When asked why she thinks she was voted one of HerNashville’s most “women-friendly” businesses, Lavish Events owner Tara Stouder-Milam hesitates momentarily before wisely surmising,

“The majority of my clients are women, and I do whatever I can to make them feel at ease and to make their dreams come true.”

After speaking with this savvy entrepreneur, it’s easy to see why dreams are coming true both Tara’s life and in the lives of those she touches.

“People in Nashville love to get married.”

Retropolitan owner Amy Heimermann makes interior space fresh, fun and personal.

AmyHeimermann has a gift; a talent for making a house a home. While her eye for design is unquestionably superb, her gift, really, is getting inside the heads of her clients and helping them define their own styles.

Probably every woman who has walked into a fancy, high-priced clothing store has felt, at least briefly, the urge to check her self-esteem at the door. The impeccably dressed salespeople, the meticulously arranged displays, and even the lighting and music often create an intimidating atmosphere. All but the most confident fashionistas may yearn to escape to the anonymity of familiar department stores and mall retailers.

But how can a woman cultivate her own personal style with a wardrobe full of mass-marketed, widely available clothing?

Figuring out what works for me ... that’s what I do best.

Starting at an early age, I proved a frustration for responsible adults, including my teachers and parents. During my primary school years, I could have easily acquired a vast sum of money had I charged a dollar for every time a teacher told me —
or worse, my mother — that I did not work up to my potential.

East Nashville’s Hooprama has no sign over its door, but students filled nearly every class in August. Owner (and aptly-named) Sunny Becks teaches the hula hooping classes, and for her, few activities contribute to the development of the whole person like hooping.

“My dream image is a dinner table in someone’s home on a school night. There is an 8-year-old sitting there, a 15-year-old, a mom ... maybe they’ve talked to Grandma on the phone that day and somehow, during the month, all of these different age groups have learned about the same non-profit organization,” Hands On Nashville’s Trish Crist muses on the ideal outcome of her new program, Do Good Well.

In 2007, more than 500,000 American lives were prematurely extinguished by cancer, a statistic that Nashvillian Sheila Bates knows well. “I call it going to Cancerland,” says Bates, whose father died of lung cancer at age 47; she was 23. “My life was irrevocably changed.”

We have a saying here that no two days at The Community Foundation are the same,” Ellen Lehman explains with a smile, attempting to describe a “typical” day at Middle Tennessee’s premier grant-making organization. From meeting with donors to planning new initiatives to signing thank-you notes, the president’s day-to-day activities are all deeply entwined with what she calls “the charitable goals and dreams” of the Middle Tennessee community.

While droves of carefree, sun-worshiping co-eds flocked to beaches and exotic adventures during school breaks, Kristen Keely-Dinger, along with her compassionate contemporaries, devoted their time off to Vanderbilt University’s alternative spring break program, which offers a selfless alternative to the otherwise self-serving season. It was this program along with local volunteer organizations that exposed the then pre-med Keely-Dinger to the world of charitable action, causing her to re-direct her plans for the future toward community service.

What Bono does for AIDS awareness, Becca Stevens does for prostitutes. Of course, I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Bono, but I have seen some interviews, and he seems to be a really cool guy; someone who is celebrated as one of the most influential philanthropists of our time (cool) and yet his focus seems to be more on his cause than the fame he’s gained from it (so much cooler).

Don’t yank my string! Menopausal wisdom is a myth.

Menopause snuck up on me. Unlike far-sightedness and varicose veins, which I simply woke up with one day, the winding down of my reproductive system was not as sudden ... or obvious. It took me some time to admit that global warming may not be causing me to overheat like aluminum foil in a microwave. At 45, menopause wasn’t on my “to do” list. And being the high priestess of list-making, if it wasn’t on my list, it didn’t exist.

It’s a weeknight at around 11 p.m., and I’m huddled under my bed sheets nearly at the gates of Dreamland when a sound comes from the adjoining bathroom. Jolted from a semi-conscious state, my ears hone in on the creature’s wild ramblings. First a growl, then a couple of sniffs, a stomp or two. Lastly, an overly dramatic sigh followed by these bellowing words: “Erin! Can you PLEASE get all of your hairs out of the sink? They’re so gross!”

The first time I saw Eric, I actually didn’t “see” him at all. I noticed someone slouched up against a wall outside the bus station in Philadelphia, but I had no idea it was him. I walked right by and instead paced around near the entrance, scanning the small gathering of luggage-laden people for Eric’s tall, wiry frame. He eventually revealed himself from his perch with a silly grin on his face; he’d been watching me the whole time.

Cold feet. That’s the best way to describe how I felt when my sweet, smart, loving, committed boyfriend of four years and I started talking seriously about marriage.

Parenthood isn’t so much a stage you enter as it’s another dimension that devours you — body, soul, car keys and all. It’s a permanent “condition” that enters the bloodstream, travels to the brain and infects your pre-parenting world view. Similar to the Men in Black “neuralizer” (the flashy thingy), becoming someone’s mom or dad obliterates all memory of what life was like BK … Before Kids.