Overcomer – Sylvia Tarnuzzer

What do you do?

I wear a lot of hats (who doesn’t, right?). I am a wife to my best friend of 38 years, a mother of two adult daughters, a grandmother of two sweet girls and I am an Entrepreneur at heart! I’m on the Chamber Board as well as Chamber Treasurer, and I do some crafting and traveling in between all those things.

Growing up, did you always dream that you would be doing what you’re doing now?

Actually yes and no! Growing up my mother taught me so much about strength and determination, but I always thought I would stay in the banking career I started in and stayed for 27 years. However, there was this creative side to my brain that actually argued with the left side which I say was my banking and finance side. What’s SO FUNNY is the left side brain is natural. Meaning the ability to be detail oriented, understand math and calculations is natural to me. However, the creative side is the one that is dying to come out and play! This is the side that isn’t natural, BUT I’ve learned so much from! It’s the side that has made me a great entrepreneur with focus to get better every day. It’s definitely the side that pushes me forward and shows me what it’s like to overcome some obstacles – many obstacles when it comes to the technical side of creating my blog!

What made you decide to “go for it” in terms of your career goals/ambitions?

WOW! I love this question! I was raised a military child and saw the strength in my mother throughout various challenges. Little did I know just how difficult it could be to be a military spouse. However, I ended up going from a military child to a military spouse and learned balance, peace, fear, challenges and so much more during our 30+ years of moving around the world. Deployments, Wars, Absences, Fears and Frustrations and having to tell your children their Dad is leaving again brings up so much in the military world. When we retired I knew I wanted to help military spouses get through the challenges of this role. Many asked me to write a book with my experiences. I knew that in today’s world a blog would be perfect! However, it’s back to learning my creative side as well as understanding how to get out there to the military spouse world!

Did you face adversity? How did you overcome that?

Oh My YES! I could bring up many things but will list a couple that are more business and/or blog related. First was when I was only 18 years old and I was engaged! Yes, at 18 going to be married within a few months. My father is the one who encouraged my husband (then boyfriend) to go into the military. So I decided to try banking since I loved finances and accounting. When I sent application after application it wasn’t until I said I would clean their bathroom floors they hired me!!! I was the bottom of the pay scale, but I was working for a bank! Mom and Dad were proud and my career began. I didn’t have a college degree (I got married instead). However, my husband and I finally did go back to college with two little ones at home. We both completed our degrees with honors while raising two small children and having full-time jobs. With all the military moves, having to go back to the bottom each time I finally promoted all the way to a Vice President! This was a tough career and position for a woman at the time as it was in Commercial Lending and mostly men dominated this position. The timing was CRAZY too and where the second adversity topic will come from. During my time in this career, fighting as a woman to the top, my children were teenagers, very busy teenagers. One was a competition cheerleader and the other pursuing many academic goals for her graduation and upcoming college years. This is when we got hit in the gut with my husband’s deployment for the Gulf War. If that wasn’t enough, he was told upon his return he would be taking over a position at the Headquarters in Washington DC. WHAT in the world were we going to do as a family??? We stressed out about the decisions we were to make and decided to bring the girls in to help. As a family, it was decided that we would stay back in Georgia after Dad came home from the war, and he would go off to DC alone. This was NOT easy! This was a challenge for us all!!! However, with the stress, loneliness, heartaches and more, what happened made us all stronger. My girls and I became each others strength as we grew so close with Dad gone. My husband and I now know that we hate to be absent from each other after such long periods of absences throughout our entire military days. Again, a lot of what we all went through is the reason for my blog! To share and help support the military moms out there who may not have others understand what they are going through.

A lot of women have these big goals & big ideas that they’d like to bring to life, what advice would you give them in terms of how they can make that happen?

To gain strength from within! Your focus and why needs to be crystal clear. There will be days that you want to run back to bed and hide under a blanket, but if you move forward, get out, get dressed and make something (anything) happen those baby steps will get you moving forward in the direction of your dreams and goals!

What’s the biggest regret you have when it comes to your blog/shop/business?

My biggest regret is probably that I didn’t think about developing a blog sooner! I know it’s time-consuming to get the technical aspects down, but I don’t regret learning that part of building the blog.

What’s been your proudest moment so far?

Taking my blog LIVE on my birthday! I will always remember the day it went live and of course, now the real work begins!

And, just because we like our coffee around here, how do you take yours?

Heavy cream and no sweetener!

I believe in the story of the overcomer. That has been my story and I believe that is your story too. We want your journey here on the blog to help encourage others just like you and me. If you’d like to share that with us, please come over and share your story with us!