Meet Cara Cohen

We were lucky to catch up with Cara Cohen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Cara , appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

I was a 17-year old college bound senior in high school with her whole life ahead of her when I found out that I was expecting a baby. Finding myself pregnant at a mere 17 years old rocked my world. In the time it took for a positive pregnancy result to reveal itself, my entire life changed. That college acceptance letter to the school of my dreams to become a broadcast journalist had to be put in a scrapbook to never see the light of day. Instead of making plans with my friends, I was planning a nursery. Instead of picking out outfits for graduation and grad night, I was shopping in the maternity section of K-Mart because nothing cute fit me. Instead of looking like a 17-year old girl graduating high school, I was a 17-year old mother, waddling across the stage at 8 months pregnant to receive my high school diploma. And, as everyone boarded the bus that was taking my graduating class to Grad Night at Disneyland, I would be going to dinner with my parents and going home to rest because in less than a month, I would be giving birth.

This was a devastating time for me emotionally. In the short time of 9 months, I had to come to terms with the fact that I was going to be someone’s mother when I still needed my mother for my own survival. I had no job, no where to live except with my parents, and all of the judgment of society upon my shoulders. I was terrified and felt so hopeless. Then, In July of 1998, I gave birth to my beautiful baby boy (who is now a 26 year old man). Looking into his eyes showed me that he was mine for a purpose. I had to be strong for him. I could choose to be blessed or choose to be burdened with my life. This is the first hard thing I ever had to go through and was the beginning of my journey of becoming a resilient woman.

Resilience, to me, is the ability to not only bounce back after a tough experience, but it is having the fortitude to push through when the hurricane of life is standing between you and your next destination. It is not something that can be handed to someone or passed down from generations before. Resilience is not spoken into someone like a word of affirmation that when said over and over becomes ones truth. Resilience takes grit, commitment, steadfastness, perseverance, and a deep understanding that the waters you are swimming today are not the same waters you will be swimming tomorrow. With every dawn brings another day of opportunity and with every dusk is a time of self reflection and preparation for the next new dawn.

I have found the ability to become resilient through prayer, commitment, and the understanding that situations are constantly changing. I have learned that nothing is ever without evolution. This has lead me to see that not everything may look as you dreamed it would. There will be times that you make decisions that have very heavy consequences to deal with and that’s ok. We didn’t learn to ride a bike on the first try. We had to try and fall and get back up and fall some more until all of a sudden, you are a bike rider. It’s the same with life. Through our own traumas and set backs we gain wisdom and understanding that makes us more confident that we will not only survive the next thing life throws our way, but we will become better because of it.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I was born and raised in Southern California and for the last better part of 10 years before 2020, I was a successful business woman working for a local attraction. I thought I had made it. I had a great job, was a single mother to two kids, and living my best life. Then, life threw everyone a curve ball with the Covid Pandemic. Long story short, during that down time, I reconnected with the love of my life who I had dated twenty years ago. There was only one problem, he lived all the way in South Carolina. I ended up being laid off from my job and decided to take a chance on myself and move to South Carolina. It was then I had to decide what I was going to do with my life and time.

A few years into that journey, I came across the concept of “glamping” sleepovers. It was then I had an “aha” moment. Why can’t I do that and make it a business? This coming from someone who enjoyed the security of complacency and monotony. I knew I better jump on the opportunity before I talked myself out of it. So, it was in 2022 that I launched Summerville Slumber Parties, LLC. We are a single employee company that creates beautiful glamp sites for children’s sleepover parties.

The best part of owning a small business such as mine, is the freedom to be creative, create joy for others, and just knowing that what I do aids in creating life long memories for these children. The nostalgia of getting together with my besties as a child and spending the entire night trying to stay awake, talking, playing games, watching scary movies, and just being kids is part of my why.

I am now married and raising a 12 year old daughter. It is so important to me this time around to create a work life balance that is attainable and owning this small business has made that possible. Not only has it taught me discipline in areas I had none, it is teaching my daughter work ethic, how to communicate with clients, and that making money doesn’t always have to look a certain way. You can achieve anything you dream and every single amazing company out there was once someone’s simple idea.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

One important area of knowledge that was impactful on my journey was learning how to forgive myself. Many of the uncomfortable places I have been in my life was brought on by choices that I made. Sometimes, when you have to push through life at a pace that does not allow you to slow down, creates an environment of not dealing with the feelings and emotions. I spent many years of my life trying to be strong and I thought that meant sweeping stuff under rugs and moving forward. Well, at some point in your lives, you will begin to trip on those rugs because you have swept so much under them and it has built up to a point where you can no longer ignore it. Do the hard work, clean under those rugs, and show yourself grace and forgiveness.

Learn how to set boundaries. This can look different to different people as we are not all the same and that’s ok. Avoid unnecessary commitments, don’t just go because you were invited. If that particular situation doesn’t line up with your schedule at that time, it’s ok. By doing things or accepting things that you don’t want just to please others, you will end up in a major burnout and it can inhibit your personal growth. Be in tune to your own needs and put those at the top of mind in every situation you have a choice in.

Resilience is another quality that is very important in one’s journey. When you learn that you have to lose sight of the shore in order to reach your destination, that’s when you dig in and start swimming. Sure, you’re going to get tired, but never stop trying. Something cliche but impactful is the saying that you should always shoot for the moon, and if you don’t make it, you may just land on a star. We all don’t know for sure what our lives look like ahead of us and we are all doing this life for the first time. There WILL be hard times, but there also WILL be great times. You just have to keep pushing forward one step at a time. Some of those steps will lead you into a valley, but know that it is through the difficulties of going through that valley where you truly find strength, tenacity, and the grit to dig in and get to the other side where it is going to be so worth it!

All of these things are developed. It is not common for a person to be good at all of these things starting out. It takes a lot of work. If someone is early on in their journey, I would encourage them to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Choose to take yourself out to dinner. Sit alone at a table and just take in the feeling. It may be uncomfortable at first, but when you take the time to just sit with yourself and conversate with your own mind and thoughts and feelings, it makes a space for you to truly get to know yourself. You can draw so much power from that place. Be the woman who is empowered to make mistakes, forgive freely, push through, and be amazing because we will leave this world exactly as we found it. Alone.

What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?

The biggest area of growth in the past 12 months for me is determining what my needs are in order to create an internal space where I can be the best version of myself for the people I love who depend on me. As an entrepreneur, wife, mother, caretaker of pets, and the house manager, it is easy to pile on “things to do” that I feel responsible for. That is a list that never ends, so why do I put so much pressure on myself to get to the end of it?

Through the help of talk therapy I have learned that it is solely my responsibility to take inventory of how I’m feeling and then set boundaries as necessary in order for me to be ok physically and emotionally. If I’m tired, carve out a pocket of time to just sit and relax, have a cup of coffee, and do some meditation if necessary. We aren’t going to always have the time to truly rest, but just carving out a small pocket of doing something that you love will help reinvigorate you to do the things you have to get done.

For instance, I started learning how to redirect my thoughts and control my emotions this year and it has been a game changer for me. I have discovered that my intrusive thoughts because of past trauma, often hinders my personal growth and growth with my husband. By learning how to redirect these thoughts and take time to feel and understand the root of my emotions, I can better communicate my needs. If I can control my emotions, I can control my thoughts. If I can control my thoughts, then I can control myself and that has been the key to being able to truly begin to communicate effectively and also make space for the hard yet good conversations to happen.

Contact Info:

• Facebook: @Cara Lea Cohen and @Summervilleslumberparties

Image Credits

I took all of the photos with my own iphone