MOMS MADE FOR MORE: A Mum Life Success Story

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This month’s Mum Life Success Story embraces all that I hope for, for my readers here at Mum Life Stories. Independence, perseverance, courage, identity, and a can-do attitude toward chasing her dreams. She’s on a mission to not only see her own dreams and desires fulfilled but to help others do the same and to find their true selves amongst all the noise this world throws at them. 

A true inspiration, April Sky is a single mum, business woman, life coach and entrepreneur. How she got to where she is today can only be attributed to her own determination not to give up, not to allow her circumstances or the obstacles that inevitably come, to prevent her from being all that she can be.

I could go on with the introduction but I think I will just let her do that herself. Afterall who can tell you more about someone than that someone themselves?

“Hi, friends! My name is April Sky and I’ve been a divorced full-time single boy mom for the past three years to my wild-ass, beautifully creative,  five-year-old son. Together, we live on our own in Montana (United States). Both businesses that I’ve built/run and supported us with financially, were started after he was born, making our journey quite the freaking ride.”

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Becoming Mum

Before April was a mother she was quite satisfied in her job as a teacher. She was married and certain that she was supposed to be a stay-at-home mum.

“So, I had my son, loved him fiercely, but felt an extreme pull to somehow financially contribute, which then birthed my second baby, photography. Two years later, that business exploded into a profitable wedding photography venture that not only gave me my independence, but it gave me a voice, something that had been squashed out of me since I was little. I knew in my soul that the identity I had lived and the life I had built around me was not okay or healthy and most importantly, not what I wanted to raise my child around. 

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When Jaemon was not even two, I signed up for, trained, and ran my first half marathon. It was in training that I realized I was in a very unhealthy marriage and was not being true to who I was deep down. I was a lost mom who had never ever had the opportunity to be her true self. I wasn’t really even sure who that was, I just knew it wasn’t who I was at that moment. So, after an internal battle for the ages and essentially no emotional support, I left. Hello single mom life.”

Troubled Beginnings

Many of us can probably relate to the fact that who we become as adults and how we feel about who we are is shaped by our childhood and the influences and experiences we go through. Some experiences are good and help us learn how to cope with the world and some damage us and tear holes in our identity that take many years to repair. April had an experience in her childhood that did just that.

“The shaping of who I am and why I lived a life of lost identity until the age of 27 started when I was five-years-old, when in a moment I lost the trust of a family member and of men really altogether. With this story comes tears, guilt, trauma, lasting damage, grief and several rounds of counseling (my current counselor is my jam). It was at five that I lost my voice and quieted that fire I knew even then was inside of me. I recall sitting on my bedroom floor, lighting candles and asking God or the universe to please make me ‘normal’ and like everyone else. At age five.

My wandering soul was old then and although it was beautifully different, outside circumstance told it not to be. It’s because of this that I am now louder than my circumstances. It’s because of this that I left my child’s father because I damn-well wasn’t going to watch my son’s old soul be shamed out of him as well. Celebrate your differences because they are gifts that were given to you for a reason.”





Finding her voice

After a difficult separation and a series of other traumatic events, April and her son found themselves called to a totally new city, completely on their own.

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“That is where the second business was created, ‘Moms Made for More’. If you cannot find what you need, you create it and that’s just what I did nearly two years ago. What started as a Facebook group for moms to feel safe and interact, snowballed into a full-time business of teaching moms that they can be both a stand-out parent AND a badass dream achiever, simultaneously and it starts with finding their voice.

With dreams comes heartbreak, grief, pain (both physical and mental), loss, and failure. But, you know what sets those that reach their dreams from those that don’t? The will to keep going. I used to, and still catch myself occasionally, living in a limited belief that because I’m a single mom with little to no help emotionally or financially, that it’s harder for me and it’s why I haven’t x,y, or z-ed yet. It’s not because of my situation. It’s because I’m still falling back into that limiting belief occasionally that because I have developmental/past trauma or because my child struggles with sensory issues or because I live dollar to dollar or because so few around me think like I do, that I’m not getting farther faster. In reality, it’s because of these things that I am absolutely fit and ready to do what I’ve been called to do which is to serve moms by being who I am and by using my very loud voice.” 

Balance

I always ask my Mum Life Success Story Mums how they find balance, between family, work, dream chasing and community. April didn’t hold back on being authentic about her struggle.

“Simple answer. I don’t, but what I do find is myself, over and over again. I’ve put in so much emotionally and financially into truly TRULY peeling back the layers and discovering who I am at my core so that, although I’m constantly evolving and growing (as we all can if we give ourselves space to), I know who home-base April is and it’s from there that I find my “balance.” It’s from there that I know what lifts me/weighs me and from there that I’ve learned how to structure my days and my weeks and my year for success as I run two profitable businesses and raise an incredible little boy on my own.

I’m also a planner whore and have my goals with actionable steps plastered all over my walls, haha. Benefit of being single. I believe with my entire being that a dream without a plan stays just that, a dream. So, I feel it, I think it, I speak it into existence, and then I plan it, step-by-step. Solid recipe for turning your dreams into reality. But again, that’s what works for me. Figure out WHO you are and you’ll know what works for you, too.” 


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Future Goals

By now I think you’ve gotten the picture that April is a planner and a visionary, so it should be no surprise that her goals for the next fews years are extraordinary. Of course my question about what she sees herself doing in 5 years was met with great enthusiasm. 

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“Oh my goodness, so I’m a 3 on the Enneagram (run and take the paid version if you have yet to) and so I LOVE getting questioned on my five-year plans. In five years, my ultimate goal is to do less, but achieve more (thank you Kate Northrup). However, if we’re getting specific, allow me to word vomit. I’m a firm believer that when you write your dream as if it is happening/has happened versus the possibility of it happening, the universe loves you more for it.

So with that said, I will be serving millions of moms through several platforms, I will be the host of a podcast (that’s coming at you this year), I will be the author of two published and impactful novels, I will be the author of a single-mom E book that helps get you through the first year as a single mother, I will be on the Ed Mylett Show (huge huge fan), I will be speaking heavily all over the world, and most importantly, I will be an exceptional mother and partner to the man my son and I have yet to meet.” 

April’s Advice

Feeling inspired? Wondering how you could become someone who motivates women to go on that journey of self discovery? April’s advice is:

“If you too would love to be a stay-at-home, full-time working entrepreneur mother who uses her voice to help others, it starts with you. The best gift I could have ever given myself and my child is the space and the time that I devoted to identifying who I am at my core and how I best care for myself to reach my highest potential. It takes trial and error, it takes falling on your ass, and it takes heartbreak, but holy sh#%, once you are on the “other side” looking back at your former lost self, you will smile and keep going. We are forever students of life, but if you want to say “F the Norm” with me and write your own story, it starts with identifying who you are, truly, so that your voice can get you to your highest potential, whatever that may be. 

For extra motivation or to find help getting started on your own personal journey toward self-discovery, you can visit April’s website at www.momsmadeformore.com

To see April’s awesome photography, you can visit her Photography website at www.aprilskyphotography.com

…and why not join April’s community Facebook group here https://www.facebook.com/groups/momsmadeformore/

 

Thanks

Thank you for reading this blog, if you’d like to read more Mum Life Success Stories, click HERE and if you’d like to be featured as one of our success stories, simply email us at mumlifestories@gmail.com or visit our T & C’s page for more info.

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