{by Katy from Bird on the Street}

“Your child has brain damage” is on the list of things you never want to hear, but in June of 2007 those were the exact words I heard just one day after my son was born. A few minutes later they told me that he would probably not live, but if he did, he would be in a wheelchair and could be mentally handicapped as well.

Long before he was born, I knew that motherhood would change me. After Charlie’s traumatic birth, I was scared to death that it would be his brain damage that would alter who I was. Being the mother of a disabled child did change me, but it turns out it would make me better, would challenge me, and would help me become the person I always wanted to be.

I’ve spent my whole life wanting to do something creative. I thought about interior design; I thought about party planning. I perused web sites, tried to discover my personality type, and stacked career guides up on the bedside table. But there was always the day job, and creative ventures were restricted to painting walls or creating art work when I couldn’t afford the real thing.

Charlie’s birth changed all that. I quit my job to stay home with him– convinced that no one could care for him like I could. Suddenly, there was time in the day. No longer consumed with the test scores and lesson plans of a full-time teacher, I needed some kind of outlet.

{by Maya from ThinkMaya}

My title is indeed inspired by the movie Julie and Julia – such is my own relationship with Margaret Rudkin!

This past weekend, I stumbled upon the story of Margaret Rudkin – the lady who founded Pepperidge Farm. It was the right story that came along at a perfect time – one I needed to hear and one that I could relate to at multiple levels.

Thus was born, in my head, the story of “Maya and Margaret” – my effort to tie in my own story of how my startup and my life today came about with Margaret’s story of how she founded Pepperidge Farm from a little loaf of bread ….

It is better unplanned …

It is 2 years and 2 months since I formally quit my job at a big company and moved to Seattle. I had imagined nothing of what my life would be. A couple of months off with the kids in the summer and back into corporate life was my plan. What can I say? Plans change. A 3 month old and a 20 month old with a broken arm and an extreme case of stranger anxiety caused me to slow down a bit.

As much as I dreaded being a mom 24*7 with no job that I can completely rely on to get that much needed break and distraction everyday, I decided to do it anyway. While I worked to help my daughter with her hand and get over her insanely acute stranger anxiety, my own need for a breather slowly sucked me into this online world.

{by Ron Mattocks from Clark Kent’s Lunchbox}

An economic downturn. The loss of a job. The struggles to make ends meet. Sound familiar? I could probably rattle off at least two dozen people living through this right now. It’s miserable. I should know.

In 2006 I was a hotshot real estate executive who was pulling down a ridiculous six figure income while driving a hot car and partying with even hotter women. I lived in a downtown loft, wore designer suits, and pretty much did as I pleased. Okay, I know what’s going through your head, but wait, it gets better. By the end of 2007 I was engaged, laid off and flat broke. Not only that, I was about to gain two stepdaughters and couldn’t afford to visit my three sons who lived several states away.

After spending my entire adult life steadily employed, I suddenly found myself in a strange and unfamiliar place. It was as if I had been sucked up in a wormhole and then plopped down in an alternate dimension where my fiancé (now wife) worked the big corporate job while I oversaw the daily distribution of Goldfish crackers to a five and six year-old like an aid worker at a refugee camp. Everything was all switched around. The hot car with a V8? Now it was a minivan that seated eight. The downtown loft? Replaced by a cruddy apartment in the ‘burbs. Endless free time? I’m sorry, who needs picked up when?

As a result of these drastic changes to my circumstances, I turned into an emotional basket-case, breaking down after watching certain cell phone commercials or at the sight of another empty toilet paper roll no one thought to replace—again. No longer could I rate my identity against annual reviews and performance bonuses; instead, I was being admonished by a kindergartener for my absentmindedness in forgetting to put mustard on her sandwich.

Being denied the external validation I so desperately needed from a five year-old, combined with the barriers keeping me from my own kids, as well as a few other odds and ends sunk me into a depression, one deeper than that to which I am already genetically predisposed. (Thanks Catholic Ukrainian ancestors!)

Yes, life was coming up roses for yours truly, and it was clear I needed to do something about it.

{by Leslie from Mrs. Flinger}

I don’t always believe in Fate. I want to keep my life organized in such a way it does not possibly involve anything other than my own strength. But sometimes I have to confess that there are strong coincidences that can not, nor should be, over-looked. I had no idea this post would be one of them.

When Blog Nosh Magazine came to me with an offer to read about and reflect on the founder of Pepperidge Farm, I said yes without truly understanding the impact this would have. I did not know I would lose my job this week, nor could I have known how much I would identify with Margaret Rudkin. Truly, I did not appreciate the exact timing of such an offer.

I do now.

Sitting in my “Mommy Time Out“, reading over the tale of how Pepperidge Farm began, I found myself appreciating the community of motherhood, entrepreneurship, and clean eating. These three things are the tenants of my site here, the foundation of my life. I found myself reflecting on how easy it is to forget this balance, to allow one aspect to dominate another. As a mother trying to re-group in the business world while finding a path to healthier eating and lifestyle, I was simply inspired by Margaret’s tale.

Hey, Margaret! My first bread attempt sucked, too!

{by Michelle Lamar from V3 Marketing}

It’s been 11 years since my mom passed away. But there are still days that I start to pick up the phone—to try to call her with a question—and my grief washes over me like it was yesterday.

My mother was a classy lady. Like many women in her generation, she raised a family and juggled work at a time when it was not the norm. Mom stood for all of the stuff that the feminist movement stood for but she did it wearing pearls and a dress. My mother did what she could to bust through and live life on her own terms, for the good of her family. My mom was a businesswoman who was involved in several different companies. She started her last business, an import-export company, when she was 60 years old!

Modern mothers need to unite and support one another, because balancing work and family is very tough, especially in this economy. I love to hear about strong women and Pepperidge Farm founder Margaret Rudkin has an awesome story. Margaret was one mom of three who just happened to start a business—in the Great Depression!

Margaret was a 40-year-old-mother of three young boys, living in Connecticut on Pepperidge Farm—named for an ancient Pepperidge tree that grew there.

The family faced many challenges during the Great Depression—but as parents, one of the most difficult challenges was dealing with the severe allergies and asthma of their youngest son, whose condition made him unable to eat most commercially processed foods.

Based on the advice of doctors, Margaret put her son on a diet of fruits and vegetables and minimally processed foods.

Then one day Margaret decided to try baking him some all-natural stone ground whole wheat bread with vitamins and nutrients intact. At a time when puffy, aerated white bread dominated the market, many skeptics—including her son’s doctor—didn’t think it was possible to bake nutritious bread that was also delicious

Margaret proved them wrong and then some.

{by Lucrecer Braxton from Art Slam}

There isn’t a worthwhile thing in the world that can’t be accomplished with good hard work.

You’ve got to want something first and then you have to go after it with all your heart and soul. ~ Margaret Rudkin

When I started the Art Slam, it was my fourth “from scratch” blog. I shut the others down knowing full well I was losing huge readerships. Why did I do it? They were no longer me…authentic. I felt lost in a world of scrapbook supplies, moms with cameras and enough online fakeness to make you want to hurl. I had lost my voice. My words did not seem like my own and I spent a couple of years searching for the essence of who I was. It was during this time I moved my journaling past just writing to making art within my journals. It never fails that when a challenging time comes into your life, you either rise to the occasion or you shrink back and allow it to consume you.

Recently, I was introduced to the story of Pepperidge Farm’s founder, Margaret Rudkin. Her youngest son suffered from asthma and severe food allergies. Concerned about his diet, she tried her hand at making bread and failed miserably with her first attempts. She did not give up and despite what skeptics told her about their doubts she could make nutritious bread that tasted good, she proved them wrong. I can not count the times I have had people tell me they doubted me and my ability to do anything meaningful with my love of art. There’s always going to be someone who does not think you can do something because THEY can not imagine your dream becoming reality. Thing is, the dream was placed in you, not them. You can not allow what others think to stop you from dreaming and being all you were meant to be.

Like most of us, Margaret did not set out to start a business, she had to do something to support her family. As a mother, you do what you have to do to support your family. I can remember when I lost my job a few years ago, I relied on what I knew best in order to help support my family in our time of need. I used my graphic design and photography skills to bring in some extra money. I started writing again and discovered a more patient, confident voice. I started this blog knowing it was not about having a huge readership, but about being a real, authentic person who could inspire with my art and words instead of breaking people down. There is enough of that mess going around online without me adding to it. When you stop by here, I hope you leave feeling better about who you are, inspired to live your life fully everyday and wanting to be all that you can be. Blessings to you.

{by Jessica from Balancing Everything}

I was certain the unbearable desert heat was actually pressing in on my little car as I drove home from work. It felt thick to drive through, too thick to breathe, heavy with the weight of impending rain and the coming monsoons. I peered at the blue sky through my windshield. Not a cloud in sight. I killed the ignition, and swung my legs out of the comfort of the air conditioned car, my green bowl positioned on my lap. I was six months pregnant and still throwing up a dozen times a day.

A wave of nausea rolled through me as the Arizona heat hit me like a brick wall. I closed my eyes, leaning my head against the still cool seat belt strap. I’d already had to pull over twice on the 202 to vomit on the side of the road; surely even my stomach couldn’t find anything else to reject. I bit back the almost automatic dry heaving and focused on getting out of the car. Hoisting two grocery sacks, I trudged up the three flights of stairs and let myself into our tiny apartment.

My husband was there, sitting on the couch, still wearing his concrete covered work clothes. I stood stupidly in the doorway, surprised to see him home so early. His eyes moved from my growing belly to my face.

“I got laid off today.”

The next month was insane. The monsoons came and rattled the windows and sent desert sand swirling away in muddy streams across sidewalks and down gutters. My husband worked when he could, begging for freelance cement jobs while he argued with his old employer about severance pay. He lined up jobs to help us pad our meager savings and I packed our little apartment, sold furniture, sorted out a replacement for the nanny job I had, and threw up every five minutes.

{by Shannon from Mr. Lady}

I was born in the place where you only went if you had to. I lived in the life most people can only imagine in nightmares, have only seen in movies. I struggle to say those words, because for me, that life is the norm, simply because it was mine.

There was no ship waiting to carry us away from that life. There was no secret to open that would grant us exit. There was no ladder for us to climb or ticket to find in the gutter that would deliver us from the soul-crushing hopelessness of societal abandonment. There were only the armed guards standing at the gates of the hole the world tossed us in to forget about us, and that is not a theological statement.

What we did have were our dreams. In a life that was shrouded in monochromatic shades of redundancy, our dreams were our escape. We imagined ourselves spies, or kings, or poets. We fancied ourselves grand and capable of great things. In the depths of night, when blackness masked the differences between our world and yours, we dreamed ourselves extraordinary.

I scribbled on tattered paper in the middle of the night, twisting words I’d learned until they made sense, creating tapestries of language to hang inside the walls of my heart. I hid those scraps of my soul carefully, under mattresses and in the backs of school lockers, because I knew that the day they were found, they’d be taken away from me.

And one day, they were found.

And that day, my heart was laid out on the floor in front of me and torn into pieces, one poem and story at a time.

And that was the day that I knew I had to leave. I knew I had to do something, that I had to effect some change in some way I couldn’t yet comprehend. I listened to the words thrown across the room at me that night, saying that it was wrong to dream of a better life, that it was selfish to want something better, that is was sinful to aspire to be something more than was destined for me to be, and I saw the bars that held us all in that place coming down around me. I knew that I would suffocate inside them if I didn’t run.

I ran. I left everything I knew one night in January and I ran as far away as I could get. I left behind the piano I’d hammer my rage into, I left the pen that I poured my soul out of, I left my mother and my family and every single person I’d ever known and I never looked back.

There is an art to the juggle. Family, business, and self… all of those dreams and ambitions up in the air. It takes a deft hand, a sharp eye, and a trust in our instincts in order to deliver the goods in life.

During the month of May, Blog Nosh Magazine will be featuring stories inspired by the founder of Pepperidge Farm, Margaret Rudkin, as part of our Celebrate the Heart and Art of Motherhood carnival. Margaret Rudkin was a mother who faced adversity and not only rose to the challenge of the juggle, but revolutionized an industry.

Her story, her work, the way she artfully wove motherhood and business, resonates with the lives of many mothers, parents, and entrepreneurs in our community. With this in mind, we shared Margaret’s story (along with the NoshTube video in our sidebar) with a group of commissioned writers, with the hope that they would feel a bit of it resonate within themselves. People, they delivered.

They delivered because that’s what we do. As writers, as parents, as innovative leaders and entrepreneurs, we look adversity in the eye and we recognize opportunity. Margaret’s story struck a chord in me because what resonated was not the fact that she made her first loaf of bread in order to help her son who was suffering from food allergies, but rather that her stepping up to the plate to solve an immediate problem revealed to her a talent for business that she never realized she had.

In today’s economy, so many of us are solving problems on the go, perfecting the art of the hustle so that our families’ needs are met, and consequently building new lives for ourselves. Through the first posts we share with you in our writing carnival, we delve into stories from designers, authors, artists, teachers, and innovators. Including one from a stay-at-home dad, which we have our current economy to thank for and for which we are thankful.

The economy that we face down each day makes Margaret Rudkin’s story all the more relevant to tell. We invite you to explore the ways that our writers’ stories overlap and build upon each other. Dig deep into your own story and ask yourself, possibly for the first time, how you have reached the point at which you are today. Is this what you had planned? For better or worse, reframe your own story with deliberation.

And we’d love for you to share it with us. We’ll be selecting 5 posts from the general carnival to feature on our front page during the month of May, with your permission. Share your post with your audience, then add it to our linky so we can find you.

Finally, we are immensely proud to share with you that Pepperidge Farm found such inspiration in your storytelling that they are donating $10,000 to Feeding America, in addition to the 9.2 million pounds of food Pepperidge Farm has donated since July 2005, 1.9 million pounds this year alone. The story of need and innovation is as relevant today as it was when Margaret founded Pepperidge Farm in the 1930′s. Blog Nosh Magazine is honored to be part of the inspiration for this donation, along with you and your own storytelling. hint, hint… Share your story! You inspire.