We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jill Adams a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jill thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.
One of the core reasons I created Pink Moon was to overcome the barriers moms face when it comes to prioritizing their own health and wellbeing and finding support.
Typical gyms and boutique fitness studios are not structured so that busy moms can conveniently access them. Those women that do carve out the time often face guilt, and must coordinate numerous logistics and sacrifice their other needs in order to do so. This is because moms are forced to divide their limited time between paid work, serving as their family’s CEO, COO, and CMO, caring for children, fitness, connection with friends, and mental health (much less other forms of self-care). Unfortunately, this generally leads to moms putting their own needs last.
Recent research shows that moms spend 98 hours per week on household and parenting related tasks — the equivalent of 2.5 full-time jobs. Additionally, 64% of moms feel isolated and lonely, 62% report that they have less than an hour to themselves in each day, and 60% of new moms feel a lost sense of self.
Pink Moon address this pervasive issue and huge gap in the fitness and wellness industry by offering a multi-functional and community focused studio for moms. By offering fitness classes, onsite childcare, social and educational events, support groups and cohorts, self-care pop ups, and fun activities for moms and their families — all in one beautiful and convenient space — we empower moms to prioritize their own needs and ensure they feel seen, supported, and connected throughout motherhood.
By addressing the specific challenges faced by moms just like me, Pink Moon is redefining the standard of boutique fitness and revitalizing the concept of the “third place” by providing the village, resources, and balance that moms need and deserve.
Resources:
Parenting Research Centre, 2023 I Mom’s Mental Health Initiative, 2023 I Flexjobs.com I
4 Moms.com I Motherly 2023 I Psychology, Health & Medicine 2019 Washington Post 2020
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’m a millennial mom of three young kids, and until recently, a lawyer and policy advocate who spent most of her career in juvenile justice reform. I never had plans to become an entrepreneur!
Then, during COVID, I hit a breaking point and realized that it was physically and mentally impossible for me to continue functioning at a “full time everything” level. I was totally neglecting my own self-care, and I felt burnt out, alone, and forgotten. More importantly I felt resentful at the lack of societal support that led so many moms like me to this breaking point. To be blunt, I felt like I didn’t matter.
As I began sharing this nagging and intensifying feeling with friends, I realized that most of the moms I knew were struggling silently. Pink Moon emerged as a way to acknowledge and support the metamorphosis of motherhood, help women reconnect with and embrace a new and beautiful version of themselves, and find space and support to meet their needs without guilt or shame. Pink Moon simplifies self-care for moms by providing convenience and support across the interconnected personal, family, social, and professional ecosystems that they operate within. A space that I myself desperately wanted and needed, but that did not exist.
I’m proud that Pink Moon combines connection and growth through music driven yoga, pilates, and fitness classes; a flexible work/social space; events, support groups, and resources; and fun family events. Most importantly, these are backed by an educational and innovative onsite play space with care for kids, so that moms don’t have to feel guilt or shame in finally prioritizing themselves. And this empowers moms to take care of their physical, mental, emotional, and social health all in one convenient and welcoming space.
Lastly, while Pink Moon is a welcoming brick and mortar space, it’s also a true community and movement that exists far beyond the walls of the studio. Through our Moms Matter initiatives, we seek to improve the way society treats and support moms by engaging in small but powerful acts of recognition, as well as actively working with and donating to nonprofits who advocate for moms.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
My co-founder also happens to be my best friend from college, so we have quite literally grown up together. Now we’re watching our kids grow up together, while navigating the challenges, self doubt, upheavals, and constant ups and downs that are part of parenting and adulthood.
We’ve supported and cheered each other on through multiple life phases, celebrating milestones and accomplishments and holding each other through heartbreaks and disappointment. But it wasn’t until motherhood nearly broke both of us that we began thinking bigger, and wanting to actually do something to help moms just like us. We each had our own stories, but there was a common thread of loneliness, hopelessness, fear, feeling dismissed and misunderstood, and crushing identity loss. And they also involved an unwavering, all consuming adoration for our children. The important part of our friendship, and of the business, was that we could be honest about the intense feelings and dichotomies of motherhood without feeling judged or self-conscious.
This helped us to create the framework for what we wanted Pink Moon to be — a space for moms to truly reconnect to and prioritize themselves, and to find resources, support, and community to help them do it with any guilt or shame. As Pink Moon has evolved, the passion we both have to ensure women feel seen, supported, and connected throughout motherhood, and the drive to build a company that will help moms overcome many of the challenges we’ve personally experienced, keeps us going!
Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
As a former competitive gymnast, yoga has always offered a place for me to continue strengthening, growing, stretching, and playing through some of the most challenging and stressful periods of my life. As I got older, I also realized that yoga represented a powerful therapeutic outlet where I could escape my racing mind, daily stresses, or a never ending mental load. As a type A recovering lawyer and perfectionist, sometimes yoga is the only place I can actually turn my brain off and just be fully present in my body.
After COVID, as I began to manifest the concept of Pink Moon, I took the leap to become certified to teach yoga in addition to practicing. I was still doing part-time legal work at a nonprofit, but I felt pulled to learn how to share with others the physical, mental, and emotional benefits I experienced through yoga. I also wanted to convince those who dismissed yoga as “boring, or just stretching” (many of them friends and fellow moms), that yoga could be fun, challenging, strength focused, and dynamic. And I wanted to push myself outside of my comfort zone, which teaching certainly proved to be. Though not easy, as someone who had always hated public speaking, I was absolutely stunned by how natural it felt to lead a large group through a yoga practice.
I now teach Yoga Sculpt, a variation of yoga that combines core sequences with cardio bursts, ab circuits, and light weights. Through teacher training at Core Power Yoga and subsequently finding my own style in teaching, I was able to better understand the structure of classes, music sequencing, and other elements that truly make an experience special. I also gained invaluable knowledge of how things run behind the scenes, and the business of yoga and running a studio. This allowed me to create a basic structure for the class experience instructors lead at Pink Moon: a vulnerable, real, music driven class that is a safe space to truly let go and find your peace and your joy.
As the owner and CEO of Pink Moon, my main role is to bring together the best team of instructors and practitioners to give moms access to the best resources and experiences. But I am lucky to be able to continue to create a unique experience through both the practice and the connection, on and off the mat.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.pinkmoonmoms.com
- Instagram: @pinkmoonmoms.com
- Facebook: @pinkmoonmoms
- Linkedin: pinkmoon
- Yelp: Pink Moon
Image Credits
https://maryellajourdak.com/