We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Deedee Cummings a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Deedee , thanks for joining us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?
I have always had big dreams that other people thought were a little unattainable. Whenever someone would ask me how I planned to achieve my “crazy” dreams I would respond, “I’ll make a way”.
It kind of became our family’s mantra. My daughter, Broadway star Kayla Pecchioni, even mentions the phrase as one of the things that helped her achieve success. My kids saw me keep going and never give up so now they do the same.
When I decided to write books that represented experiences of kids like mine, I knew I also wanted to inspire readers with that same message, if you’ve got a dream, you can always make a way for it to happen. So, Make A Way Media was born.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a professional dreamer. As an author, therapist, attorney, and mom from Louisville, Kentucky, I have achieved many dreams in my lifetime. I founded Make A Way Media in 2014 after struggling to find books with characters who looked like my children. There were even less stories that reflected their life experiences. Since then, I’ve published 17 inspirational children’s books and am in the process of writing my first set of books for adults.
All of my books are hope-filled stories that model the social-emotional skills kids need most. I developed the K Club during the pandemic in response to the isolation that families were feeling during that time. I am so proud that we are able to send free printable resources to families each month to help them teach their kids important skills they need to thrive, like empathy, resilience and a growth mindset. Our club has grown to support over 2,000 families in just a couple of years, demonstrating just how badly this type of support is needed for families, teachers, and caregivers.
I also founded The Louisville Book Festival in 2019 because I truly believe that literacy is a fundamental human right and that all kids deserve access to books with characters that look like them. This became clear to me when I was working as an in-home therapist and I would go to kids’ homes and they would not have a single book to read with me. I started bringing books with me. Then, I started giving away books, including the books I write.
Louisville, KY is the 4th most segregated city in our country and we have a true book desert that I felt compelled to address. Louisville is divided mostly into two parts, the West End and the East End. In the East End of Louisville bookstores and bookish events are plentiful. When I founded the Louisville Book Festival, there was not a single bookstore in the West End of our city. Not a single one. There was also no hospital, an imbalance in the number of libraries, and even in Little Free Libraries. This also correlated with poorer communities, poorer residents and poorer schools.
As a kid, I would go to book fairs at school and fail to see what all the hype was about when I could not get even one book from the book fair. I did not want to repeat that pattern at a festival that seeks to highlight how cool books are. The goal of the festival is to get at least one age-appropriate book into the hands of every kid in Louisville. In just two years in person, we have given away 10,000 books to kids in our community! This has been one of my proudest achievements.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When I was in my twenties, I was a single mom working full time as a child protection worker. After seeing so much injustice in the family court system, I really wanted to become a lawyer. I thought I would have so much more power and maybe a bigger voice to support families who could not afford an attorney and were therefore not given the same opportunities to advocate to keep their family together with services in place.
The problem was, as a mom already, I could not just quit my job and return to school. With my parents’ help, I worked all day in one of the most stressful jobs possible and I went to Law School at night. It was awful. So many times that I thought, “why am I doing this?”. There were a lot of moments that I wanted to give up.
I knew that I had that dream for a reason though and I pushed through. I made a way. I promised myself that I would just do the same thing tomorrow. Every day, I promised myself tomorrow. I know that dreams are hard. If they were easy they wouldn’t be as special. What I have learned is that there is always a way. You just have to find the way. You have to make a way.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
This is actually something that I am turning into a memoir right now. As a therapist, I am constantly talking to people about taking care of themselves and pouring into themselves but I have always struggled to apply that knowledge to my own life. I was constantly giving 150% to my goals and dreams and ignoring my actual needs. I had to unlearn the idea that I have to choose between my own well-being and success. It is possible to have both.
As I started applying the same lessons I gave my clients every day in therapy sessions, a funny thing happened. I realized that I could do more and achieve more in my business when my mind and body were being taken care of too.
As business owners, our needs can’t come last. The well-being of our businesses depend on us being well enough to run them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://makeawaymedia.com/
- Instagram: https://Instagram.com/makeawaymedia
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/makeawaymedia
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deedee-cummings-b57334ba
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/makeawaymedia
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@makeawaymedia
Image Credits
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