Meet Sofi Ronning

We were lucky to catch up with Sofi Ronning recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sofi, so many exciting things to discuss, we can’t wait. Thanks for joining us and we appreciate you sharing your wisdom with our readers. So, maybe we can start by discussing optimism and where your optimism comes from?

The world is a lot more difficult these days, and I think it’s important to distinguish between positivity and optimism. I grew up within a household of a lot of toxic positivity that encouraged me to not talk about hard feelings like sadness and pain, and I found it only led to depression and anxiety for me.

Being convinced to feel positive or look on the brightside even while facing really intense harm and abuse, didn’t fix what my body and emotions were trying to tell me and just made me hardened to the world. The less I allowed myself to feel honestly, the more angry and hateful I felt inside, and the less I was able to connect or empathize with others.

While in college, I faced additional compounding forms of trauma and after a mental breakdown during my junior year, I finally started seeing a therapist to help me work through what I learned to be complex ptsd and trauma. I was so used to seeing anger as inherently abusive and dangerous, and sadness as a weakness, that I had stopped allowing myself to feel those emotions altogether. My therapist helped me unlearn the really toxic ways I was dealing with my past and current emotions, and helped me better understand that feelings like righteous anger are not abusive, but instead are my body trying to tell my mind that a boundary is being crossed and I need to uphold my boundaries to feel safe and to thrive.

I’ve now been in therapy for 9 years and I’ve learned how to take accountability for my actions and how to feel and process my emotions with myself and with others. Through taking accountability and approaching my relationships from a place of vulnerability, repair, and curiosity, it’s made learning how to talk through my feelings even more accessible.

Learning how to have healthy confrontation and to share my feelings with other people has led to mutual understanding and repair, the creation of boundaries, and sometimes the difficult decision to end a relationship with someone I love who doesn’t want to change their harmful behavior. Even though these don’t always have a “positive” outcome, the outcome is always honest and I think that’s what matters most. Through these conversations, I’ve become more and more optimistic for the future.

We are currently living in a social world that doesn’t encourage approaching life from a gentle place or leave a lot of room for these types of difficult conversations, which has led to things like fear mongering of people experiencing marginalization, cancel culture, and people living lives in isolation. If we continue to not feel our emotions, to choose to not see ourselves honestly and what we have in common with the people around us, we will continue to feel more and more isolated and alone.

However, when I think back on who I used to be because of everything I wasn’t feeling or processing compared to who I am now, it makes me believe that things can and will get better for us. Through working through my trauma and choosing to live an honest life, it’s led me to feel relentlessly optimistic both in my own life and for the world around me. It helped me realize that if I can heal and unlearn my toxic behavior to find my way back to my true self, other people can too.

There is still a lot of privilege that’s been part of my healing since mental health services themselves have a barrier to entry. Due to inequality, systems of oppression, and the endless encouragement of consumption, healing is a privilege. So, I really encourage people with the resources for mental health services, to choose to heal and learn how to treat themselves and the people they interact with in the world with kindness and dignity.

I feel optimistic that the more work we each do to understand ourselves and what’s caused us pain, the more we will come back together to choose community instead of ourselves and individuality. Studies and history have shown us that we are so much better off together and I feel relentlessly optimistic for a better future of love and care, where everyone’s needs can be met, not just the most privileged.

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?

Two years ago, I decided to start my own upcycled small business called Two Howling Labs Studio (THL), after working within retail fast fashion during college and in the local small business scene post graduating. Two Howling Labs is named after our two labrador mixes after one taught the other to howl whenever we were away from home.

Two Howling Labs is an intentional clothing and accessories shop with a variety of secondhand items ranging from handmade and upcycled clothing & accessories made from vintage textiles, to an assortment of vintage and antiques. Our focus is on the intersectionality between sustainability, slow-fashion, and community care. THL is a single-person run business where all of our handmade items are sewn in our studio in Milwaukie, Oregon using vintage quilts, sheets, and a variety of other secondhand textiles.

THL is also an ode to my maternal grandma. She was a quilter, sewist, knitter, & yard saler. She taught me how to sew, knit, & navigate yard sales as a kid and it was how we bonded. Our business prioritizes secondhand in all aspects of our business and try to source as locally as possible with the intention of selling unique items that can be loved for years at an affordable and accessible price. We source mainly through local garage sales, estate sales, and a handful of small, independent thrift stores to circulate as much of our money locally as possible. I love that the key components of this business and our sourcing are based in activities she and I did together.

After working in fast fashion retail in college, I saw the amount of waste that was created & was inspired by the slow-fashion community to create a circular clothing company. I then helped run a local small business & decided to make starting my own company a reality using the knowledge I gained there. All of the pieces I create have size inclusivity & self-expression in mind. All of our pieces also come with a free repair guarantee.

This past winter, we launched a new product line of size inclusive handmade knits and crocheted pieces. I had been struggling to find sweaters that fit loosely over wider hips and curvier bodies, and was inspired to make ethically sourced pieces that fit that need. Our knits and crocheted pieces are made from biodegradable materials like merino wool and cotton, and are all designed and handmade by Sofi.

We currently have a local retail booth at Stars & Splendid Antique Mall in Sellwood, Oregon. We are also hoping to expand into other retail locations in the near future, with the overarching goal of collectively opening a local brick and mortar location with other local artists. We plan to expand into offering wholesale options by the end of 2025.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

The three qualities that were most impactful while creating this business are perseverance, community building, and staying true to my values.

Perseverance
Imposter syndrome and feelings of inadequacy were two big feelings I needed to work through before launching my business. I worked a lot with my therapist to work through where these feelings were stemming from. We also worked a lot on not shutting down when I started to have these feelings arise. Comparing myself to other people’s work and accomplishments from a negative self perspective, only led to those feelings becoming larger and more difficult to navigate.

Learning to persevere and push through the negative self talk has been such a huge help while navigating all of the elements of running a small business. It’s really important for me to remind myself to keep moving forward even when the negative self-talk is at it’s loudest, since falling into the trap of those voices only leads to inaction and further perpetuates the feelings that accompany that negative self-talk.

Perseverance isn’t just about pushing through, but it’s about working through the stuff that makes me feel inadequate. Instead of agreeing when my brain says I’m not good enough or I don’t know how to do something so I shouldn’t try, I try to approach those thoughts gently and with curiosity. It’s so helpful to remind myself of everything I’ve accomplished and that it’s okay to not know how to do everything. Choosing to learn new skills instead of being intimidated by them, has truly been such a game changer in how I view myself and has led to more success for my small business.

Community Building
Through understanding that I don’t know everything, identifying my weaknesses, and experiencing the loneliness and isolation of running this business on my own, I’ve come to understand how important community building is. The Portland small business scene is pretty tight knit and I love that I can rely on my friends and colleagues to share their honest experiences and feedback with me. Through community, I find that I continue to learn and grow, while also getting to create meaningful relationships and share my own knowledge and experiences with others to learn from. It’s so helpful to have shared experiences and understanding with other small business owners, especially when many of us run our businesses individually. We support one another’s work and art, we share in frustrations and wins, and we rally behind one another when things get tough. I truly couldn’t ask for a better community to be in partnership with.

Staying True to Values
I think something that is so important when creating a business is having your personal and business values written down before you begin. There will be so many opportunities that arise and some will be in perfect alignment with you and others will not. As a business owner, it can be really easy to fall into a scarcity mindset, leading you to take every opportunity that presents itself. However, compromising our values for the sake of an opportunity often leads to distress and frustration. It’s really important to know where you’re approaching opportunities from and whether or not compromising your values is something you’re comfortable with.

I’ve found for myself, that when I’ve compromised my values, I feel angry and frustrated with the situation and myself. It also makes me feel out of alignment with my business’ mission and that isn’t something I’m comfortable with. Ultimately if I want my company to reflect who I am and what I believe in, that means my values will sometimes impact the opportunities I’m presented with. However, missing out on opportunities is something I am comfortable with if it means staying true to myself. It can be so easy for businesses to start to reshape over time as we choose financial opportunities over what we believe in and we lose ourselves in the process. When money matters more than our values, we will never do the right thing, and will lose sight of why we started in the first place

My best advise for knowing if an opportunity is right for you or your small business is the following.
1. Do you research. Check on their website or social media if there’s more information about who they’ve partnered with in the past, who some of their financial backers are, and who they support and give their dollars to.
2. Ask lots of questions to help you understand if your values are in alignment. Is there a bad Google review or information that’s making you feel uneasy? Ask about it and follow your gut based on the information they provide you.
3. Still aren’t sure and something is making you second guess it? Each time I’ve felt this way and moved forward anyways, I’ve regretted it and found out later on we didn’t align on values. Always trust your gut when you don’t know the answer logically.

However, it’s important to remember that sometimes we make mistakes and we end up agreeing to partnerships or opportunities that we ultimately don’t align with. Don’t beat yourself up and instead take accountability and action in a way that does align with your values. Mistakes are inevitable, so hold yourself accountable personally and to anyone who was harmed or impacted by the decision, be honest with your customers, and keep moving forward.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

Collaboration is something I’ve been really interested in expanding into this year. Now that my small business is more established and a lot of the nitty gritty start up phase has been sorted, collaboration feels a lot more accessible. At the beginning of this year, I worked with my first model and photographer which was a really exciting development for Two Howling Labs.

I’d really love to collaborate with more photographers, models, and folks interested in the work we are doing as a business. My goal with this company is to be able to showcase as many people as possible, so people can see themselves represented. I want Two Howling Labs to be for everyone and would really love the opportunity to prove that through collaboration.

I’m also really interested in collaborating with other artists to make more mixed-medium clothing and accessories, and would love to hear from folks if that interests them!

To get in touch about collaborating, people can reach out through email at twohowlinglabs@gmail.com or through Instagram @twohowlinglabs.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.twohowlinglabs.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/twohowlinglabs/
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@twohowlinglabs

Image Credits

Sara Cross