services and I know you have a vision for something even much larger that would include. communal housing. And I wonder, and I think the answer might be related to the nature of being a single mom, but we’ll see. Because you both have backgrounds from what I can tell sort of in the creative arts. I don’t see MBAs amongst either of you. And in a world that we live in that very much teaches people that you’re not allowed, you can’t do something unless you have this degree or this pedigree or whatever it looks like. What gave you the audacity to say, we’re going to build this thing? Because I think that’s scary for a lot of people and they wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t believe that they could.

Lisa Woodward:

We both have a background of, you know, owning our own business and working with CEOs and things of that sort. So we have the drive and definitely could believe in us doing the framework. We’ve had lots of experience inside of some of these topics. So we felt strong from the jump. We’ve never felt like we couldn’t do it. It’s gotten scary sometimes, you know, there’s up and downs, but we make a good team that way. We definitely have great qualities that between the both of us for success.

Heidi Howes:

I think the entrepreneurial experience that we’ve both juggled motherhood and work over decades, you know, and just that set us up. Plus, we’re, you know, we’re in our 40s now, and I think you just become a little bit more audacious after 40 as a woman and as a mother. And we, I mean, frankly, can run circles around, you know, the CEOs that, you know, we’ve been in touch with. So I think it’s just an audacity that you know, oh, I can solve that problem. And I think if we had known probably before we started it, what we were getting ourselves into, we might’ve said no, but it’s really like a calling. It’s really a calling. And there’s a drive from some other place, from beyond, that I think carries us both because this is truly a vision of the future that needs to be, it needs to happen. And so if, you know, and we’re part of a mother’s movement around the world, it’s not just us. And so we connect with that and we continue to bring sustenance in, you know, I know you’ve had Toi Smith on your podcast. Toi is a good friend of mine, a dear heart friend of mine who also provides me with so much inspiration, provides us with inspiration. You know, we are sister organizations with Loving Black Single Mothers, her organization. I went through her mastermind, for lack of a better word, of Business for the People for a couple of years, which is an anti-capitalist business mastermind. And we take inspiration from a lot of different places that helps us keep going even against the odds, I think, because we’re, Motherful is definitely a unicorn. You know, people don’t understand what we’re trying to do. We’re working on really being able to explain it and to educate folks on what’s happening. But we’re really just building a new world.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

Well, you’re speaking a language that so many Americans specifically, or people who live within capitalism are just, it’s like a foreign language. They’re, you know, for many people, they don’t speak that language yet at all, or they’re just starting to understand it. But I’m hoping the audience that you’re speaking to here are people who are more fluent in that language or are trying to learn more, right? And they’re starting to say like this, I see the potential for this. I see the beauty in this and hopefully we’ll want to support your organization. Tell me how your organization is set up structurally as a business. Are you a nonprofit? Are you a collective? What does that look like?

Heidi Howes:

We’re a non-profit. Yeah, we’re 501c3. And we also have looked into social enterprise opportunities as well. We’ve ventured, gone into social ventures. As a nonprofit, we are set up as a non-hierarchical collective, which means we have a membership process for moms to come in and we also provide services for single moms who are not joining the collective. Once a week, we have an open house where any single mom can come and receive community support, resources, etc. But we have a board of directors. like any nonprofit, and we have a co-directorship along with a couple of staff beyond us. We have our collective members, and we have our supporters that are our village supporters, donors, volunteers, and we have an advisory council within our collective called the Matriarchs Council. And all of that is a circle. We’re not doing the pyramid.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

I think that’s another big piece of the difference between patriarchy, matriarchy, patriarchal systems are almost always inherently hierarchical and matriarchal systems are not right. Where it is more of a collective experience. So I think that’s a big piece of what you’re talking about. What have you guys learned over these last like 6 years or so with starting and now operating a nonprofit? And that is its own beast of a business organization. What have you guys learned about bias in the nonprofit space when it comes to funding specifically?

Heidi Howes:

We’ve learned that we get to be creative about our solutions. We’ve learned that we will be overlooked. We’ve learned that we will be underfunded. We’ve learned that we get to continue to seek out those who truly see us and who truly are in solidarity with mothers, with Black single mothers, with Indigenous single mothers, with mothers of color in general. We’re seeking those funders who really get us and we’ve learned to just keep it moving. Like, they don’t see us, they’re not for us.

Lisa Woodward:

Yea, keep it going because they’ll see us in the end.

Heidi Hwoes:

Yeah. It’s very frustrating. You know the Global Fund for Women has this campaign going on. It’s 1.9 Rising. That’s like 1.9 percent of funding and philanthropy going to women. And then I think it’s going 5 percent, don’t quote me, that they’re showing for women of color. So you know we’re up against incredible odds but we’ve we found different kinds of alternative funding and local funding, local government funding is coming through for us. So our local partners are really seeing us, which is beautiful. The City of Columbus, Franklin County, you know, and we do have a lot of individual donors, although that’s down. So we’re really leaning into those things, you know, the individual donors who are supporting us and our monthly donorship we’re really working on that. We’re not depending on philanthropy and big philanthropy to give us what we need. We’re looking at, like for example, we’re in talks right now with a local developer who happens to be a Black queer woman who was raised by a single mom, and she’s interested in building our first housing project together. Finding those funders and partner who really truly see us and believe in us and have that future vision. That’s what we’ve learned. And we’ve also learned that we will be, it’s nothing new, we’ll be discounted, we’ll be unheard, we’ll be unseen, and that’s nothing new.

Lisa Woodward:

We’re doing something out of the box. So we definitely encourage our donors to come see us in person because it’s hard to just understand everything, but once in-person meetings and seeing our location and seeing our members definitely always puts that person on track with understanding what we’re doing and getting support.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

And you mentioned they won’t see you. Are you also finding, I mean, is that same sort of bias there for in terms of visibility of being, you know, getting media attention, other types of attention?

Heidi Howes:

No, I think we’ve gotten a ton of media, especially local, not yet national and international, which is what we’re looking for, for sure. But locally, we’ve definitely created a ton of buzz in our 4 and a half years that we’ve been, we’re definitely a known entity. People, I feel like we’re beloved. And one of our funders, the Gund Foundation, is putting us front and center on their website. You know, they’re funding reproductive justice organizations like ours, which we’re super grateful for. We’ve definitely gotten a lot of like, I guess that would be what tokenism, you know, a lot of like, let’s showcase this grassroots organization that we’re supporting, and you know, that’s kind of par for the course, I guess, but we love to be showcased, and we love to be you know, we’re looking for the dollars to match that, to back that up.

Lisa Woodward:

And we have kick-ass branding. You can’t deny it. Yeah. Like, seriously. We have a boob in our logo, people. It’s a boob.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

And that’ll get you noticed, I would think. So that’s good. What other kinds of challenges have you encountered just doing this thing that’s different than I know you said you’re from businesses in the past, this is a different kind of business and the vision that you’re holding is so large. You know, I love that you have such a big vision for what you think this can be and want it to be and what it will be. Let’s hold that vision, right? That it will be. What are the challenges that maybe you weren’t expecting that have come up for you guys on this journey?

Lisa Woodward:

Well, we have lots of challenges.

Heidi Howes:

Lack of funding. Lack of funding. You know, we have a lot of personal challenges that come in the way of, you know, get in the way of us like being as quote unquote productive as we may want to be on a daily basis. You know, I have a chronically ill child, Lisa has a special needs child, you know, that takes up a lot of energy, time. So those are big challenges for us and we keep going. Other challenges, I hadn’t expected, I think that mothers would be… that it would be so slow to build the collective. But this year, I feel like with the Matriarch’s Council, which we started this year, I feel like it’s really started to take root. We have moms coming and volunteering and being more involved and bringing their voice to the table. As we’ve held this vision, we’ve been wanting more and more moms to come in and say, yeah, and let’s do this. And yes, and I’ll take this on. And so that’s really starting to happen. I think we thought things would happen faster.

Lisa Woodward:

But we’re doing so much in so little time. It’s a challenge.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

There was some hesitancy or it took longer than you thought it might to get people who would be using the services, which is surprising to me as well. I’m wondering what do you think that’s about? Is that like, it’s too good to be true or they just don’t understand it or don’t deserve, don’t feel this feeling of not deserving? Like, what do you think it was that kept people from taking advantage of the services?

Heidi Howes:

Not so much taking advantage, sorry, not so much taking advantage, but more like taking ownership of the organization as a collective.

Lisa Woodward:

And also time, single moms don’t have a lot of time to like pour back into us. And so we’ve seen that gap. That’s why we started to implement like stipends for our moms when they do like volunteer for a shift because we want to give moms money. We want to be able to give them opportunities so they can get paid as well to support them 360. So we have found that we have more engagement and that is available.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

Tell me more about this matriarch’s council, because you’ve mentioned it a few times and I love the sound of it. I like anything that’s called matriarchs, anything. But how does it operate and how’s that like, how does that fit into your business structure and how it runs?

Heidi Howes:

Yeah, so we found that, like I said, we wanted moms to really start to own the collective so that it wasn’t just like us driving the vision, but that we could really bring other mothers, like a larger group of mothers into the organizing. And the board, the board structure felt like more of a top-down kind of thing that doesn’t really work for us. So we decided to take more attention and put it into this Matriarchs council, which is, you know, we took inspiration from a book, which I know you’re asking at the end of this question, but the book is “Societies of Peace” by Heide Gettner-Abentroth. It’s edited by her. She’s a matriarchal, basically a scholar of matriarchy, matriarchal societies and “Societies of Peace,” which actually I think Toi Smith turned me on to through her amazing Instagram. She, Heide Gettner-Abentroth, she outlines the matriarchal model, which has like four different things that she highlights and I have them here. There’s the economic level, which in a matriarchal model, the economy of matriarchy is a society of reciprocity and balanced by gift giving, like a gift economy, right? And then the social level is founded on motherhood and based on the clan, the non-hierarchical horizontal society of matrilineal kinship. And then the political level is egalitarian societies of consensus, gender egalitarian. So it’s not just the flip of patriarchy where there’s oppression of men, it’s egalitarian, right? And then for the level of culture, worldview and spirituality is sacred society of the divine feminine, you know, so the basically spirituality of the Earth. So we wanted to look with the Matriarchs council, we wanted to build this. kind of matrilineal kinship with each other and to bring, empower the mothers in our collective who are already engaging but not like quite feeling like it was they could step forward to lead within the collective. We wanted to develop their leadership so that’s what the Matriarchs Council is. It’s a leadership development cohort that’s a year long and we meet once a month and the matriarchs are in part of our decision making, you know, and they’re advising what’s happening in the collective, you know, and we, it’s consensus based.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

I had this thought that just popped up that was you’re really ruining business for these women because they’re gonna have this beautiful experience and then go out into the corporate world. I hope they don’t. I hope that they don’t have to do that. But boy, if only all business could operate that way. Unfortunately, they don’t. So you have this beautiful experience and then go function in some other business where that is not the case. But I love the idea of encouraging all business owners to think. Again, it’s just like, how do we flip things on their head and how do we think about this stuff differently? And maybe it’s, you know, obviously some things might have to change in a for-profit versus a nonprofit, but still those principles, why can’t we begin to explore, how can those principles show up in my business? What does that look like inside of my business and with my team? Or even if I’m a person of one, a business of one, how does that show up in the way that I’m treating myself and my community, and thinking about my business? So I love that you guys are thinking about that in all of those ways, it’s beautiful. How does it show up for you, for the two of you, because you’re obviously putting in, I would imagine, there’s just a little more sweat equity from the two of you as the founders and the folks that are the director role, I’m assuming probably paid staff compared to some people who may not be or whatever. So how does it look for you as far as caring for yourselves and what is collective and community look like for you?

Lisa Woodward:

Well, inside of all the programs that we do for Motherful, we’re involved. And so I feel like we’re giving self-care to the moms and also we’re participating. As far as self-care, it’s very hard to create self-care outside of Motherful, but it’s a balance I’m still working on. It’s a challenge. It’s definitely a challenge, but I’m thankful that I know beyond a doubt that inside of Motherful all my needs will be met. And it’s definitely, I lean in on it and I am not scared to ask for support.

Heidi Howes:

Yay. Yeah, I think, and that’s stuff that we’ve been developing. alongside of Motherful, I think. Like, I feel like I’ve seen Lisa grow as far as being able to ask for help and being able to say no to things that, like, in the past. I feel like I’ve seen myself grow, too. But I think outside of, like, watching Lisa, and first of all, like, we take care of each other. I think, you know, I feel like we take care of each other. We have, like, you know, beyond, like a solidarity beyond probably most co-directors or co-founders in that like, we also, you know, care for each other’s children. We also, you know, bring each other food or things that we need, you know? I mean, I think there’s just like a kinship that we have. That, and I wouldn’t say that, I don’t think before we founded Motherful together, I don’t think we were like, I mean, we were friends, we were acquaintances, but we weren’t like, you know, close friends per se. And I would say that like, so together as we’ve grown Motherful, and as we’ve seen how like, oh, this isn’t working, let’s do this, you know. And and it’s also been a healing process for each of us, you know, like when we started saying like, let’s, let’s center our motherhood inside of this business, right? Like it’s allowed me to be able to say, like, instead of just getting up and doing everything for the kids and doing, doing stuff for me, and then running straight to my computer, right? Like, I’m like, wait a second, how do I center myself? Um, you know, cause there’s this pressure, right? There’s this, there’s this pressure always of like, well, I have to work. I have to work. How do I like make sure that I eat something first? You know, and we’re still working on that. Like, how do I make sure that I get my exercise in, you know, like instead of being just like in this crazy drive, and just really taking more time to pause and say like, what do I need? Yeah. What do I need? And, and so that. That’s also just looking at the collective of mothers together and seeing what is it that we need collectively as mothers, as single mothers, to be able to breathe and thrive and slow down and that’s, it’s a work in progress. I feel like we are growing a lot alongside of the collective too. And I feel like things have shifted a lot, you know, cause before we, Lisa was an executive assistant position, even as we were growing this in the first couple of years before we had funding to become staff. And that was like a, an unraveling for you, right?

Lisa Woodward:

Yeah. It’s change of environment, change of, uh, you know, daily schedule and adding my daughter in. So it’s definitely a work in progress.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

I love that you’re able to ask for help now. That is huge, huge. That’s huge

Lisa Woodward:

Yeah, I used to be a yes girl. I used to be a yes girl. But I’m not anymore.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

I think so many people can relate to that. I mean, that’s again, that goes back to our conditioning. You know, women are very much conditioned into being good girls, quote unquote, good girls, right? And being part of that is like caretaking and saying yes and putting other people first. And so it is a huge shift to be able to say no and even more so I think to then ask for what you need when we’re so told that that’s selfish or you know, also like you were saying that you should be strong and be able to do it on your own. So it’s great. And being able to role model that for that community that you’re a part of is huge. Yeah, Heidi, what does your shirt say?

Heidi Howes:

Mothering is an act of revolutionary love. I mean, we did a book club with the book, “The Three Mothers,” which was a biography of the mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin. Highly recommend. And it It really made the connection for me that everything I’m doing as a mother is a part of the revolution that we are birthing, you know, because that’s definitely what Motherful is. It’s a revolution of matriarchy, you know, of the matriarchy of simply just caring for mothers, which hasn’t happened in this country, you know. And so it’s revolutionary to love inside of capitalism, to love our children, to raise our children, to labor for free in like this economy that doesn’t work for mothering, you know? So everything that we do as mothers is revolutionary because it’s changemaking, it’s culture making. That’s the way I see it. But this is from Mahogany Mommies, so everybody should go buy it from Mahogany Mommies on Instagram.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

I love it. I’m glad I asked because I love what you just said there. And thinking, I mean, talking about business and where you talked about feminism, feeling like it has excluded mothers or feeling excluded from that as a mother. Because I think feminism has historically in many ways focused on the idea of work, of women, of equality in the workplace, and not giving the credence that it needs to, to the laboring of mothers. That is work, right? That is a whole lot of labor that is unpaid, uncared for, and is valid and needs to be respected. And so I love that you mentioned that part around that too, because this is a business podcast, but mothering is labor. It’s work.

Heidi Howes:

And to be fair, I mean, Sylvia Federici has been talking about like the Mothering Wage forever, right, since like the 60s, 70s. So I know that there are pockets within feminism that are talking about motherhood and have been for the whole, you know, the whole movements. But yeah, just wanted to put that out there, you know.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

Well, I think it’s important to note that. I mean, the ways that it has felt exclusive when the point, I think, at least of the approach that, you know, I think we’re all talking about this intersectional, inclusive look at what it should be and how that then translates into the way we run our businesses. And you guys are really modeling some amazing different ways to show up. You talked about being culture makers and I can see the culture you’re trying to create and tell us about the… I’ve mentioned your vision a lot, that you have this big vision with collective housing, but shed a little more light on that for folks. Like what is the vision you hold for what Motherful can be?

Lisa Woodward:

Yeah, we’re looking to build an eco-village that’s a farm on acreage of land. We will have trees and woods and there will be units that, 25 units that moms could buy or rent and then we also want to have emergency housing available, child care on site, community center. We want to have a farm. We have a 15-bed community garden right now so we want to expand that and also our composting to make it bigger and just having social enterprise there, maybe having a community center where other moms have spaces or women’s orgs, also having a cafe so moms won’t have to worry about eating, cooking at home. They can just come there and eat when they want to. What else do we want on our land? A spa. A spa. We’re going to have a spa. Definitely. And have a place to do, we like to do art. Art is in our mission. So we definitely want to have space, maker space, and also somewhere where we can have live shows. Performances.

Heidi Howes:

I mean, really, we’re building Motherful as a prototype to here in Columbus, Ohio. We’d love to lateralize the organization. We’d love to have other single mothers in other cities around the world be able to take our model and reproduce it so that it’s a movement. And so we’re working on those pieces. So if there are any mothers who are hearing this and want to maybe start a chapter in your city, reach out to us for sure. That’s the big vision is to create a model that can be replicated easily and in other cities.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

And does that vision include work like employment? Is it the idea being that the community is running that getting paid to run that? Or how do you envision that piece of it, the sort of economy of what you’re building?

Heidi Howes:

Yeah, we envision creating cooperative businesses. So if you’re talking about at our community, we would like to build worker-owned cooperatives with mothers, you know, say maybe for mothers who are interested in the composting business that we wanna create, or we’re talking about building potentially a thrift store, we’re talking about other businesses, like we have a lot of moms who are doing self-care items and creating businesses collaboratively so that moms can thrive, and yes, contributing to the economy of Motherful as a whole, as far as lateralizing our organization, you know, there would probably be a small fee for chapters to be created. And then the consulting on that would be also an income model for us. Also the development, you know, we will be potentially help supporting and development of housing projects all over. So that’s another thing. And yes, our goal is to employ mothers as much as possible, employ single mothers, pay single mothers. And also just we’re working on an Ohio Mother’s Trust, which would be a guaranteed universal income program here in Ohio. That’s another one of our goals that we’re working on with city officials is to create, you know, those kinds of reparations to mothers.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

What advice or just like final thoughts might you have for the kinds of folks who are listening to this who are running for-profit businesses on the whole? I hope that we have also nonprofit listeners, but I think the bulk of folks will be people who are leading for-profit businesses, but again, are really committed to saying, I wanna do this differently. I wanna think outside of this capitalist box and what it could look like and what’s possible and how my business can help create that more equitable world. Do you have thoughts about how these more traditional for-profit business might be able to reimagine what they’re doing to learn from some, take some pieces of what you’re doing and make it work for them.

Lisa Woodward:

I mean, definitely the rules inside of their employees that are moms, the rules inside of working and what they can and cannot do that would block them in caregiving is definitely really important.

Heidi Howes:

I would say that just because this is the way it’s always done and the way you’ve always doesn’t done it doesn’t mean you can’t change. And if there’s a radical idea that you’re thinking is just too outside of the box for you, like I would challenge you to really start to envision what would it look like to bring your values? Like if you’re feeling that pull inside of your gut and your heart, like something needs to change, I don’t know what, like I would just start leading with your values, like, you know, do you value people over profits, okay, well then let’s, you know, center that. What does that look like? Start to do some visioning and we’d be happy to vision with you. You know, I think that’s something that we’re really good at. I, because we just said that doesn’t work. That doesn’t work. Okay. So what are we doing? We’re going to build something different, you know, that works for us. And I think if you’re the owner of your business and you’re the CEO and you’re the leader in your business, like you get to say, you’re building this ship. Like, and this could be the point at which you turn it to the direction that you want to go and you know our society needs to go. Like, business can really, really make a difference in our world. You know, which kind of difference do you want to make? You know, it’s the either you’re following the status quo or you’re making change, you know, and I think you have to be brave. You have to be willing to not know. You have to be willing to create a new map. Tisten to your gut. Listen to your heart. Listen to what the ancestors are telling you, you know, um, what your descendants are telling you like out there in the future, you know, here’s what it looks like in the future, um, and yeah, just be brave.

Lisa Woodward:

And listen to your employees. You know. Talk to them, have brainstorms, have those hard talks so you can understand what’s needed because a lot of times they don’t tell you and they talk amongst themselves and it’s actually change that you could make or things that you don’t know that there’s a gap in. So have connection meetings weekly so you can know what’s up in the workplace, in your workplace.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

And thinking about that hierarchical piece too, and just questioning or examining where can you break down some of those barriers that have created these top-down approach where that’s possible. You know, maybe even the small things can make a big difference. And I love that you said, Heidi, about the ancestors and the descendants. That’s something I like doing with a lot of my coaching clients is having them write letters from or to their ancestors and from or to their descendants around whatever issue they’re sort of challenged by because it can shed such a different light when you are thinking of things in that way. So it’s so beautiful to bring that up and share that here. Okay, well, we’re winding up here and ordinarily I ask about an organization to donate to, but I think in this case, we know that they ask is going to be to support Motherful. And I will be making a donation as a thank you for your time for being here and doing this. And I hope people who are feeling inspired and motivated to make change will do the same. And I will include all the information on how to find Motherful in the show notes. It’s motherful.org, is that right? Yeah, so easy to find. You can go there and make a donation, but I will also include the link right in the show notes. So there’s no excuses. Go find them, go make a donation to say thank you for their time. And then as far as a resource, I know you mentioned one, Heidi, um, you may have another, but I also want to make sure I give Lisa a chance. Is there a book, a podcast, an educator, something that just either really inspires you or that you just are really interested in right now that you would share?

Lisa Woodward:

We’ve been really just interested in sustainability as a whole. I’ve been actually reading and studying composting because it’s a real big part of our business. We get a lot of food every day. It’s an up and coming… Composting in general is on the forefront of becoming like an explosive career path and also not many people are doing it and we are seeing like how it can spread. So I’m really for the composting.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

Food waste is like, I was shocked when I learned, I think it’s a third of what’s in the landfills or maybe even more. Food waste is a huge problem. It’s what motivated me to start composting. So we compost in our home, but I know that you’re right. It’s not a super common experience, especially I think in more suburban and urban kinds of experiences. So I love that you guys are doing it. I love that you’re excited by that.

Lisa Woodward:

Yeah, yeah, we’re expanding it. And right now we give our compost to a prison that has a program, a workforce development program inside of it. And then we’re looking to on the front side, we have moms that are recently bailed out of jail, that we support that are moms in a wraparound service and having them work on the composting on the front side. So we’re looking to like expand composting for jobs here at Motherful.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

Thinking of every move you’re making in your business, whatever your business is, but at every point, even the things that may seem small, like asking yourself, is there a way I can do this that better reflects my values? I had never thought about donating my compost. We have a lot of it at this point that we can’t, it’s more than what we can use in our own gardens. So it’s very interesting and I love that your brains are wired that way. And it inspires me to try and rewire my brain a little bit to be, you know, just in the smallest things to ask myself, is there another choice I could make here? Another choice that better reflects my values. That’s beautiful. Anything else that you guys wanna share before we wrap up about your organization, about business?

Heidi Howes:

I mean, I just want to reiterate that if you’re looking to do business differently, you can do it. You know, there are amazing resources out there and also you can talk to us and we’re happy to talk to anybody who wants to learn more about how we are doing business differently.

Lisa Woodward:

Yeah, we’re happy to do a brainstorm with you. We can create a group of moms to facilitate that and you can get feedback in person. We love doing brainstorms. We have great ideas over here.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

I love that offer. I hope that you charge a consulting fee for that or at minimum request a very sizable donation to your organization for that. How do people reach out to you if they’re interested in that kind of thing?

Heidi Howes:

No, they can just send an email to info at motherful.org.

Becky Mollenkamp (she/her):

I highly recommend people take them up on that offer because I think that’s amazing. Thank you both so much for your time today and for doing this. I’ve really, really loved our conversation and I feel like it’s leaving me thinking about, again, how do I just look at all the little pieces of what I’m doing and say, is there another way? Is there a way that feels more matriarchal? So thank you.

Heidi Howes:

Thank you, Becky. We appreciate being here.