A: I am passionate about helping people feel at peace with food and learn self-love! I understand that our relationships with food and our body image are often more complex than they seem. Self-love is the foundation of all positive change! I also love real estate investing and financing.
Q: What were your younger years like?
A: I was an adventurous kid, and as an adult, I enjoy extreme sports like skydiving and more relaxing options like paddleboarding. As a child and teenager, I used food to gain a sense of control and turned inward. I don’t want anyone to experience that pain.
Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?
A: Self-love is everything. You deserve to love yourself. Your authenticity makes being your best self possible!
Q:What does feminism mean to you?
A: Feminism is about opportunity. Women need the same level of opportunities awarded to men.
Let’s connect! You can email me to get on the waitlist for my self-love course about our relationships with food and how to truly love ourselves. The course begins in May 2022!
Q and A with Adinafrom Timisoara, Romania, living in Sarasota, Florida
“It’s up to you to seek out the learning that will help you fulfill your desires.”
Q: What are you passionate about?
A: I am passionate about women’s health and happiness. I want every girl to grow up knowing about her body and honoring all of its processes. I want her to know that she is magical and has the ability to create life, either in the form of other humans or in a relationship or business or any passionate project. I want her to speak her beautiful and powerful thoughts and feelings into the world boldly. I want her to willingly share her body, mind, and soul with others who appreciate her. I want her to understand her monthly superpowers and to make the most of each phase of her life in general. I want her to feel safe and powerful in her body.
I found this passion through contrast. My career started as a pharmacist, seeing people (especially women) come in month after month for “maintenance medications” that never seemed to help them actually get any better. My hobby turned career since 2001 has been belly dance. These two worlds, pharmacy, and dance are almost exact opposites in my mind. Pharmacy is very structured with many rules and regulations, not much freedom to say what you really feel. Dance is fluid and new in every moment (even the highly structured dances have this fluidity within them). Over the years, I began to see that dance, on its own, has more power to heal than conventional medicine. When combined with other modalities such as nutrition and mindfulness, dance can lead the way to true freedom of movement and lasting fulfillment. Currently, I am working part-time as a pharmacist, teaching about 9 belly dance classes per month in my membership, and including a free class each month (Yes, I teach free monthly classes! DM me on Facebook or send an email at ravenswoodrhythms@gmail.com, and I’ll add you to the list so you know when the classes are held each month.), and I have a coaching program helping women harness the superpowers of their cycles (menstrual and/or the moon and seasons).
Q: What were your younger years like?
A: I was born in Communist Romania. At the age of three, my parents escaped and left me behind with my grandparents in the village. Nine months later, we were reunited in West Germany and another year later, we moved to the US. The message I received growing up was not to stand out in any way, to just be quiet and fit in, for fear that we would be found and possibly killed. So, I learned to stuff all my differing opinions, of which there were MANY, down deep inside myself and stick to what was safe. So, I became a pharmacist. But I’ve also stuck with belly dance for over 20 years now, so that’s the way I rebelled.
I actually discovered belly dance while visiting Romania when I was 15. We were at a restaurant and there was a belly dancer! I was mesmerized. A few years later, I was at the Earth Day Festival in my town and there was a troupe performing. I was so excited that it was so tangible! The costumes were bright and flowy, and I knew I found my thing. It took several months for me to build up the courage to attend a class, and several years until I felt truly comfortable in my own skin, and yet I persevered! When you find your thing, it keeps bringing you back home to yourself, no matter how far you stray.
Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?
A: Your past definitely shapes you, but you are the artist and can shape yourself into whatever you want with that information. As a woman, you are life, and that is no small thing. You have such great power within you, and all the tools hidden in your biology/physiology make your world and the larger world a better place. It’s up to you to seek out the learning that will help you fulfill your desires.
Q:What does feminism mean to you?
A: I definitely resonate with equal rights in the larger world, social/political/economic, but as far as being equal to men, we are not. And that’s a good thing! I believe that all humans can do all things, but we are wired for great differences. I believe it’s okay to be ultra-feminine or masculine and that means different things for each person. I do believe that the more feminine types of contributions to society, compassion/collaboration/nurturing/etc. should be valued equally.
MORE FROM ADINA: I was born in Timisoara, Romania, and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. I’ve lived in a few other places, but now Sarasota, Florida, is home.
Let’s connect! Here:
DM me on Facebook or email me about my freely monthly classes so that you can get yours! 🙂
*Note: Woman Wednesday is a part of our blog. Each Woman Wednesday post will feature a woman who would like to share information in the hopes of inspiring and motivating other women. Comments are welcome below.
Q and A with Ramona, Bucharest, Romania
“Art can give us strength to carry on, courage to push through.”
Q: What are you passionate about?
A: I am passionate about empowering, uplifting, and bringing joy into people’s lives through art. During the lockdown, I started a series of paintings called Urban Queen. Initially, I gave up my studio and planned to relax at home for a month or so. I was planning to do all the things I never have time to do like reorganize my wardrobe, read, and drink cocktails on my terrace. It didn’t last long. One day I read an article in Forbes magazine about the 7 women head of states and how they dealt with the pandemic. I started thinking about all the women in lockdown, all the unsung heroes, and the women who are leaders in their own way, whether it’s in their home or in their community. I had an urge to paint these women, so I set up a home studio and ended up working 12-hour days for 2 months straight. I took over the living room, and my family got used to fending for themselves.
Through my paintings, I want to bring every woman into the spotlight who runs her household, raises her children, puts up with her boss, looks after her health, and shows the strength and courage in her everyday life. I started sharing my art online and the response I had from women all over the world was incredible. Art has the power to move people at a very deep level and women connected with the paintings in a way I didn’t expect. I had hundreds of messages from women telling me what these paintings mean to them and how they make them feel. Stronger, powerful, self-confident.
A deeply moving experience was talking with Kristen, a nurse on the front lines in San Francisco. She was working crazy hours, doing loads of overtime when the hospital needed her, only taking breaks and resting in her car when she was on call. We messaged each other and spoke a lot. She told me, “I’m scared, inspired, and empowered raising girls during this time! These paintings spoke to me on such a deep level as a nurse on the front lines and mother of two daughters. Seriously, these paintings blew my mind on so many levels.” This expresses what I paint for: the power of art to lift our souls. It reminds us that we are magnificent beings capable of doing so much good in the world. Art can give us strength to carry on, courage to push through.
Q: What were your younger years like?
A: I grew up in a totalitarian communist regime where ‘freedom’ was nonexistent and food shortages, fear, and persecution was part of the daily life. I hated the system that imprisoned my grandfather, I hated the fact that everything was grey. When I was about 12, I saw a book on Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel. I was so moved by the art, the colors, the beauty that I decided there and then that if I can get out of the country, I would leave and never come back. That chance came when I was 18 years old, so armed with big dreams and a bag full of clothes, I made it to London, UK, all by myself.
I wanted to finish my education, so I was going to college during the day and working evenings and weekends. It was then when I discovered painting. I thought it was the most amazing thing in the world. I would stay up really late at night to finish my paintings assignments. However, the mentality I grew up with was that of the ‘starving artist,’ so instead I pursued a career in fashion where I thought, worst case scenario, I can get a job as a seamstress. Instead, at the age of 25, I opened my business, a fashion label that expanded rapidly selling in 300 boutiques all over the UK. Time passed, I fell in love, got married, and had our daughter. In 2009, my family and I moved back to my native Romania. This was now a totally different country I didn’t recognize.
Liberated from communist regime, the country was flourishing and exciting. I started an interior design business that made six figures in the first year. Still, painting was something I was called to do all my life, so I started painting again, at night time and during the weekends. In 2013, I was invited to exhibit in Miami, during the famous Art Basel. That was all I needed to get me to pursue my long life dream. Shortly after I walked into my office and told all my staff that I would be closing the business in order to pursue a career as an artist. I was 40 years old! It was a bold, crazy move and what followed was a few years of really hard work. As a self-taught artist, I made a point on working extra hard on my technique as well as finding my artistic voice. And still, I didn’t feel “worthy” unless my art was validated by the “art establishment.” When my family and I moved back to the UK in 2018, I got the validation I thought I needed by working with some well established art galleries, exhibiting in central London, selling my art to important collectors.
Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?
A: Life is about constantly learning, growing, and evolving. Painting the Urban Queen series has taught me my latest lesson: I don’t need the art establishment to validate me or my art. I am a queen and I wear my crown with pride. At the same time, my biggest lesson that I’ve learned is that “I am on Purpose.” I have been searching for purpose, for the best part of my life, and asked myself many times, “How can I live on purpose?” I think Urban Queen has provided me with the answer. When you are passionate about what you do AND you serve others, you are living with purpose.
Q:What does feminism mean to you?
A: Feminism is reestablishing the balance between feminine and masculine. It’s recognizing and honoring our differences. It’s understanding that vulnerability, sensitivity, intuition, creativity, and nurturing are very important qualities the world needs. They are not weakness as we were raised to believe. We don’t need to be like men. We need to connect to our own inner feminine qualities and lead from there.
Q: Would you like readers to know anything else?
A: I would say honor yourself. Women are used to doing everything for everyone else first, and we leave ourselves last. I am also guilty of that sometimes, and it’s something I’m still working on. To me, honoring yourself means working on your mindset, learning to appreciate what’s important in life, being grateful, being inspired, treating yourself, and most importantly, loving yourself. Find the Queen within!
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