Don’t be ashamed of your weaknesses
Meet Tesla Mitchell (Rodriguez), she is a woman of many talents! She is a longtime journalist for the Winona area, she is an award-winning feature newspaper writer, a community leader, block party enthusiast, a current author, a stay-at-home mom, and her most recent connection was with 100 Rural Women where she presented with two other women in a virtual webinar on rural journalism.
We are excited to feature her through our Spotlight Profiles.
Question: Tell us a little about yourself
Answer: Thanks for letting me do this. I’m excited. My name is Tesla Mitchell, maiden name is Rodriguez, and I’m a longtime journalist for the Winona area. I’ve been doing that for about a decade. I’m also an award-winning feature writer for newspaper writing. That was really exciting. I’m a community leader. I definitely, really enjoy doing community projects. I’m always super big into block parties. It’s there’s a way for me to connect our community and bring neighborhoods together. That means a lot to me. So, block party enthusiast and also a current author. I’ve written a children’s book that I’m in the process of getting published. As well as a stay at home mom. So, I have two kids, a five-year-old and an 18-month-old. And my recent connection with 100 Rural Women was in presenting with two other women in a virtual webinar on rural journalism.
Question: Describe your connection to rural America
Answer: I have lived in the rural area, pretty much my entire life. My parents used to build fireworks. They just recently got out of that industry, but part of building fireworks is that you need to be in a rural area for that. We have always lived out in the middle of nowhere and have definitely loved and appreciated the aspects of that. I’ve lived in North Dakota, Montana, Missouri, back to North Dakota, and then to Minnesota. Minnesota has been my longest residency, I would say.
We’ve gotten to experience a lot of really amazing parts of rural America. It’s definitely a place filled with neighborly love and also, you know it’s a part of it, small-town gossip, [unfortunate persistent racism], and outdoor beauty, and a heavy dose of hard work ethics. Since being a little kid, my goal has been to build off of the strengths that I’ve learned in rural America to help make it a better place for everyone to live.
Question: Tells us about a moment you felt discouraged and how you overcame it.
Answer: I would have to say that moment was pretty recent. I recently had filed for election for our local school district for our school board and I lost. I lost by 26 votes. It was definitely an amazing experience. But it was also one that I had to work to not be too super discouraged about. I had really put my heart and soul into running for the seat and had gained a lot of momentum and support in the community.
I was excited to champion for racial equity and financial support for programs that had been long been lost, like elementary orchestra. Really, I was excited to just be a responsible school board member that communicated with constituents by things like newsletters and videos. I was just like, super pumped to be an active school board member and to like get feedback. And I had these ideas of like doing small surveys of, like, what do you think about this issue and tell me about it and vote on it. You know, what you think it should be? And I was just super pumped about that.
In the end, I lost by 26 votes. I had 1601 and the other candidate had 1627. So at first, I was really discouraged and disheartened by that because most of all, I was really excited to work at increasing racial equity. Rural America is awesome! It also has downfalls and one of those downfalls is persistent racism in areas. I was really excited to increase racial equity for our area because just as the United States is seeing all across the United States, we have a lot of work to do. And so, I was really pumped to take part in increasing that. So, I was discouraged and disheartened.
I overcame it by first, allowing myself and giving myself permission to be disappointed at first. I didn’t do a ton of Facebook time or social media time. You know, I had said… I had put out there the excitement and I’d put out there what I gained from it because I did gain so much. Regardless that I lost, that doesn’t matter. I gained so much internally and, you know, that was the things that I put out in social media. But at home, I really wanted that space and that time to just feel it. And that was okay. And I really gave myself permission to do that. In doing that, I allowed my disappointment fuel [to] run out so that then I could see what was behind it. What always behind it was a lot of lessons learned. A lot of moments of building up my confidence.
As a journalist. I have always worked to give both sides of a story. I had really worked to sable sides of a story and journalists aren’t usually allowed to really have strong opinions. For me to go out into politics, and go out into the school board, and go out into the community and have opinions was very much outside of my comfort zone. The results were super exciting. Finally, I got to have a chance to say this is what I think should happen and actually push towards it; we’re really not able to do in journalism. So it’s really exciting and I really learned a lot from that.
After, [I] allowed myself that moment to be disappointed. That was what was there at the end. You know I really appreciate everything that I learned from that. I also focused on how amazing the experience was and how much more I appreciate the act of filing for candidacy for like all candidates because it is such a hard thing to step outside of your home, step outside of your comfort zone and say ‘this is what I really want to happen and I’m ready to make that change’. And you’re up there in front of people and you’re… you know that you’re being judged because you have to in democracy. You have to judge the candidates based on what they’re saying in order to decide whether or not you believe in them or not.
It gave me an appreciation for the political system and democracy in general and gave me a new perspective, because as a journalist I got to help democracy in one area, but now with filing for candidacy I got to help it in another. So that was really cool and now I’m able to take so much more from that. And I’m actually able to not allow it to discourage or dishearten me but to help me shoot up, help me gain more momentum, and gain more confidence in the next step of what I’m doing.
Question: How do you lead and create change in your community and how can your community better support rural women?
Answer: I really love this question. This one is my favorite. Personally, I love creating change through creating positive momentum and encouraging others to join in on that. An example of that is recently, my daughter and I really wanted to be connected with an older adult in order to do pen pals. Because during this time of the pandemic and isolation, I know that there’s lots of older adults out there who would love to hear from a little kid. And there was also my daughter, who both of us are extreme extroverts, who just wanted to feel connected with other people outside of our home.
We reached out to our area’s older adult Advocacy Center. It’s called the Winona friendship center. Well, first off, we found someone to be a pen pal. And we’ve been writing back and forth, and it has been so cute. My daughter is five and you know, she’s able to write letters, but they’re like maybe six sentences. It’s so cute. It’s awesome to watch her do it and it’s also awesome to watch her receive mail and hear from this person that she hasn’t met yet.
It started that way. But then I was talking to the Friendship Center director and she was actually saying, ‘Hey, we’re doing these Thanksgiving baskets’ And I was like, ‘Is there any way that I can help?’ And she was like, ‘Well, we’d really love to have Thanksgiving cards or like little notes or positive notes to put in these Thanksgiving baskets”. And I was like, ‘I am on it. Let’s do this.’ So, I rallied some momentum and got some people excited and I was like, let’s help these people because there’s so many older adults that are isolated. There are many older adults who have been inside this entire pandemic.
I know a few of them who have been asking for supplies to be dropped off or delivered to their door. They’ve been severely isolated. Let’s bring a moment to them. I rallied support. Our goal was to get 50 cards written. Instead, we got 71. There are about 30 people who participated in this. Lots of them were kids. So, I got this chance to see all of these letters and notes come in and I put them all across my table and even had to use my stove to spread all these out. They were so unique and full of love that it filled my heart. Just to be able to see all these notes that were going to older adults who would cherish and appreciate it so much. It came together. It was awesome. We had 71 so well beyond what we had hoped for.
That’s how I like to create change is I end up doing projects, that are sometimes short projects, but I’m able to pull a lot of enthusiasm into it and a lot of momentum and have others build off that momentum and then help me with this project. And then get to see it to its fruition, so it’s super exciting. That’s what I love to do most. I’ve also done a block party project. That was one of my faves. So, I personally love block parties. I talked about that earlier. And I’ve planned or I’ve hosted about eight or nine of them in different neighborhoods.
One year, I decided I really want to help other people host their own neighborhood block parties. In this project I got six leaders who were ready to do them in their own neighborhoods. I really walked them through it. I didn’t do it for them because I was really intent on empowering other people to be able to do it in their own neighborhoods and they did it. It was amazing. They’re each unique. My favorite story is that in one neighborhood, the neighbors were convinced that there were no kids. They’re like, we don’t even offer treats at Halloween, because there’s no kids in this neighborhood. Then they did this block party and the street was filled with them. They were just like, where did all these kids come from, but they were right there in these different houses and they just didn’t see them.
Now that small community, that neighborhood, now understands who’s actually there and now they’re able to flourish around that. They’re able to be more connected. Two neighbors that were living side by side for two years finally got to meet at one of those one of those block parties. It was awesome.
As far as better supporting rural women I genuinely believe that the community should support women in the ideas that they’re already itching to get out. Us women have so many beautiful, change-driven ideas to better our community. But sometimes we just don’t have the mental capacity to be able to pursue them or the resources to pursue them. I really feel that as a community, we need to support those women and help them bring their ideas to fruition. Because many times, it feels as though a community leader needs to be ridiculously loud and like a natural people person. And be able to shout their idea from the rooftops in order to get the community support, but there are so many women out there with ideas. And those women are strong in those ideas, but they may have a quieter voice.
We, as communities, need to be listening for those quieter voices, because those ideas are valuable and are beautiful and will change the world by changing their own community. And it’s our responsibility as their community to uplift them and give them the freedom to pursue those beautiful ideas because it will help everyone in the world.
Question: If you could give one piece of advice to your former self, what would that be and why?
Answer: Don’t be ashamed of your weaknesses. Many times, you didn’t choose to have them. Instead, keep them out in the open so that when you come into situations where they might play a part, you can look around for the tools to help strengthen them. I’ll give an example.
I am what I call a “short burst” person. I went to a leadership training program through the Blandin Foundation and got a chance to talk with a counselor about my ‘weakness’ of being a short burst person. So, what I mean by short burst person is I’m a person where, like the Thanksgiving cards, I get an idea. I’m like, ‘Yes, let’s do this’. And I put all my energy into it and I let go. But then I run out of energy. Not pretty quickly. And, but, you know, it has, it has a distance span. Like I’m not a marathon runner. I’m a short burst person. And that’s okay!
I always used to beat myself up for that. I always used to be like ‘Tesla, you can’t commit to anything. You get super excited and then you make big progress and then you just fall on your face’. And what that was doing though, was by talking to myself like that I wasn’t allowing myself to recharge and do another short burst. And that was my true weakness, was not accepting my own weakness and being okay with it. So, through learning with that therapist, and through actual practice, I’ve learned that it is okay for me to accept that I’m a short burst person. I need to not beat myself up about that because that’s just who I am; what I need to do is look around me for tools in order to help strengthen my weakness.
For me, that is, if I am doing a project, I need to find others who are marathon runners because short bursts and marathon runners work perfectly together. The short burst person will get the project going and get a good start. And that marathon runner is going to be steadily running along. That short burst person is going to sprint ahead; they’re going to sprint ahead. They’re going to be at the 50-yard mark. And that marathon runner is going to be slowly catching up. They’re going to be steady. And when that short burst person has run out of fuel, eventually that marathon runner is going to come up at a nice pace and can be able to help pick up that person. And help that short bursts person go again because the short bursts brings enthusiasm and helps it along. Each one has huge strengths.
So, when I’m doing a project that I know is going to be farther past my short ‘burst-ness’, that’s when I say, ‘Okay, I need to look around for someone who would partner with me on this, and who is more of a marathon runner… Who will do a little bit each day’ instead of me where I’m like, ‘let’s do it all today’. That’s how we created that project. We got it done using both strengths.
When I’m not doing a bigger project and instead of doing a shorter project, I start using tools like journaling or even a calendar. I will allow myself that that space to do my short “burst-ness”, and then I’ll journal about it and say ‘these are the beautiful things that have come into it. These are the things that have happened’. And now I’m going to give myself a week or now I’m going to give myself a couple of days. Here’s my deadline for my next thing. And until that deadline comes, or until that time that I’ve set comes, I’m not going to think about it. I’m not going to put mental energy into it. I need space to refuel my energy so that I can burst again.
I wish I would have learned that early on. If I could, I would totally go back and tell myself don’t fear your weaknesses. Instead, accept them, put them as badges of honor, because in some ways they are strengths. Just acknowledge them though so you can look around for tools to help. That’s how you embrace the whole person of you and do amazing things!
Question: Who or what has been your biggest inspiration?
Answer: You know, I would have to say this was one of the hardest questions. I’m so looking around, I don’t have a person. That I can pinpoint and say, that is my one inspiration or that is my biggest inspiration. My biggest inspiration comes from different community leaders and family members all around me.
I will see something and someone that I admire and that I love so deeply, and I will use that as inspiration. And some of those people aren’t even people I know. Some of them are community leaders and some of them are family. But some of them are just famous cool people that will inspire me and will remind me that if they can do it, so can I. Each person really gives me a tiny piece of inspiration I hold dearly in my heart.
My great-grandma is definitely one of them if there was a person who truly inspired me. It is my great-grandma. She was like the most forgiving woman who believes in the best of people. No matter what, she was always thinking of the community and always thinking about how she could put love and care and good things out to the world. She’s definitely one of those people, she’s passed now, but she was definitely one of those people were like, if you could see angel wings, they were definitely on her. She was just that awesome and her memory still to this day inspires me and everything that I do.
Another person who inspires me is my former professor, Judy Becker. She inspires me to seek what connects us all beyond our cultures and that really helped me so much. Because, being in a rural area, I didn’t always get to be around diverse cultures. I’m half Hispanic. But I didn’t get to grow up being in that household, being in a Hispanic household, all the time. Even now, I’m still learning my Spanish. And so, Judy Becker, she really helped open my eyes to the beauty of other cultures and showed me how much we have in common. And how I don’t need to fear crossing over to shake someone’s hand or give them a hug. Not right now. I can’t give hugs… But here’s so much that we can connect with and she really inspired me with so much of that.
There’s just so many humans who have changed the world who inspire me to believe that I can do it too! I’m a firm believer that by changing my community. That same thing goes with block parties. That’s why I’m such a block party enthusiasts. If we can change a neighborhood, we are changing the people within that neighborhood. And if we change those people within that neighborhood, we are changing the community and changing the world and that’s where it starts. Just by connecting with another person and letting those actions, and that love, and that respect between each other flourish into other people and other events and other momentum that reaches well farther than we can imagine.
Check out what Tesla is up to…
“I’m an avid weightlifter and supporter of strong women!”
Recently, Tesla picked up 275 lbs. and “did a bunch of other crazy stuff” Check it out HERE
Follow @Frazzled_Fitness_Mom on Instagram