We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tracy Bradshaw a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tracy, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

Growing with TEA, LLC has been a journey of taking risks that we continue to embrace. The idea behind this adventure came to light when one of our daughters stumbled upon a Facebook memory of casts we made of our busts and auctioned off for charity several years ago. I promised said daughter that I would document the casting process, which eventually led me to create an experiential lesson plan that required careful scaffolding. It dawned on me that starting a women’s group with bust casting might be too overwhelming, just like jumping into flying a plane without the necessary training. So I started making a list of other activities I would do with a group of women, similar to the activities we had done two decades earlier as TEA, The Empowering Alliance for Women. Then I wanted to share stories with her about the activities and how they helped me and our friends grow together in the community. Soon I found myself writing a book. I started knowing I’d share the resource with our daughters, but the risk was deciding to publish. Publishing meant everyone would know that I am not and never have been perfect. It’s funny now, but then it was really scary. After the book was published, the women of TEA gathered on a Zoom call to meet my editor. During the call, my editor expressed her admiration for our lively interactions. As we were chatting, Kerri had an epiphany- we need a TEA podcast. It was a whole new level of vulnerability to share our voices. We brainstormed and researched, and then we decided to give it a shot. Because we were in it together, the risk of sharing ourselves so vulnerably became exciting. When I listen to our early episodes, I can tell how careful we were with sharing and how we approached each other. Now, after sixty-eight episodes, our weekly recording feels like therapy. We found our way, and now we have nearly 5,000 downloads and an audience of listeners that I treasure.

Tracy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am Tracy Bradshaw, a human services leader with over 20 years of experience in developing, implementing, and evaluating programs for women and youth. As the CEO of Boys & Girls Club WNY Collaborative, I lead joint efforts for twelve Western NY Boys & Girls Clubs to develop and achieve organizational goals. In addition to that, I am also the founder of Growing with TEA, LLC, a platform that inspires women to dismantle restrictive cultural norms and embrace their authentic selves. TEA stands for The Empowering Alliance for women. The larger vision is by collecting, sharing, and bearing witness to diverse stories and experiences through connection; we will develop a nurturing community that supports healing the human spirit and being of service. Our mission is to provide platforms for growth and healing in community. As such, I am the author of “Women Gathering and Growing with TEA,” a part memoir, part guidebook that documents my journey with a group of female friends, providing a proven method for other groups of women to experience transformational growth together. I also co-host a weekly podcast, Spill the TEA, with four other founding members of TEA, that features truth-tellers sharing their stories and insights on being a woman in today’s society. Together, the women of TEA have been providing experiential self-growth workshops for women in the last year, leading to our annual fall retreat. Later this month, thirty-five women will join us for a three-day journey exploring the divine feminine and concepts of radical self-love through experiential workshops, ritual, and fellowship.
The work that I find most rewarding and am proud of is the effort that Growing with TEA is putting into creating connections and building communities among women. Our activities have served as a catalyst for women to gather and grow together, resulting in lasting and meaningful female friendships. It’s always exciting to hear from podcast listeners and readers who have been touched by my work, especially women. Listening to their stories is something I truly love.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Compiling a list of books that have significantly influenced my approach to leadership, life, and love is a daunting task due to the vast number of impactful titles and my voracious appetite for reading. One such book is “What Happened to You?” by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey, which I recently read and shared with others. The author’s perspective shifts the focus from “what’s wrong with you/me” to “what happened to you?” By examining how trauma affects the development and survival coping mechanisms in the brain, those who work with people and are seeking to heal their own trauma can gain valuable insights into how to navigate stress to regulate and access higher-level thinking skills. This paradigm shift is especially vital when working with families and young people in crisis, as it allows for the creation of healing-centered solutions. This is the text I wish I had access to prior to having my children because it would have impacted my parenting. After finishing high school, a mentor gave me Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” at the start of an Upward Bound program. Having experienced a significant trauma, just before the program start I was struggling with my own resilience, making this a timely gift and assignment. The author, an Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor shares a poignant story harrowing experience surviving in a Nazi concentration camp. Frankle’s resilience and positive outlook in the face of unimaginable circumstances is truly inspiring. It’s a powerful reminder that even in the toughest of situations, we still have the power to choose our attitude towards them. I have been giving this book as a gift to graduates for many years, hoping that they too will be inspired by Frankl’s teachings and embrace a similar philosophy.
To round out the top three, I would recommend “Dare to Lead” by Brene Brown. Her leadership lessons, which are built on the foundation of self-awareness, integrity, and courage, helped me grow as a manager. When I was a young manager, I had inherited skill sets that were guarded and authoritative. By delving into Brown’s philosophy, I shifted towards her daring practices, which helped me build a stronger and more connected team.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Like many stories in the past few years, the pandemic was a test of resilience and an exercise in the overuse of the word pivot. In 2018, I was tasked with growing a small youth-serving nonprofit in South Carolina across the state while diversifying funding. The program had been funded by an extravagant gala that provided the annual funding for program operations. When that type of fundraising halted in-person operations, my pivot, while not losing sight of growth, was to find funding and create meaningful virtual programs. There were frequent and hard conversations with board members, prioritizing and strategizing any way that we could continue our work. Sometimes, it felt like we would have better luck using a Magic Eight Ball to plan during that year. In fact, it would have been easier to pause our programs, set aside our strategic goals of growth, and try to regroup when the outlook was more certain.
Instead, together with the committed board of directors, we built a bridge campaign and started making phone calls to supporters. The community responded. Securing the means to continue operations without hosting a gala, our next step was to build strategic partnerships. Those partnerships resulted in a successful pilot, a large investment from the state, and ultimately a merger that sustained and grew two nonprofits.
During that time, my inner peace came from deep reflection, which I recorded for my book. I tried knitting and several other trends, but they mostly resulted in Pinterest Fails. Writing became my saving grace and release. In retrospect, the daily uncertainty of work felt less risky than sharing my story. Writing each day was challenging, and I had to fight imposter syndrome fiercely. Eventually, it became a cathartic release. Looking back at my past experiences helped me stay connected with the women and their stories that supported me during my journey. Despite the fact that many of them were living in different states and some had passed away, they provided me with the strength to endure a time when the entire world was in turmoil.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.growingwithtea.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/grow_with_tea
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/Grow.With.TEA
• Other: https://growingwithtea.buzzsprout.com

Image Credits
Lauren Guthrie, owner of Gallery Guthrie is a Branding and Wedding photographer located in western New York servicing the East Coast and beyond. Specializing in warm, nostalgic and glowy images with a timeless feel.