As a professional life-coach, Loren Slocum has helped thousands of women to defy the odds to experience the life they deserve, but helping each and every one of them started with the same question: Who am I as a woman?
“I so badly wanted to heal this wound for them,” explains Loren, mother of three and author of No Greater Love: Being an Extraordinary Mom. “Watching so many come to my talks and seeing them with the tools and then they’d get this look on their faces that they weren’t sure who they were.”
She knew that by bringing them together, “we could see, share, and celebrate each and every one of our uniqueness as women, and learn how to support each other out there in the world.”
Loren began her work under motivational speaker, Tony Robbins. After founding her own company, Lobella , and working for twenty years in the business of encouraging people to reach their goals, she’s still as excited as ever when people tell her of their success stories.
Let’s face it, we women are our own worst enemies. We downplay our strengths and needs; emphasize our weaknesses and limits; and put so many others before ourselves. This exhausting cycle only makes us move further and further from whom we were before we took on the roles of wife and mother. This process can leave us feeling lost and lonely and a bit frustrated.
Loren tells us “one of the most common traps women can get caught in is the many ‘roles’ we fill in our everyday lives. So often we spread ourselves a little too thin and we can forget WHO WE ARE AS WOMEN at our core.”
So you find out who you are at your core, then what?
Loren says one of the biggest goals is to learn to be FULLY ALIVE.
“Being fully alive means different things for different women. For some women it might mean living a life with no fear— and no regrets. To other women it might be connecting with the maternal role and creating a family that feels nurtured and loved. For some it might mean experiencing fully the beautiful sexual beings we all are.” Loren adds, “To me, it means not taking any moment for granted. To be fully alive means staying true to who we are.”
As each of us raise children, clean house, go to work inside and outside the home, it can feel as though you’re simply going through the motions some days. It can almost make you feel invisible and unimportant because how important is laundry in the grand scheme of things?
Well, it’s very important and so are you!
“All women that bring life into this world should be honored and cherished, and anyone who thinks otherwise can come and see me,” laughs Loren. “I may be little but I’m mighty! I’ll straighten them out!” But she does offer this advice: “I think very often the challenge is more with how we are prepared for motherhood by other people, not how we view it ourselves. Sometimes the rules of others can get in the way and prevent us from being fully awake to the gift that is being a mom. Not everyone does this, but boy the voices of those who do sure seem loud. Once again, I think a lot of what shapes a mother’s identity depends on what we are listening to and seeing as important.”
After Loren helps women meet their true potential and re-discover who they are, she says that’s not the end of the journey. It’s only the beginning of a second leg.
Giving back to the community, the world around you “I believe is EVERYTHING.”
She tells us “when I say ‘give back’ I mean all the way around. But you have to remember to give back to yourself first so there can be more of you to share!” With her friends advice of “You can’t clean up the community until you clean up your own backyard,” Loren knows it’s easier to think of other above yourself because you don’t have to deal with your own concerns or problems. “But you HAVE to deal with your own stuff so you can be authentic in your contribution. That sense of honesty is really important. The only thing about true contribution is that you can’t have an agenda; you just have to contribute to contribute— true selfless service.”
Mother to two boys, Josua and Quinn,and a girl, Asher, Loren and her husband, Shore, mentor disadvantaged children and raise and donate money for a variety of charities. Loren is also heading the corperate partnersip as a volunteer for the Raising Malawi Girls Academy.
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