Sara Hood is proof that you can be a mom and still have it all. With her two beautiful sons by her side, she has created her own website, SaraLoveStyle where she shares fitness tips, cooking videos, and mommy advice. When she’s not trying to help other women, she is advocating for children with special needs. Oh yeah and she happens to be married to NFL player Ziggy Hood. Get to know the incredible Sara Hood
You have one of the most incredible life stories thus far. Please tell our readers a brief description of how you got to where you are in life.
I’m Sara Hood. I am married to Ziggy Hood, and mother of two incredible boys. I am an immigrant of two Ethiopian parents that fled a war to Sudan and so that’s where I was born in a refugee camp. We were just blessed enough to be seen by a church family here in Virginia and that’s how I got to the United States. I grew up in Seattle, Washington and I couldn’t have asked for a better childhood. I went to Missouri where I met my husband of14 years, nine years married, two kids later, the rest I guess we would say would be history.
How has your upbringing impacted your life?
My parents are incredible. They literally live through love with compassion, with kindness. They spread it to people that they know, people that they don’t know. I grew up in a home where Christ was the center of it, where you know you love others no matter the disagreements and you don’t have to like other people’s actions, but you still love them and show them respect and so I’ve made sure that I live my life that way and I’ve taught my boys to live the same way too.
You are a huge autism advocate. How did you get involved and why is it something you are passionate about today?
I became an autism advocate because our oldest son Josiah is autistic. He is also non-verbal. There are some other underlying issues as well, but that’s where I’ll leave it for now. When he was first diagnosed, it was a very lonely and isolating time. I didn’t know anyone who was going through what I was and I felt so alone. When challenges would come up, I would think I’ve got this figured out…and then something else would come up.
As a stay at home mom I’m blessed to be able to spend 5-6 hours in mediation, in IEP meetings. I can spend hours upon hours of my day doing that but a lot of parents have so many other responsibilities. It’s a lot of work. It’s exhausting. It’s emotionally, physically, and spiritually draining. I want to give my all and sometimes I just can’t because there’s not much left for me at the end of the day–especially when pulled between other children and a spouse. I became an advocate when I realized that there was an issue between the parents and the school system or the parents and the state or the school system and just knowing what your rights are and how or how to navigate insurance.
There are so many horror stories about children not being able to receive beds when they need them or need services and parents can’t get them. They don’t understand what their rights are and they think that the schools or the state has the best interest of the child at heart but in reality they don’t. Sadly, everyone’s best interest is their pockets and so my job is to come in and help you fight and teach you how to fight and tell you what your rights are and tell you, you are not crazy! I was told that I was crazy, that I was advocating too hard or that I’m tough to deal with and at the end of the day, screw you.
It’s my child. I’m going to advocate for my son like no one else can because at the end of the day I know my child and that’s what I want to teach other parents –that’s what I want to show them how to fight. Be a fighter, be an advocate even when you feel like it’s an uphill battle, keep going.
You’re also a big fitness junkie, including motivating everyone on Instagram! How did you get started on your fitness journey? What is your best advice for people lacking motivation to exercise every day?
My fitness motivation began because unfortunately well, fortunately –depends how you look at it–six days after our oldest son was born I had a heart attack, I was 23. The number one question I got after was what happened? So no it’s not genetic, no it was not. It turns out there was an underlying issue with my heart that I was not aware of. The birth of my son probably saved my life and saved me from future issues. I ended up with an emergency C-section after three days of induction and then it was a rough delivery. I realized it was too much on my body. My body couldn’t recover and my heart couldn’t pump the way it needed to.
So for me, my fitness motivation started because I was over 200 pounds at just 5’4”. I had just started my fitness journey when I got pregnant with Josiah. I actually did a really great job and continued to stay kind of fit even though I was over 200 while I was pregnant, but after I had my son I just took off and I never looked back. I lost almost 50 pounds and then I found out, of course, I was pregnant with baby number two. I so wanted to live. I was 23 with a new baby and a wonderful husband and nothing motivates you more than just wanting to live and not wanting to die.
My best advice for people lacking motivation to exercise every day is to find your why and the why shouldn’t be just your kids or your spouse. Thewhy should be for you. What is it about you that you want to rediscover? What is it about you that you want to see? I know for me when I started losing the first few pounds, I started to see myself and envision myself in the mirror at the end of my journey. Then I began to focus on that rather than focusing on the daunting task. I knew I needed to lose sixty pounds, but I said, let’s start with this first five, then I would hit that five and I would celebrate. I would celebrate my accomplishment and then I would add another five and then another five because if I focused on the sixty it seems like an impossible task, but by focusing on five it’s something that seems way more manageable.
What is your favorite sport? Are you an athlete as well?
Actually basketball. I was never football for me. I did play basketball in high school.
Raising children of a professional athlete, most people assume that it makes life “easy”; however, that must come with some costs. What is that cost(s)?
Raising kids with a professional athlete is the biggest misconception on the planet. There is nothing that comes easy in life when you’re with a professional athlete and it’s certainly 100 times worse when you’re raising children with a professional athlete. I know at one point we moved four times in 30 days and I don’t mean like down the street move. I mean to Pennsylvania and Florida and back and from Florida to D.C. back to Florida and back to D.C. It’s rough and the hardest part is you want to create stability and you want to create a home for your kids.
It’s hard to do that when you’re moving every which way, but you make choices to keep your family together and luckily for me my kids are really amazing. They just go with the flow and nothing seems out of the ordinary for them, but it’s still difficult, especially with a child with severe special needs. It’s not like I can just pick up, get on a plane and go. There’s a lot of planning that comes with it and when you have a child with special needs in particular, well at least for our son, he doesn’t deal well with new environments and the continuous moving. So we came to a decision where we actually stopped doing that and began to create stability for our kids.
Daddy not being home a lot of the time is hard. Having to answer the questions as to where he is, is hard. They’re old enough now to understand but it’s still a difficult part of the process. Being by myself obviously never gets easy, but I’m at the point where I’m really lucky that I have my mother-in-law living with us. She is wonderful and it really does take a village.
Do you have mommy play dates with other NFL wives ?
Absolutely. I think the longer in the NFL we stayed the more comfortable I became letting people into our lives and into our space, especially near our son because I’m so protective of him, but absolutely.
A lot of sports fans don’t think about the sacrifices you and your family has to make. What are some of the challenges you face?
The first thing to come to mind is that they are always gone and having to answer to the kids as to why he’s always gone. Another challenge is creating a safe, happy home environment. I think answering questions from fans too is really hard or even if it’s neighbor, just people who don’t understand our lives because it’s not normal. Our lives are not what people think they are at all, not remotely.
I gave up my career in politics to be home with my kids. I gave up my career ambitions in order to make sure our home was stable. That was a choice that I made and that’s a choice that I don’t regret by any means, but it does come with great responsibility because he can’t do his job if I don’t do mine in making sure that our home base is good and making sure that everything is working. I like to say that I’m a travel agent, I’m a counselor, I’m a motivator, I’m a speaker, I’m our financial advisor, I’m a planner, I pay the bills. I’m the do-everything person. I’m his manager. I’m just you know marketing agent and so it comes with a lot. There’s a lot of sacrifices, you don’t get to see your family as much. I can’t do what everyone else does because we’re on completely opposite seasons.
So when everybody else is going on summer vacations, we’re going into training camp. It’s a lot to think about, it’s a lot to sacrifice, but it’s just part of the journey. You can’t do this forever and he can’t play forever so you make the sacrifices so you don’t have to later and that’s the goal.
Best advice for women who want to become business owners/entrepreneurs.
My biggest advice would be just do it. I wish I had done this five years sooner, but I allowed fear and worry and the thought of failure because nobody wants to fail. I thought that because I was a mom I couldn’t do it and I’m a perfectionist so needing to do things well was a problem.
Let this idea of needing to be perfect go! You are perfect just the way you are. You’re incredible. There is someone that needs your story. There is someone who needs whatever it is that you are selling, whatever problem it is that you are solving and that you have this idea to solve. Do it. Someone needs you. Someone out there needs to hear from you and wants you and is looking for you and you might be the answer to someone’s prayer or you might be the answer to your own family’s prayer and you just don’t know it because you’re afraid. Let it go. Just do it.
That’s literally the advice that someone gave me five years ago and I just took it upon myself to follow that in the past two years.
What projects are you currently working on?
Well, I finally launched my blog. I’m ecstatic! @SaraLoveStyle is definitely a labor of love. I have an incredible team that shoved me in the right direction and I’m so, so, so happy. Every time I was scared, they pushed me further and every time I wanted to give up, they pushed me further.
The cooking videos I never thought I would do are probably going to end up being my biggest love because I’m just so excited about them and I hope my followers will enjoy them too.. I’m a visual learner so I made sure that the videos were there for those that needed it. I am also working on a couple of speaking engagements which I’m looking forward to.
My goal for next year is also to do some more travelling. The kids are old enough and my business is growing. My brand is growing. There is so much going on and I’m excited and so very grateful about the future and the direction of my brand.
Make sure to follow Sara Hood on Instagram and check out her site SaraLoveStyle for lifestyle and mommy advice!
