The Rewrite: Shonna Chiles-Heintzelman

“I am large, I contain multitudes.” Walt Whitman famously used that line in “Song of Myself” and it’s so apt for our Hundred honorees. 

What was true for Whitman all the way back in 1855 is true for us today. We're always changing and growing and broadening your perspective in every passing moment.

So that’s why we’re introducing Rewrite: an opportunity for honorees to look back at their Hundred interview and tell us what’s changed. 

Did you have a mindset shift? An experience that opened your heart to a new reality? An epiphany that can only come with life lived?

It's been about five years since we first interviewed Shonna. Here, she reflects on what's changed:

Firstly, I needed to read what “Me from Issue One” had to say. I needed her fire and I needed that loud voice of self assurance. Since being in the first issue, a lot has shifted in my life. In a few short years, that young woman feels light years behind me. I’ve become a wife, a mother of two beautiful babes, and rebranded my entire business to fit my life in this season. From this side of the table, I can see with clearer vision why and how difficult it is for so many women to make time to be alone. How vulnerable it feels to sit with yourself in a season when learning who you are feels so foreign because it’s constantly shifting based on what your family needs from you. The one thing I would emphasize now is not so much being alone (read: what is “alone” with toddlers) but prioritizing moments with yourself. The continuity of self evolution and the cultivation of your ideas, hobbies, self, and friendships outside of your life at home - or even your business. Self care as an act of essentialism, not luxury. But self care beyond just a superficial moment; a true pouring into the self so that you can be of better service to others. And so that, one inevitable day, when your chicks leave the nest you aren’t so detached from who you are that you struggle with the next iteration of who you’re becoming. We must keep our own gardens tended. We must water the growth and prune away what has died. We must do it in a way that we can always blossom into who we are meant to be. When we do this, we give other women permission to do the same. We transcend the roles that society has boxed us into. And most importantly, we give our children a perspective that many of us didn’t see. We empower them to say “this is healthy and I should do it too.”

Thank you, Shonna, for updating us! We’re honored to share your story.