A Place to Feel Like Ourselves with The Lullabar Co-Founders Stephanie Issa and Christine Ong Forsythe
This week’s guests, Stephanie Issa and Christine Ong Forsythe
Moms and Co-Founders of The Lullabar
Episode Description
Imagine a place where you can receive what it is that you need in that moment – drink a hot cup of coffee, take a workshop, or even get a manicure – WHILE your little one is happily occupied in a play gym within the same vicinity.
This is the concept behind The Lullabar, a wellness cafe in North Country, San Diego, which is set to open around the corner from me early 2023.
Where I live, The Lullabar is getting all kinds of buzz in motherhood circles. When I heard about it, my immediate reactions were, it’s about TIME!, and, why hasn’t anyone done this before?! I personally am so excited about this space, and I know I’m not alone.
Today’s guests are the cofounders and mothers behind The Lullabar: Stephanie Issa and Christine Ong Forsythe. In this episode, we discuss all things motherhood, business, and the idea to create a space where moms can just feel like themselves for a few hours – no childcare coordination necessary.
Behind the idea
Christine was Stephanie’s wedding planner in 2016, which was “beautiful and flawless.” as Stephanie puts it. They stayed friends long after the wedding, and later, went through motherhood together, too.
During COVID, both felt pretty isolated and burnt out. They treated themselves to an afternoon together at the La Valencia Hotel in La Jolla. As they sat by the pool, they kept saying to each other: they REALLY needed this time for themselves. It made them feel like Stephanie and Christine instead of Owen and Charlotte’s moms.
Then they thought about what would be even BETTER: a place where the kids could hang out WHILE the moms relaxed and took care of themselves.
They felt so confident in their idea, which would eventually become The Lullabar, they began looking for a location before they secured funding. Stephanie created a landing page ages in advance and began receiving email sign-ups immediately. They now have about 1,000.
Here they had the answer to the most important question – do people want this concept to exist? The answer was a resounding YES.
Judgment-free community
What I love so much about this concept is that it creates a social community of parents and kids. When it opens, the plan is to offer workshops on meditation, burnout, stress management, early motherhood, and more.
Instead of being a child-centered space, this one is adult-centered, focusing on creating a place where adults can feel like themselves again and get support on the things they’re navigating at that moment.
In our conversation, the three of us discussed the judgment we felt when we became mothers. I remember, when my daughter was really little, hearing my parents say things like, “Oh, we didn’t do it that way.”
Similarly, Stephanie says she received unintentionally judgy comments from family members because she couldn’t produce enough milk for her baby. Recently, she enrolled her son in preschool, and someone said to her, “If he was my son, he’d be in a playground instead of preschool.” Were they saying she was a bad mother because she enrolled her kid in preschool so she’d be able to work?
There are so many expectations around us that influence the way we think we SHOULD be doing things, which distracts us from simply making the decisions we feel are best for us and our children.
The fact is, some people are better moms when they give themselves the space to work. Stephanie says she’s one of them, and that they’re incorporating this idea into their content strategy – that it’s OK if you’re parenting in a way that’s different from how your parents and family members did it, as long as it feels right to you.
Abundance mindset
The Lullabar took awhile to break ground on. A lot of landlords were burned by COVID and hesitant to put their faith in a start-up with an entirely new concept – a self-care center with a play gym built in? Coffee and meditation? All in one?
There were a couple things that gave them the courage to push forward. One was that this was something both Christine and Stephanie really wanted for themselves. Another was their enthusiastic online following, who Stephanie polled regularly to see what they’d want inside The Lullabar.
What was interesting to Stephanie was the difference in mindsets she and Christine had. Christine had an abundance mindset – maybe because she was used to planning lavish weddings with big budgets – whereas Stephanie was more pragmatic. Where would they GET the money to incorporate these big ideas?
Stephanie says her husband, too, pushed her to see the potential. He pointed out all the money in the world people were just throwing at businesses. Why couldn’t The Lullabar be one of them?
Certainly, it can be difficult to trust that things will work themselves out, but I personally am so glad Stephanie and Christine took on the abundance mindset and believed that what they needed to make The Lullabar happen would indeed come around.
Notable Quote from Stephanie and Christine
“I think, also, there's a lot of outside judgment in terms of accepting help. I don't know, you'll just hear it from your friends, your extended family members, and they're not placing judgment on you. But they'll say comments like, well, I didn't have help. And then you kind of feel like, oh, maybe I shouldn't either, even though they take pride in doing it themselves. But I think you kind of forget over the years, how hard it was.” (11:56)
“Going back to work is good for my mental health. To be honest with you, I'm not a good stay-at-home mom. It's not good for my brain and for my self esteem. I’ve been working since I was 11 years old, so you kind of do what you're used to. And I love to work. It makes me happy. So that's kind of what I'm trying to instill in our content strategy, really, in the mindset of the people that follow us just like it's okay, if you're kind of doing something that your sister didn't do, or your mom didn't do, but it feels right for you. Because if you're happy, I swear your child's going to feel it.” (17:30)
Resources & Links
Follow the journey of The Lullabar on Instagram and their website.
Learn more about Project: Mom and follow us on Instagram at @projectmompodcast.
Do you want to share your motherhood journey on the podcast? Email me at projectmompod@gmail.com.