March is National Women’s History Month

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Patty

My idea of feminism is self-determination, and it’s very open-ended: Every woman has the right to become herself, and do whatever she needs to do.
– Ani DiFranco, American singer and songwriter

Cream and black, linen and lace for a beautiful spring day. Vintage handbag from Secondi (Washington, D.C.).

When I first started my lifestyle blog, The Dress at 50, I envisioned it to embody its tagline – “live the creative life.” I still follow that maxim. Striving to live the creative life touches on every aspect of my life – marriage, parenthood, friendship, career, fiction writing, blogging, fashion and interior styling – and my topics have covered that wide range. I’ve also focused on women, regardless of where they are in their lives, and their creative endeavors.

Since the launch, I’ve become fascinated by women entrepreneurs – why and how they got to where they are today with their businesses. Creativity definitely factors into many of their decisions and choices. As I’ve interviewed women whose shops I patronize, I’ve found an interesting theme of going from one career to the one of their calling – hence the category Transitions and Transformations. The one thing I’ve learned from all of these women is to truly follow your heart, taking risks along the way. And for this former non-risk taker, it is a lesson I’m still learning. But their stories are so inspiring, I come away invigorated and ready to welcome opportunities and the chance to open new doors.

Accessorizing creamy lace with a Gorgeous and Green statement reclaimed vintage necklace (Berkeley, CA), End of Century cicada ring (NYC), Alkemie scarab cuff (Los Angeles), and Paz Sintes textile earrings (Spain).

I’ve also realized I want to celebrate women who have done amazing and courageous things in their lives. I have already met two incredible women – very close friends for more than 30 years – whose story will inspire you to stretch your boundaries of giving and living life to the fullest. Peggy and Tenny’s story will be posted this Friday, March 22nd.

March is Women’s History Month. It seems appropriate at this time to reiterate the focus of my lifestyle blog as the celebration of women at any stage of their lives who are living a full, creative life and making a difference in their communities, both local and global. I looked up the provenance of Women’s History Month: In 1987, after being petitioned by the National Women’s History Project, Congress designated the month of March as Women’s History Month. Since then, every year Congress has passed resolutions requesting and authorizing the President to proclaim March as Women’s History Month, which continues to be done.

Mixing linen and lace with carpet-bag floral and textile, reclaimed vintage, and vintage-inspired jewelry.

The 2013 National Women’s History Month theme, Women Inspiring Innovation through Imagination, honors “women who throughout American history have used their intelligence, imagination, sense of wonder, and tenacity to make extraordinary contributions to the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields.” Certainly this year, I hope to feature women who have made contributions in this area, and have lived fully and creatively along the way.

My mother – as an immigrant mother who sacrificed her life to ensure that her daughters were participants in the American Dream – was a role model to me for her perseverance and her unconditional love. When I look back at my formative years, I can’t recall other female role models who influenced my life or remember studying in school women in history who made an impact on me. Whatever the reason or reasons, it matters little now. At any age, women can adopt female role models and become role models themselves.

Confidently put on that new dress and be a role model for your kids, your family and friends, and your community. And live the creative, meaningful, and full life!

My life in healthcare information technology

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Patty

The most pleasurable thing in the world for me is to see something and then to translate how I see it.
– Ellsworth Kelly, American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

John, me, and Jack practicing our “author poses” for our book jackets, The Orange Grove, Syracuse University, May 1990.

When I’m not blogging on weekends and weeknights, trying to work on my novel on vacation time, and being a mom, wife, chauffeur, cook, housekeeper, and errand runner, I write about healthcare information technology (IT). It is, as they say, my day job. I’ve been writing about this industry since 2003, when my good friend Jack from grad school co-founded his business-to-business publishing company and asked me to leverage my experience working for a major health insurance carrier to write about the IT that insurers deploy. I free-lanced for his company, interviewing and writing articles about an industry that was initially new to me, for the next seven years.In 2010, I joined the company, now a media company, full-time. The previous year I had worked on a big project for a major client of ours, writing numerous case studies and a lengthy executive summary. It was a baptism by fire, as I’d never done a project of this magnitude before and it was crossing from the familiar territory of editorial to the uncharted waters of marketing. We took on more projects of this nature, and I became the sole custom content writer for these special projects. I had moved over, as purists scornfully or jokingly say, to the “dark side.”

My company mugshot.

As journalists, your interviewees, PR people, marketers, and the like do not see what you’ve written until it’s published. The separation of church and state is protected and preserved. What I write, however, is edited, reviewed, and approved by as many as several departments. They are our customer, after all. On a high note, a well-known industry visionary from a major global company merely added one sentence to my white paper and told his marketing director that I was his new favorite writer. On a low note, I’ve had a client redline what I’ve written to the point of non-recognition – in other words, if I had a byline, it would have to be deleted because it was no longer mine. Sometimes, you just never know, which makes each project somewhat of a blank slate. It’s my way of living on the edge, professionally speaking.

Why healthcare IT is important to you and me
Pressure and uncertainty aside, I enjoy what I do. Healthcare IT is an important industry that touches everyone because we are all patients – most if not all of us have been in a hospital and gone to the doctor’s office. Two major pieces of legislation to come out of the Obama administration that impacts all of us is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act (ACA), of 2010. Within ARRA is the HITECH Act, which essentially contains a number of incentive programs for the adoption of healthcare IT, especially electronic health records (EHRs) and health information exchange. ACA includes provisions that are more easily achieved through the adoption of healthcare IT, which is by design.

My company’s back East, and I’m out West. I work at home, which enables me to wear such things as vegan leather pants at my office.

I have seen the shift in both my primary care physician’s office and my kids’ pediatrician’s office from paper records to electronic records. Our pediatricians carry around their tablets and enjoy pulling up apps with their stylus pens. Gone are the shelves upon shelves of paper records in file folders. It is disruptive technology, for sure. EHRs were originally developed as a documentation tool so physicians could properly bill for the services they rendered in the traditional fee-for-service, or fee for volume, reimbursement world. Today, we are asking EHRs to document care, aggregate relevant patient information, and deliver the right information to the right clinician at the right time in order to improve the quality of care, clinical outcomes, and patient safety in a more streamlined, cost-effective manner. (We are also trying to shift to a pay-for-quality reimbursement model.) There are naysayers who want to eliminate EHRs and all healthcare IT because they are expensive, disrupt clinician workflow, create more work, and don’t do what they claim they will do. Privacy watchdogs warn of greater risk of data breaches. The technology has to continue to be re-engineered and vendors have to develop robust, reliable, and user-friendly technology (not just sell a bunch of software licenses that lock healthcare providers into long contracts with bad technology that clinicians don’t want to adopt). And policy has to continue to be refined so as to protect patient information.

A plum-colored sweater gets a boost with a Missoni scarf and bold Pam Hiran necklace (Anthropologie).

We are getting there. It’s a painful growing process. Legislation was put into place to speed the inevitable. The healthcare industry is woefully behind, if you look at how the banking and financial services and retail industries have embraced technology. Consumers will demand it in healthcare. They are already demanding to communicate with their healthcare providers across various channels of their choice and wanting to interact in a way that is more convenient for them. According to the Pew Internet Project, 45 percent of American adults have smartphones. According to an industry survey, 53 percent of clinicians use smartphones and 47 percent use tablets in their healthcare work environment. Medical schools are incorporating healthcare IT into their curriculum. So, really, it’s only a matter of time before we achieve the same state of IT adoption that we enjoy in other industries. And it’s only a matter of time before you can be in another part of the country far from home, end up unconscious in the emergency room, and the physician who is treating you can pull up your EHR, see what medications you’re taking, what allergies you have, and what other health conditions you have, and therefore know what medications he or she can or cannot give you based on that critical information. That’s why I take pride in what I write. This is important stuff. Admittedly, some topics are more engaging than others. Vendor neutral archive, anyone? But my job is to make the topic engaging. My job is to entice healthcare executives, managers, and clinicians to read what I write. Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, a short story or chapter in a novel, or a blog or case study or white paper, I have one goal: To find the narrative and tell the story in a clear, concise, and engaging way.

I work at my home office, but I still dress up as a way to be disciplined and to take myself seriously while working.

Cocktail party topics
In my research, I learn so many things. For example, RAND Health reported that approximately 133 million Americans had a least one chronic illness in 2005, which is astounding to me. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, every year, chronic disease, which includes cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, causes 70 percent of deaths in the U.S. and comprises approximately 75 percent of medical care spend. Our healthcare costs comprised 17.9 percent of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2012, and it’s expected to climb to 18.4 percent of GDP in 2017. And yet, up to 80 percent of chronic diseases can be prevented – mostly with lifestyle changes. The solution is both simple yet exceedingly difficult.Here are more interesting data. Did you know that persons aged 65 years or older numbered 39.6 million in 2009, which is 12.9 percent of the U.S. population or one in every eight Americans? By 2030, the number will grow to approximately 72.1 million older persons, or 19 percent of the population. The proportion of the global population over the age of 60 is projected to double from approximately 11 percent to 22 percent – from 605 million to 2 billion – between 2000 and 2050, according to the World Health Organization. Imagine the implications on our societies and economies to have countries with inverted pyramid populations?

Fun accessories complement the sequined birds.

In the U.S. we haven’t yet figured out how we are going to build a sustainable healthcare delivery system that will allow us to “age in place,” or grow old at home and not in an institutional setting. We have to look to other models in other countries. In Hong Kong, for example, instead of dispersing more funds to care for dependent citizens, the government is adding incentives to the same allocation of money if the patients’ functionality – which is the operative word – improves. We need to identify and support necessary enabling technologies to ensure a person’s maximum functionality so he or she can live productively within the community. Evidence exists that enabling an older person to stay at home saves money. Global aging, therefore, should be approached as both an opportunity for business and for improving the quality of life, rather than just a challenge or a burden, advocates argue. Now that’s exciting stuff to me, especially as I grow older.Writing about these challenges and paradigm shifts and potential technological solutions and visionary policies is an intellectual exercise for my brain. I’m learning so much; you could even call me a SME (subject matter expert), which is what I call my interviewees, in a number of topics. I have also had the opportunity to hone my presentation skills in webinars and before groups of healthcare professionals. Would I rather be writing novels and blogging? No doubt. But I’ve become a more thoughtful and careful writer and I have a better eye as an editor of my own writing through my industry writing through the years. I just need to clone me thrice to get everything done – something healthcare IT unfortunately can’t do. For that, we would have to turn to science fiction….

Have fun mixing black and white graphics. Throw in Carmela Rose vintage Lucite earrings, clear chunky bracelet etched with fun words from Anthropologie, MoMA 3D ring made of plastic (NYC), ruffled booties, skinny patent belt, and glossy red book bag from the Fickle Bag (Berkeley, CA).

Transitions and Transformations: Pilar Zuniga of Gorgeous and Green

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Patty

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though I have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously)her first rose
– e.e. cummings, American poet, from “somewhere I have never travelled,gladly beyond”

Pilar setting up floral arrangements for a wedding. (Photo credit: JRotsenphotography.com)

I first discovered Gorgeous and Green (2946 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705, 510.665.7974) after receiving a beautiful set of reclaimed vintage earrings for my 50th birthday last year. The earrings came in a box with the letters “GG” stamped on the lid. The letters were Art Deco in style – the first G backwards, as if mirroring the other G – and on either side was a flourish of Art Deco-style flowers and greenery. Curious, I asked my friend who gave me the present where she got the earrings. She explained that she was on San Pablo Avenue in West Berkeley and came upon a floral shop that sold unique jewelry. Intrigued, I made a little discovery trip, and I’ve been back to Gorgeous and Green many times since.

A colorful storefront display greets visitors to Gorgeous and Green.

The warm and inviting entrance to Gorgeous and Green.

Step inside: A Mix of gorgeous and green goods
The majority of Gorgeous and Green customers are neighbors who live in West Berkeley, although commuters who work in the area also come in during the week. On weekends, the shop is filled with visitors to the East Bay. It’s not uncommon for people to walk in and be unsure of what the shop is selling, admits owner Pilar Zuniga. Her concept is a mix of goods that she and other artisans have created that embody her distinct style – encompassing color, attention to design, vintage feel, sustainability, and the ability to be marketed and displayed in a beautiful and creative way. The gifts in her shop are either one of kind or “embodies the intention of the artist,” she said.

A rustic display of greeting cards from local small presses.

Thus, greetings cards displayed on a white-washed picket-fence gate hung on the wall are made by local, small-scale printing presses. Colorful glassware reclaimed from thrift stores and antique and garage sales dot the shelves throughout the shop. Hand-blown glass by local artisans is re-envisioned as planters for succulents and other plants. Body and bath products are made with natural ingredients and produced in an environmentally friendly manner. Zuniga stocks her shop with goods crafted by artisans whom she researches and finds on the Internet. “I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback,” she said, of her selections. She continues to stock what sells well, but tries to bring in new items.

Reclaimed vintage jewelry dangle from a suspended branch.

She designs and sells her jewelry, which comprise vintage pieces that she incorporates into a new design. “I like to redo jewelry to make it better or to make it into something someone would enjoy,” she explained. “I’ve always been interested in art – painting, drawing, other craftwork, sewing, making jewelry – I got really into reusing reclaimed vintage. That was always a side thing,” she said. Zuniga showcases creations by other jewelry designers as well, most of which are fashioned from reclaimed materials. Gorgeous and Green carries M.E. Moore‘s jewelry, which I discovered in Zuniga’s shop.

Artwork on the wall seems to spill out of this beautiful arrangement.

Roots in sustainability
Sustainability is an important aspect, and Zuniga has ensured that it is expressed in her shop. The San Diego native developed her environmental consciousness when she was a student at UC Berkeley, which opened her up to thinking about the greater good of the world. Not surprisingly, she found her way into the nonprofit sector of public health as a career and remained in northern California because of the area’s “down-to-earth sensibility” and the fact that “everybody is really close.”

When Zuniga was planning her wedding in 2005, she had difficulty finding a sustainable florist, though today there are more environmentally conscious florists. She saw a need to fill and was energized by the concept. Though she enjoyed working with people and in the nonprofit sector, she was losing interest as she moved into management and got behind a desk. Zuniga started her company in 2007 with a focus on floral design and events while still working full-time. She took classes but didn’t go to school for floral design, though she also learned about the industry through her aunt, who was a florist. When she was younger, she helped her aunt with weddings. Zuniga was able to rely on various skills she had learned in her job – designing and evaluating marketing materials. She transformed her garage into her workspace and created gift items specifically for weddings, and her business took off in 2008.

Vintage suitcases hold unique gifts and treasures.

Challenging times
“I really enjoyed the design and artistic piece of it, so I quit my job and opened up a shop,” she said. Zuniga had been eyeing her current storefront and convinced the landlord to rent the space to her in January 2010. Within three weeks, she had opened the first week of February, just in time to take advantage of Valentine’s Day. (In an anniversary of sorts and a repeat of history, Gorgeous and Green moved to its new location, 2946 College Avenue, near Ashby Avenue in Berkeley, this past February from its San Pablo Avenue location.)

Succulent terrariums featuring locally hand-blown glass.

At the onset, Zuniga faced significant financial challenges, which were exacerbated by the recession. She and her husband – who had started his business years before – had saved money, but in the beginning there were months when she made very little money or none at all. Zuniga logged 60 to 80 hours a week, seven days a week. Despite the grueling schedule and unstable earnings, by the end of the first year, when her lease was to be reviewed, she decided to try another two years. The holidays had buoyed her, and she added, with a laugh, “It could only get better from where it started.” That said, Zuniga burnt herself out the second year with her workload and made the strategic decision to hire people to help in the shop. Though staffing is one of the biggest line items in her budget, she believes the benefits outweighed the cost. Despite being “shackled” to the shop, she says the best thing about being a shop owner is flexibility. “I’m a hard worker, but I don’t have to keep going 110 percent all the time,” she said. She allows herself time to power down or take a break.

Wall-mounted terrariums and planters share a cozy corner of the shop with dried pressed flower earrings.

She has since pulled back doing events because of the time and effort involved and competition with larger events companies, and is investing more time showcasing her shop, which she feels needs her support to keep it going. This year she plans on cutting back on the number of events she produces in order to enjoy the few that she plans to take on. The wedding events that were the most memorable for her were the ones in which she was granted creative license. She has done a number of weddings at the Piedmont Community Center, but one in particular enabled her to use brilliant colors and planted materials such as succulents and ferns. “I really enjoyed having the space to do what I wanted to do,” she said. She also did a wedding in Moss Beach, which enabled her to enjoy the drive down the coast and then transform a garden into a vibrant place with washed-up wood that the bride had collected on the beach and had Zuniga incorporate into the floral arrangements.

The shelves are stocked with glassware, jewelry, natural bath and body products, and more goodies.

Taking risks and “throwing up some dust and some dirt”
Zuniga touts the support of her husband as being very significant in her decision to start her own business. When she and her husband first got together, she was the breadwinner while he was trying to get his business going. When his San Francisco-based video production company, Corduroy Media, finally turned and grew, the strain of being the breadwinner eased. “We both have our own businesses now, but I don’t think I would have done it without his business doing well,” she said. When her husband’s business was going strong after its first decade, Zuniga felt it was now her turn.

Gorgeous and Green’s San Pablo location before the shop moved to College Avenue.

She never questioned her decision to open her shop, buoyed with the philosophy that things would take care of themselves. She didn’t worry about being saddled with debt should the business venture not work out. “I’ve been there before and I’ve paid it [debt] off. You just move on and you learn from it,” she said, simply. “It’s just money. But it’s also a chance to be happy and to enjoy what you do and give yourself a chance. You’ll regret it if you don’t [try]. You’ll always regret it.”

If she hadn’t made the change, Zuniga emphasized that she would have missed out on the entire experience – the difficulties and challenges, the enjoyable times, and especially the fact that she overcame so much to get to where she is now. “I continue to do so [overcome adversities], and I surprise myself,” she added. “You just have to put yourself out there.”

Turning serious for a moment, Zuniga noted that society teaches women to eschew being a risk taker. “Part of it is genetic, part of it is maintaining your uterus as a safe space because you want to have children at some point or you might not,” she said, with a laugh. “Evolutionarily, it works that way.” But Zuniga has grown comfortable with embracing risk. “It’s okay to take a risk and not be sure and make big mistakes,” she said. It may not work out, but she says, “At least I jumped on it. I threw up some dust and some dirt, and it will eventually settle.”

Spend a lazy Saturday afternoon checking out boutiques in West Berkeley in a comfy chemise and platform boots made for walking.

A Gorgeous and Green find – a rose necklace made from corn! (Earrings by Carmela Rose and ring from Lava 9, Berkeley, CA)

Close-up of the rose necklace made from corn from Gorgeous and Green.

Redefining supermom

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Patty

“Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at the sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.”
– Zora Neale Hurston, folklorist and writer, from Dust Tracks on a Road

I was 38 when I became a mom for the first time and then gave birth to my daughter when I was two months shy of my 41^st birthday. One thing I’ve learned – in a nod to the wonderment of motherhood, parenthood: You can never stop learning parenting lessons, no matter what your age, if your heart and mind are open to them.

Supermom wears sparkly tights, an ombre velveteen shift, and ruffled booties.

When David and I found out I was pregnant with our son, we made plans for me to continue working until his birth and then allow me to work on my novel, but morning sickness was taking its toll and my job as a business development writer for a health insurance carrier was neither enjoyable nor fulfilling. I quit in my third trimester. I had been writing articles on the side for a good friend from graduate school and was expecting to rely on increasing freelance assignments to replace my regular paychecks, which we needed. By not commuting or having an office job with set hours, we reasoned, I could stay at home and work around my son’s schedule.

It wasn’t easy. The experience of being a first-time mother was amazing, magical, confusing, exhausting and a whirlwind. Speaking for myself only, I could not imagine dropping him off in the mornings and picking him up in the afternoons, and I cherished being with him during the day. At the same time, however, it was stressful to conduct phone interviews, hoping he wouldn’t wake up, as he stirred in the motorized swing on the other side of the bedroom, my makeshift office. Once, I even nursed him during an interview. Surely a combination of sleep deprivation and the determination to multi-task whenever I could resulted in this jaw-dropping lapse of judgment. I remember halfway into the interview when the interviewee, thankfully a woman, asked me if I was nursing. She recognized the sound and marveled that I could do these two things at once. I vowed never to put myself in an embarrassing situation again, though she and I had a good laugh over it and she told me I shouldn’t apologize at all. That’s what women – mothers – had to do to make things work. It didn’t stop me from finding other ways to multi-task.

In the fog of early motherhood, I remember feeling disconnected from the rest of the world. I missed talking with adults face to face. There came a time when I could no longer handle the many assignments and take care of him full-time, and my mother was no longer able to stay for a week each month to watch him while I worked. I reluctantly agreed to David’s suggestion that we find a nearby family daycare so I could be more productive and not be up all hours of the night to make up for the work that I couldn’t get done during the day. I felt guilty and angry with myself – an early admission that I failed as supermom. I couldn’t take care of him full-time and help contribute financially. At first, and at the same time, it was difficult to be alone in the house and to admit that I could be so productive in this new situation.

Supermom gets her energy from crystal – reclaimed vintage chandelier parts strung on brass chains from End of Century (NYC).

But give supermom an inch and she’ll take a foot. I was going to make up for this shortcoming. Being highly organized, I made sure that everything was done before David came home from his long day at the office. The laundry was folded, ironed and put away. Dinner was on the table and the kitchen cleaned up. The house was always neat and clean (we had two dogs who shed a lot, so I vacuumed every day). I will admit that I even ironed the bed sheets. Groceries and other errands were done during the day. Bills were paid and filed. Weekends were supposed to be cleared so we could have family time. The only problem was that while the house was in shipshape order, I was still working round the clock and I was even more exhausted and sleep deprived.

The opportunity to go back to an office job came when my freelance editorial work for a magazine that covered people, technology and capital turned into a full-time position. I was thrilled to join the adult world, really enjoyed the work itself and overcame my guilt of having a set workday away from home. I negotiated to be able to come in early and leave early, so I could pick up my son at a reasonable hour in the afternoon. I still remember clock watching and the mad dash of pushing the stroller three blocks to the family daycare and then running to the BART station to catch my train into San Francisco. Few of my colleagues were married, and I endured a few snide comments when I left for the day because many of them stayed past dinnertime, when our editor brought takeout to the employee lunchroom. Never mind that after I put my son to bed and the house was in order, I parked myself in front of the computer to write my feature-length articles late into the night.

By the time my daughter arrived in December 2002, my work situation had worsened, mostly due to my boss’s irrational behavior, low morale and the high-tech industry bubble bursting. Overcome with morning sickness, increasing workload, politics and new management due to the bank taking over the company, I quit ahead of my due date. Again, the goal was to get back to my novel, return to freelance work full-time and stay with my daughter while she was an infant. When my son turned two, he transitioned to a preschool and when my daughter was six months old – much younger than I had thought she’d be for her first transition, I put her in my son’s old family daycare to be able to get more work done.

Supermom ready for action in blue faux fur.

As the kids got older and into elementary school, the workday got shorter because the school day was shorter than the preschool and family daycare hours. When my son was in second grade, he drew a picture and wrote a few sentences about his family, which was displayed at the school’s Open House. He wrote: “This is my family. My mom works wen [sic] I am at school… My dad workes [sic] the whole day.” I remembered feeling somewhat cheated. I worked all the time, but it seemed I was a victim of my own success. I could set the dinner menu for the week in 20 minutes and go to the dry cleaners and two grocery stores in less than an hour and a half. By dinnertime, the kids had completed and I had corrected their homework and I had given or supervised their baths. I rocked them in bed, and then began my second shift of work. Nothing was out-of-order in the house. Except for me.

Gradually, I let go of things. The wrinkles in the clean bed sheets don’t bother me as much as they used to. I relented and let David do the weekly menus and get the groceries. I ignore the dust bunnies made of our dog Rex’s fur. The kids rake the leaves, pick up the dog poop, empty out the dishwasher, clean the bathrooms, dust, strip their own beds and so on. (Yes, it helps when the kids are older and take up chores!)

But the biggest thing I did was redefine what it means to be a supermom. There’s nothing wrong with being a supermom, but I wanted to personalize the qualifications to suit me. Last year, I asked my daughter if she wanted to be a writer because she has quite an imagination and loves to write and make up stories. She flatly said no. She didn’t want to be a writer because she said I worked too much, I was up late and I was always tired (read: cranky). That was my wake-up call.

Abloom with resin and satin and tulle roses.

While I value being able to work my schedule so I can walk them to school in the mornings, pick them up after school, be at home with them when they get sick (last winter they both came down with pneumonia on separate occasions and were sick for two weeks each), chauffeur them to their various sporting and other extracurricular activities, and most importantly, make home-cooked meals and have dinner together as a family, I don’t want either my son or my daughter to think that this is the norm for moms or that moms who opt for this lifestyle have to give up who they are. To be sure, all moms make different sacrifices for the family life they choose or that are chosen for them. But in making sacrifices, we can’t let go of what gives us, as women and persons, life.

So when I took a week of vacation this past April to work on the revision of my novel, I talked with my son and daughter about sticking with something despite the barriers, finding a passion and nurturing it, and doing something that truly makes you happy. They saw how happy, how buoyant and energetic, I was. This past June, when my son graduated from sixth grade, we had a long discussion about motivation and perseverance. I told him that fear of failing had kept me from buckling down and finishing the novel but that I was guaranteed to fail if I didn’t try. Wide-eyed, he asked me, “So you mean if you hadn’t been afraid, you would have finished the novel already?” I nodded, and then he nodded slowly and walked away in silence. It remains to be seen when he’ll fully appreciate that nugget of wisdom. But I’m hoping that the notion of a fearless mom has new meaning for my kids.

Tunic – not cape – and leggings.

Also helping me to meet my goal of becoming who I want to be is writing this blog. I’m discovering that my blog has created another valuable by-product, in addition to providing exercise for my writer’s muscles and sharing the challenges and beauty of this time of my life with a bigger community. My posts reflect many of the things I want to tell or share with my kids and, thanks to the Internet and technology, my words and photos are accessible and permanent, relatively speaking. It is, I’ll admit, a form of multi-tasking.

My definition of a supermom has evolved to this: One who loves her children unconditionally, supports them and is always there for them in whatever capacity she can, and pursues her hopes and dreams so that they see and know that the pursuit makes her a whole and happy mom and person. Under those conditions can she love and support fully. These traits are not mutually exclusive. They are also not the traits of anyone else’s but mine.

More importantly, no ironing bed sheets required.

Grayling earrings from Jenny K (El Cerrito, CA) and 3D ring from MOMA (NYC). (The ring, however, is not made of Kryptonite.)

Transitions and Transformations Profile*: Laura Leventer of Personal Pizazz

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Patty

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities.
Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.
– Gloria Steinem, American journalist and women’s rights advocate

Laura Leventer, proprietor of Personal Pizazz.

I first met Laura Leventer three years ago at a New Year’s Eve party thrown by a good friend who has known Laura since high school. I was struck by her utter confidence and fashion style – a fusion of classic, vintage and glamour. It was not a surprise to learn that she was proprietor of a clothing store called Personal Pizazz (3048 Claremont Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94705, 510.420.0704).

What’s interesting to me is that Laura, now 45, was a teacher for 10 years and then spent the following six years as a department chairperson, principal, and district administrator. Though she loved teaching, working in administration proved to be unrewarding, very political and extremely stressful, especially on her family, with her son being very young at the time. The idea of opening her own clothing store for mostly women but also men wasn’t far-fetched, as Laura had always loved fashion and owned a business license for her personal shopping gigs on the side. She had worked in retail in college and gained valuable knowledge about the entire range of retail processes, and attended a couple of shows and made a few connections in her capacity as a personal shopper. Laura took a district-level administrative position to start saving for her big investment. When her father passed away and left her with enough money to add to her savings, she felt comfortable taking the risk and made that life-changing leap.

Purple walls provide a vibrant backdrop to highlight the luxurious clothing and accessories.

Filling the fashion niche in Berkeley
When Laura was an administrator, she wore business suits that many admired for being original, different and the antithesis of the retail-chain business suit. “That was the niche I wanted to fill,” she explained. “That was my original direction when I opened – nice-looking business wear that was functional enough for work but interesting enough so you didn’t feel like you were putting on a boring suit.”

Inviting armoires full of stylish clothes.

Although she has clients who come to her store for that very reason, they are few and far between. Personal Pizazz’s clientele are mostly women 35 and up, although the timeless styles she carries appeal to all ages, such as formal dresses for proms and bar mitzvahs. Laura has found that many women are no longer dressing in business suits and the ones who do, for whatever reasons, are sticking with the retail-chain look. It’s been a challenge to reach out to them. “I’ve had to evolve to who comes in and what people want,” she explained. Berkeley is already home to artistic, flowing, interesting clothing shops. “It’s done; there are tons of that,” she said. There are, however, very few shops that offer fitted clothing. “I have people come in all the time and ask me if this is a vintage shop because the clothing is more classic style,” she said. And with its purple walls, chandeliers, carved sales-register desk, antique armoires and curio cabinets, and velvet dressing-room drapes, the vibe is definitely vintage.

One-woman business
As the sole employee, Laura is at the store six days a week. “It’s just me doing everything,” she said. As such, being organized is extremely important. She does her own accounting and all administrative tasks, which she tries to complete during store hours to keep work and life in balance. That said, her priority is to always be available for her customers. Despite the creation of charts and graphs to identify trends and make forecasts, there’s no logic to traffic flow into her store. “When I unlock the door for business, I never know what to expect,” she said, which is another reason to be organized and to plan ahead.

Tidying up the winter scarves near the Personal Pizazz neon sign before the first customers arrive.

Laura goes to Los Angeles for market week four to five times a year. “Since I’m here six days a week, I’m very organized about what I do,” she said. She flies down Monday morning, attends 20-minute, pre-arranged appointments all day, and flies home that night. The few times she flies back East for appointments with her New York City-based vendors, she takes the Sunday red-eye flight and flies back Monday night. She previews vendors’ digitized line sheets ahead of time, which streamlines her appointments. “I’ve learned to never buy at the show because you will make mistakes,” she said. “You never know if another company will offer similar clothing at a better price or different color.” Laura takes detailed notes and snaps pictures with her iPad, which help her determine what she will order when she returns home. “I am particular and I know what I like,” she said. “I know what works for my customers.”

Laura has learned to always be prepared for the unexpected. Case in point: The ceiling lights died last Thursday, on the day that her store is open until 8PM. While her husband was willing to replace them, the lease calls for professional servicing. “That’s money I didn’t plan on spending, but I don’t have a choice,” she said. Therefore, Laura noted: “Always give yourself wiggle room.” She’s learned from a neighboring business that anything can go wrong and when it does you need to know what to do and whom to call.

Despite the challenges of being a business owner and sole employee, Laura revels in her son’s assessment of her career – indeed, her life: “As my son says, now my job is my hobby and my hobby is my job,” she said.

Personal Pizazz finds – Tocca coat and Asian Eye scarf.

Q&A: In her own words
Q: Describe Personal Pizazz in 10 words or less.
A: Classic, quality clothing with a twist.

Q: What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered?
A: I’ve lived in and near Berkeley my whole life, and I dress the way I dress, but there aren’t that many people who do. Even people who want to, think they can’t because other people don’t. There is pressure to not care about clothing. That’s a constant battle. If it [an article of clothing] makes you happy, then your outlook is better, you feel happy, and in turn you look better.

Q: What’s the best thing about being the proprietor of Personal Pizazz?
A: Not having to answer to anyone else. My previous boss was the school board and I was jumping through hoops. There’s a lot of bureaucracy – forms to fill out, things you have to do. I still have a lot of forms to fill out and things I have to do, but I don’t have to justify or explain it to somebody else.

Personal Pizazz find – Zelda coat.

Q: What advice would you give to women who are looking to make a career transition or transformation?
A: Do your homework. To be honest, I thought I’d be making a lot more profit by now. There are decisions you have to make along the way. You have to create a nest egg. I was saving and saving until I got to the point where I could say, okay, I can go this amount of time without bringing home any money. And I have this much that I can invest and don’t expect to be able to take out because you’re not going to turn a profit quickly. People have to discover you and they have to become faithful. Whatever the business happens to be, you’re going to make mistakes in the beginning until you figure out what your niche is and what’s going to work. You have to have enough exposure so people know you’re there.

Personal Pizazz is located on beautiful, tree-lined Claremont Avenue in Berkeley.

Post script: If you’re a local and this blog has whetted your interest, make your way to Personal Pizazz and let Laura know that you read about her store here. If you’re not a local but find your way to the San Francisco Bay Area, make Personal Pizazz a destination point.

*My Transitions and Transformations profile series chronicle stories of amazing women, not limited to women 50 and above, who have made inspirational and creative transitions or transformations in their lives. The series will run bi-weekly.

Fifteen years later: On becoming a writer

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Patty

Celebrating with glimmering gold.

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
– John Ruskin, British art critic

In 1997, when I began researching and then writing my first novel, I could not have imagined that in 2012 I would still be working on the umpteenth draft. If I had known how much time would pass, I might have given up. Thomas Edison was credited as saying, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

The thing is: I did give up.

The first draft was 1,000 pages. It was easier to write when my husband and I didn’t have children and my job was not demanding. My son came, I changed jobs a few times, job demands grew, and sleep deprivation was my companion in the middle of the night when I sat in front of the computer screen, writing articles instead of fiction. I finished another draft when I went into labor with my daughter. In 2006, I was finally done and sent the trimmed-down (at 650 pages) manuscript off to literary agents, only to get rejected by 60 of them. One writer friend exclaimed, “I didn’t even know there were 60 different agents to be rejected by.” The manuscript was too long and there was no market for a novel about Filipino immigrant farmworkers, labor unions and grape strikes, I was told. And I believed them. I also believed that a more talented writer would have made the novel more compelling. I understood that I was not good enough to have made it work against any and all odds.

So I gave up. I put the manuscript away. I stopped reading fiction and book reviews. I didn’t go into bookstores anymore. I did other worthy and necessary things in my life. I had some inkling that I would come back to the writing, maybe to the novel. Every now and then, through the years, my two high school best friends would ask me when I was going to resurrect Fausto, my main character, and his story.

For anyone who has known the passion of creating, who has experienced the ecstasy of getting the emotion or moment right with the precise words in the only order that makes exquisite sense, who has stopped whatever ordinary activity she is doing because she has solved a niggling and bottlenecking problem with a character’s motivations or actions, the desire to create is never abandoned. Somewhere deep inside me, I knew that.

When we are ready on the inside, it may still take time for that desire to radiate outward and make us aware of its awakening. Sometimes it takes an event in our lives that turns the key or opens the window, and the desire is unleashed and demanding to be nurtured and given the tools to create anew. I took a week of vacation in April to start the next major revision of the novel, and my happiness was palpable. I did not want to lose it again. Getting stuck on a word or a sentence was a gift, not something to agonize over or dread as a tedious task. Carving out time to reintroduce myself to my characters was a gift.

Gold accessories on gold brocade – my own vintage early 90s tassel earrings and M.E. Moore reclaimed vintage bracelet and necklace.

In May I submitted the manuscript to a local independent book publisher’s annual contest. I had high hopes, but my novel wasn’t chosen. I was disappointed to be sure, but undaunted. Last month, I heard from my undergraduate professor who, along with his partner, is an independent book publisher. I asked him to consider my manuscript, and while he didn’t accept it, he told me that he and his partner “enjoyed it and admired the sometimes quite lyrical prose” and that they “liked the rendering of the setting, at once exotic and universal.” This time I was ecstatic. He was one of the best creative writing professors I’ve ever had, and he gave me the gift of his time and his advice for the next and hopefully last revision. His response – the outside world’s response, so to speak – validated what I’d been feeling inside: I’m getting there, I’m on the right track.

In September I sent the manuscript to the Poets & Writers’ California Writers Exchange contest. Last week, I received an e-mail announcing the winning poet and fiction writer. I honestly did not expect to win, but there was an itch of disappointment. Yesterday, however, I received a letter, letting me know that I was one of 15 finalists whose manuscripts, out of a total of 609 fiction manuscripts, were sent to the fiction judge for his final selection. I was quietly happy. I felt a warmth growing inside of me.

Fifteen years later, this is what I know: In 2006, the novel was too long and I was not a skilled enough writer to make Fausto’s story resonate. I am a much better writer now and the novel is almost there. All these years of toil have made it thus.

A love of mixing textures again – thrifted embroidered purse, faux fur, Frye leather booties, textured tights, and bold jewelry by M.E. Moore.

The Dress at 50

Live the creative, meaningful, and full life

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