We were lucky to catch up with Marie Isabel Hernandez Mcmanus recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Marie Isabel, thanks for joining us today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

The journey of being a business owner started when I was ghosted by an employer after getting pregnant and started to go broke from lawyers fees. I began paving my way to seeing clients by myself but it was a slow build. Months went by and I was pregnant, sick with Hyperemesis gravidarum, and needing maternity leave bad. It was then I felt this immense feeling of desperation. I was bringing a child into this world and our savings was dwindling.
Though things were starting slow, they were moving in a positive direction, but as a mother, returning back to a regular job was all I thought about. I’d question myself and think of the stability I would get in having a regular job. I’d dream of how easy it would be to just put my head down and grind it out. I’d get home at a decent time. I could have minimal responsibility and liability with no worries about a paycheck, and maybe I could even get a 401K or a pension. However, it was so obvious to me at the time that I needed a job I could do on my own terms, where I could work and have the flexibility to manage my home and be a mother.

As I reflect back on this feeling of desperation, not only did I realize that I am not alone in trying to build this ideal work situation,
I realized that I am a good worker. My instincts to invest in things and work with others has been something that I was secretly building and did not know I had. I networked, and created alliances with other therapists. I learned to never burn a bridge, to ask for exactly what I needed, and learned to find those who could help me. I met with other business owners, and asked questions. They have been my greatest allies so far. They know my work and my experience and more importantly they see the passion in my work and my motivations for doing it.
The hardest part is learning to hone in on your skills and selling yourself. Asking those deeper questions and really digging to know what makes you wake up and work is what everyone needs so that when those seeds of doubt creep in, we realize that they are there not to keep you from deterring you from your goals but to keep you accountable and alert.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Marie Isabel Hernández McManus, Bilingual Speech Language Pathologist, Feeding & Dysphagia specialist, Lactation Consultant, and owner of Ignite Speech Therapy, PLLC. In short, I specialize in the mouth. How it talks, sucks, drinks, chews, and swallows and how those movements affect your sleep and breathing. I also provide typical services for developmental and speech delays, cognitive delays or deficits and I do this for newborns to 99+ years old. I get the pleasure of working with families and individuals, providing services in both Spanish and English with some American Sign Language in between.
I’m not your typical Speech Language Pathologist. I have learned that thinking outside the box is essential for growth in my field and so I am able to provide Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation (NMES), have training in manual/hands on support, Myofunctional therapy for tongue and lip ties and use kinesio taping methods to facilitate movement and blood flow when needed.
The thing that I am most proud of is the ability to keep my eye on the prize. Persist. When I was in college, I did not see others like me earn graduate degrees, so innately, I thought it was something I could not achieve, but I persisted. Being a minority on campus was also an intimidating feat, and now as a woman and mother sometimes there are an endless amount of hurdles in life. Lots of STOP signs. So between being the minority in most professional groups and trying to be a mother in a working world with the systems that are built for men, it often seems like I should have stopped a long time ago. Stopped working, stopped learning, stopped trying to make something of my own.
What keeps me going is the motivation to leave something behind and a collective effort to empower women and families. Life with its struggles can be very arduous and when we work at it together, and are in the thick as one, that work doesn’t seem so hard after all and the legacy thats left behind is what makes the next person move forward as well. It’s a push till the end.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

After getting my degree, I moved to another state with my husband. We were excited and overjoyed with having the opportunity to experience life outside of what we were used to. We had the time of our lives so much so that we moved a bit farther away continuing our exploration. We bought a house and settled in as we prepared for the next stage in our life, children. The struggle was real and after 3 years of trying with medical intervention it just was not happening. Luckily for us, the instant we stopped trying, we were parents. We were overjoyed and that was soon over as I learned I had Hyperemesis Gravidarum, a debilitating illness of vomiting for an entire 9 months of pregnancy. I felt hopeless, exhausted and starved. I did not know what to pray for, to stop being pregnant or to continue with this life that was growing and making me sicker and sicker. It was not morning sickness. It was all day sickness. I woke up nauseous and went to bed starving, having only drank or eating a table spoon of water, and then throwing that up as well. I would go to my doctor appointments and they would ask me to try ginger or crackers. They would deprive me of IV hydration and question my tolerance to pain and sickness. I was neglected and losing weight by the day and worse off, I could not hold a job. I felt like I was in this cave of darkness and not one person could help me. As the months passed by I would be able to handle getting in the car and maybe eating a few more bites. I got tougher at asking for what I needed with doctors and slowly the doctors saw that I was not overreacting or being hormonal. I brought them research and showed them how other doctors were treating my illness and though I did not get perfect care, I was at least hydrated and my feelings and thoughts of dying were subsiding to more hopeful thoughts about being a mother.
This did not end there. I had 2 other beautiful souls thereafter with two more unbearable pregnancies.
As you become parents, you begin to see the disadvantages life gives us or other families, and I often think about how educated and fortunate I am, and still with all of that I found it hard to ask and to receive assistance in the most dire of moments.
This cycle of dealing with doctors and their lack of empathy and action is something I think about often and always keep in the fore front of my mind. Advocacy was something I learned to do the hard way and is something that most of us learn while in those moments of grief and despair. In experiencing my hardships, I have realized that these are the seeds to my harvest. The drive to do better and be better for others in my work.

Does your business have multiple or supplementary revenue streams (like a ATM machine at a barbershop, etc)?

As I have become a parent, my time gets shorter by the minute. The amount of work it takes for one visit to the doctor’s office seems like I need one whole day off from work and going to multiple locations can be difficult for families to manage. So, I have decided to venture out and have an occupational therapist and a chiropractor in the same location. Most of my clients need both services and go to many different locations to get served while others, do not or cannot simply because of cost and/ or convenience so making therapy accessible is something I have to be mindful about and work towards. Additionally, I have also decided to implement a sensory gym system that will be in place later this month to help with my quality of care.

Contact Info:

• Website: www. IgniteSpeechTherapy.com
• Facebook: @IgniteSpeechTherapy

Image Credits

Cecilia Elder, Cecilive Photo