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Please tell us more about the business and when you started it.

I was a professional cookie decorator (by accident, it was a "temporary" job that stuck) for ten years before my book on the art of cookie decorating, "Cookie Sensations" was published. My Masters degrees are in literature/creative writing and my other dream is to be a writer, so getting the book was a huge coup. My cookies have appeared in the "New York Times," the "Washington Post," "Washingtonian Magazine," Modern Bride" and "Chocolatier." Inspired by the joy of crafting the book and motivated by my daughter, who keeps me home, I designed a series of themed cookie decorating kits, Chic Cookies, and started my online shop at www.chiccookiekits.com two months ago. And I already have ideas for two more businesses and a new book proposal!

How do you define Hybrid? 

A whole whose sum is greater than the ridiculous number of parts.

Tell us how your "What’s Next" moment occurred and what did it mean to you. 

I had been seeking my "What’s  Next" moment for many, many years, and its arrival was not sudden. It was hardly a moment, rather a growing, mutating thing. My over-education and resume reflect this struggle. When I stopped working during my pregnancy, when I was no longer driving to another place and spending hours elsewhere, I was home looking at my computer searching for my something bigger. My oh so many years of seeking and struggling and experiences just coalesced into an idea.

The closest time frame that your 'What’s Next' moment occurred was..? 

During first pregnancy

If you have not acted upon your 'What's Next' thoughts, what has been stopping you? 

I did act on the moments, and always have, but not without fears, financial restrictions, uncertainty, and know-how (to borrow your words).

What are your biggest challenges? 

I have an incredibly supportive husband and we live humbly and frugally. So my challenges are focused elsewhere, primarily in balancing my health and time. I have a tumultuous (and impressive) medical history. Living in my body every day is alone a challenge. I've lost my large intestine and part of my lung to an immune disease, and I work very hard to maintain a semblance of normalcy. I sometimes wonder if my body will explode under the demands of my day. I work during my child's naps and late into the evening, so then I, of course, worry that she doesn't have my full attention and that her intellect won't be stimulated enough by the brilliant things I could be teaching her if she received all my attention, all the parts of me, instead of only one.

What are your aspirations? 

My aspirations are almost too numerous. I want my business(es) to succeed, to publish another book, to publish a novel, to publish children's books, to write for magazines, to find the right hair products, to find the right jeans, to eat only organic foods and nothing from a box, to make the perfect mac n' cheese. And above all else, to have another child.

What are your interests? 
Writing, crafts, television (yes. television.), my work

What inspires you? 

Other blogs, other shops, clever and creative people, my magazines, Martha

Feel free to tell us anything else you'd like.

The idea of a mom as a hybrid is brilliant. I have so many parts (though, to be fair I AM missing a lot of parts thanks to major surgeries), finding one term to describe my whole is quite useful. I am a mom who adores her miracle child (and by "miracle" I mean "created with the help of scientific intervention so a woman whose insides are a mess can experience the joy of having a child") with an indescribable passion. But there are also a million other non-mom parts of me.

On the Net: http://www.chiccookiekits.com/

Check out all the Hybrid Moms of the Week.