Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Hannah Milks (she/her/hers). We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Hannah, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

My story starts the day I first walked into my therapist’s office four office years ago. I had no idea how the decision to show up for myself would change the course of my life- but here I am one year into entrepreneurship, at the very beginning of so much more.

I started therapy when I was in grad school. I was beginning to study trauma to hopefully develop methods for architects and designers to create trauma-informed spaces. I was specifically researching educational environments at this time and had a basic understanding of trauma, its prevalence, and its impacts on the body because my mom is a trauma therapist at a local shelter for homeless youth in KC. When I started therapy I didn’t see the parallels to my research, I just knew that grad school was very hard and I needed extra support.

After a few sessions, it started to click that I myself was experiencing trauma at the hands of the US education system. It is not just the helpless children in our underfunded schools that I was researching dealing with the impacts of trauma. It is not just houseless people or war veterans or victims of violent crimes who are impacted by trauma. It is all of us, and If I as a privileged white woman am experiencing this, it must be so much more prevalent for others.

Therapy taught me how to validate my own experiences, which was absolutely instrumental in my ability to see, acknowledge, and validate others’ experiences. I was also building more capacity to look at issues in the world and not get overwhelmed by them- which my privilege allowed me to do before. As I was researching our education system I was learning about the school to prison pipeline which inspired my thesis on trauma-informed police buildings. The ability to validate others lived experiences that were so vastly different from mine allowed me to dive much deeper into my personal anti racism work. It’s important to understand that in design there is a lot of effort put into understanding the demographics of the people you are designing for- but considering how people of different races experience the same exact environments, systems, and spaces differently was not discussed, explored, or mentioned. There are people designing the spaces we live and work in without crucial context and understanding of how missing that is contributing to the prevalence of trauma.

This is when I began to understand that I wanted to be a trauma educator. I knew I wanted my thesis to be an example of how design can be trauma-informed in ways that could be applied to any space. I knew to do that I needed a deeper understanding of how people heal from trauma. I was lucky to receive a scholarship to start a three year training in Somatic Experiencing, the modality of trauma therapy my mom does with clients and I was doing with my own therapist. I came to this training for therapists as a designer and brought the perspective of building things for an entire community. This is very different than how the modality is used by therapists- with one client at a time (or sometimes in a small group). This led me to develop a community-focused approach to “self” care because healing happens in relationships. We can take care of ourselves, together.

Shortly after the training the covid pandemic began. At this point, I had about half a semester left before graduation. While I felt great about my research and was passionate about how design could be trauma informed I knew I didn’t want to work in the industry. I had a serious case of creative burnout and was feeling very lost. My cousin told me about an app called Tik Tok and after a few weeks of insisting I was too old for it, I downloaded it. At this time many people were losing their jobs and looking for other ways to make money. I randomly saw a video about how to drop ship t-shirts and thought that I could make cuter designs than the person in the video so if they were doing it I could too.

I was still thinking about trauma and thought comfortable clothes could be an awesome way for people to have a positive experience of being in their body- something most trauma survivors struggle with. These shirts and sweatshirts could have mental health inspired designs that start valuable conversations and become a tool to destigmatize mental health. This is where our motto, “comfortable clothes for an uncomfortable world” comes from. When you are surviving grief, mental illness, grad school, systemic racism, or whatever it is: you deserve to find comfort in your own body while you do it.

I figured out how to print my own shirts at home to make more money and as I was slowly learning how to build and run a t-shirt business I continued with the Somatic Experiencing training. That gave me the confidence to begin working with four nurses from KU med teaching them basic nervous system regulation skills to use with each other in real time during their shifts. I started designing affirmation cards and other products that increase accessibility to trauma informed healing tools for people who can’t afford therapy or people in therapy who want to deepen their work. I am about to start doing somatic journaling nights with local businesses to build community in their client bases and give people essential emotional regulation skills to use with themselves and each other. I have been able to use design to build a wonderful network of people who are passionate about mental health in our community.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I design and print casual clothing. I have a line of t-shirts, sweatshirts, and hoodies with mental health inspired designs. My brand is about starting conversations that would maybe otherwise be uncomfortable to talk about. Some of my designs are light hearted like “baddest b*tch in therapy” but with others I like to push the boundaries and make people think about their beliefs. For example, I have a shirt that says “bodies are for pleasure”. Have you ever thought about pleasure as a nonsexual experience? What are all the ways you can experience pleasure? How do you experience pleasure in your body?

I personally love the shirt that says, “ask me about my pronouns” which literally invites a conversation and normalizes talking about identity. I hope people are able to find a shirt they connect with and feel good that they are a part of a larger movement to destigmatize the emotional roller coaster that is the human experience.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

I saw a Tik Tok about drop shopping t-shirts. I started doing that because it takes no investments in inventory or equipment, but quickly wanted more control over the quality and placement of designs and a higher profit margin. In architecture school I hand made scale models of buildings and spent three semesters working in the wood shop building furniture so I felt excited to make something with my hands again. I started with heat transfer vinyl and a silhouette cutter, but now order my designs from Transfer Express which is much faster, more cost efficient, and has better durability. Seeing how the quality of my product has improved over my first year has been a very rewarding process.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I’ve been unlearning the pace of work I learned in grad school. This means figuring out practical ways to prioritize rest, self care, time for pleasure and finding ways to move my body that I enjoy. I’ve found that prioritizing these things in my life is essential to keep my creative inspiration high, wich is essential for creating high quality design work and preventing burn out.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cleverbabes.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cleverbabesco/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cleverbabesco

Image Credits
Johnny Lee