Wild Sister Magazine is a gorgeous ~60 Page online monthly magazine created by Jen Saunders. Each month has a theme, such as Gratitude, Self Love, Abundance, etc. The magazine is filled with articles, stories, poetry, artwork from Wild Women from every perspective of life. I discovered this magazine a few months ago and have been incredibly inspired by it. I contact Jen to see if she would answer some questions for us. Happily, she said yes! Click HERE to subscribe to Wild Sister Magazine.
1. How would you describe Radical Self Love?
To me, Radical Self Love is loving your whole self, the light and the dark of who you are. It's being comfortable in your own skin, shining your light, loving beyond fear, and knowing what makes you happy – and doing what makes you happy. It's authenticity, vulnerability, and honesty. It's knowing you are enough. It’s shining your light so that others can shine their light, too.
2. In what ways do you feel you spread the message of Radical Self Love, or ways you might want to?
I feel I spread the message of Radical Self Love through Wild Sister, which focuses heavily on inspiring and empowering women. I hope I have been able to spread this message by example too, by loving myself, learning to be kinder to myself, and sharing my vulnerabilities with others.
I am planning to spread this message even further this year, firstly by launching the Wild Sisterhood – an online space for women to connect and work together to lift each other up and change the world – and also by starting a new passion project of mine; painting empowering portraits of women.
3. What inspired Wild Sister?
I've always been fiercely passionate about helping women see how amazing they really are, and I became so frustrated seeing my closest friends frowning at themselves in the mirror, putting themselves down, and putting other women down to make themselves feel better. Of course, I have been guilty of all this too, but it always made my heart ache to see women who were so beautiful to me dulling their light.
I feel it is my purpose in life to use art and writing to help women love themselves, own their power, and follow their heart. Wild Sister magazine is how I do this, and I hope to add more ways to live my purpose in the future.
4. Creating a magazine sounds like an overwhelming adventure; could you share with us the process of starting up a magazine? Such as getting permissions, your site up, getting subscribers and submissions,etc.
It all happened so quickly, and I honestly had no idea what I was doing! I have been extremely fortunate to have such amazing women working with me to create each issue. It's absolutely a team effort, and I'm so grateful to be surrounded by creative, intelligent, brave, kind, and authentic women.
I had been blogging for a while, and I became friends with other bloggers too. So, when I decided to create a magazine, I emailed all my favourite bloggers and asked them to be a part of it. Once I had writers, I got to work on creating the website and spreading the word. The writers sent me their first submissions, I found an amazing Assistant Editor (Dani of Positively Present), and I worked non-stop for a week to put the first issue together in time for the release. Luckily for me, I was living overseas and unemployed at the time, so I had plenty of time to dedicate to getting Wild Sister off the ground!
It all seems like a blur now, but I can tell you it involved a lot of time in Wordpress, Photoshop, Pages, on social media, and many, many emails. In fact, it still does! But I am very fortunate to be in love with what I do, which makes it easier for me to dedicate so much time to it.
5. What are your goals with Wild Sister?
I have so many! I want Wild Sister to inspire and empower as many women as possible, because I fiercely believe that by empowering women we can empower the world.
I want the Wild Sisterhood to be a sacred temple for women to come together, be inspired, and change the world.
Causes that focus on empowering women are especially important to me, so I hope to support them through organising fundraisers and other passion projects with the Wild Sisterhood. Our first one is coming up in April, called 30DaysOfBeauty, so stay tuned!
I want Wild Sister to be a movement, one that promotes positive media, self-love, equality, kindness, and love. I want it to spread a ripple effect of love through the Universe, and encourage more movements.
6. You have a specific topic for your magazine, what's coming up?
The March issue is focused on women we admire, and the April issue topic will be 30DaysOfBeauty, encouraging positive body image and self-love. Future topics are still being decided.
7. You've created a new social networking program that you are about to launch, tell us a little about that.
Oh I'm so excited about this! It launches on Wednesday 22nd February (my 25th birthday!) and it's called the Wild Sisterhood. It's an online community for women, and also serves as a subscription to Wild Sister Magazine! It's kind of like Facebook, but with more focus on women, empowerment, and positivity!
It will make reading the magazine a much more interactive experience. Members can download the latest issue from the Sisterhood store and talk about their favorite articles and share their Aha! Moments with fellow readers – and even talk to the writers who wrote their favorite articles!
Wild women connecting from all over the world, forming friendships, sharing stories, supporting each other, owning their beauty, inspiring and empowering one another. Magic!
8. How would someone go about submitting to your magazine?
The submission guidelines are on the website (http://wildsister.com/contribute/), and it's pretty easy to do.
We include about 5-10 submissions from readers in every issue, and we've just reopened submissions for 2012!
9. You also have a personal blog, My Smiling Heart (loved it!), share a little about this.
I started My Smiling Heart after I had a life-changing physical/mental/spiritual breakdown, or rather, breakthrough. My whole world had been turned upside down, and My Smiling Heart was my therapy, a way to document my journey as I rebuilt myself from ruin.
More than a year later, it's a positivity blog, a place to share my art, and where I bare my soul. I wouldn't be who I am today without it.
10. You are so creative, where do you get your inspiration?
Thank you! Inspiration comes to me pretty randomly. It can be sparked by anything, a movie, nature, stories, a thought, art. My biggest inspirations are women who love themselves, take hold of their power, and use their lives to make the world a better place.
11. You married recently, how is it going?
I love being married! I'm so surprised by this, because I never thought about getting married when I was younger. But it's so much fun, I can't explain it, I just feel so blessed that I get to spend every day with my favorite person in the world. I'm a very lucky girl!
12. Anything you'd like to add?
Thank you so much! Your questions have been so much fun to answer, you can interview me anytime! :)
Hi! I'm Jen, a stargazing, rainbow riding, empowerment artist. I’m the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of Wild Sister Magazine, and a positivity junkie who loves to dance with words, paint with love, and connect with kindred spirits from all over the world.
Wild Sister: http://www.wildsister.com/
Wild Sister Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wildsistermag
Twitter: @smiling_heart
Instagram: @smilingheart
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