Here are the things Hannah Neeleman, who goes by the nameBallerina Farmonline, wants to discuss.
First, she is the mother of eight children and she loves it.
Second, she is a business owner.
Aubrey Bengtzen-Jones & Crystal Lund
What Neeleman isnt interested in talking about?
What everybody else thinks about her.
There are two ways of viewing Neelemans content.
Aubrey Bengtzen-Jones & Crystal Lund
Then theres the second way.
Neeleman, though, sees her life as more nuanced.
His first three years were in the ballet studio with me, and it was amazing.
Aubrey Bengtzen-Jones & Crystal Lund
He was so fun to have in there.
I was like, Im just going to keep trucking along.
And it was very unconventional in a way to a lot of people around me.
Aubrey Bengtzen-Jones & Crystal Lund
The piece went viral and led to more eyes onand critique ofNeeleman and her brand.
Though Neeleman through her representative declined to answer specific questions about the story, its implications clearly bothered her.
Since then, Neeleman has launched, if not a rebranding, a reintroduction.
Aubrey Bengtzen-Jones & Crystal Lund
(A rep for Neeleman tells me that she has done interviews with a wide variety of media.
Neelemans core values as she describes them are much simpler.
The way Neeleman tells it, becoming business owners is in her and her husbands blood.
Aubrey Bengtzen-Jones & Crystal Lund
Her parents ran a flower shop together, with their nine children raised working alongside one another.
He just loves seeing all of us start our own businesses and get dirty.
They were barely seeing each other, and Neeleman started to reflect on her own childhood.
She says shes the one who proposed a family business.
I came from a family where my parents work together, she says.
So Im like, Daniel, we have to find our thing.
I want to build a business together.
I want to start my own business.
I want to do it with you so that we can work together.
It was then the couple had the idea for their business: a small family farm.
And Neeleman knew just how to market it.
We had to go direct to consumer.
Neeleman began following a woman on Instagram named Mary Heffernan, who ran an account called@fivemarys.
Neeleman saw a blueprint.
Im like, Okay, Im going to follow her business model, she says.
I reached out to her and I was like, Hey, tell me your ways.
And she actually put together a course.
I was her first student learning how to sell your farm goods direct to consumer.
Neeleman even ended up flying out to Heffernans ranch more than once for coaching.
When the Neelemans officially launched Ballerina Farm in 2017, it wasnt an overnight success.
Instagram Stories had just launched, and so Neeleman experimented with them.
Soon, she felt she had a niche.
I really utilized them, she says.
I think people just loved the rawness, the realness.
And I tried to share the story as much as I could, she says.
The next year, Ballerina Farm Instagram got a substantial influx of followers due to an achingly real event.
She filmed and shared it all.
And so that was a big moment for us.
But how did she then grow her account to millions?
Even Neeleman isnt sure.
I had to wonder if Ballerina Farm, the persona, is also something that had snowballed.
Then suddenly it felt like Ballerina Farm was everywhere.
As oneTikTokerput it, when moms in the trenches see her content, it makes them feel bad.
It makes them feel like theyre doing something wrong.
Shes working full-time and flexing her creativity in a way thats personally satisfying.
I love sitting down at the end of a day and editing videos, she says.
I love editing my cooking reels.
I love putting together stories in a way that I feel like is cohesive and beautiful and hopefully educational.
That to me is just really fun.
We definitely share the mantle of parenthood together, which I love, she says.
Neeleman also gets fulfilment out of inspiring people through her content, and sharing the values she cares about.
So, I ask her, what are those values, exactly?
Neeleman wants to inspire people to know where their food comes from and to be self-reliant.
Shes also passionate about portraying a version of motherhood that leads with joy.
I think parenthood can get overwhelming and scary very quickly, she says.
Sure, she says, motherhood can be challenging.
But she wants to focus on the good.
Parenthood is hard, but what is meaningful in life that isnt hard?
Having a career is hard.
Running your own business is hard.
Its all hard, but we do it because theres purpose in it.
Her oldest son is now 12, and thats also provided perspective.
I remember having my first and being like, Oh my gosh…it felt so huge.
Is embracing the joy in motherhood an inherently political message?
In our extremely polarized country, maybe.
But Neeleman is looking forward.
For Neeleman, thats what its all about.
Pushing ourselves as individuals is key, she says.
Keep pushing yourself, keep inspiring yourself.
You just have to keep going, keep moving, keep going upward.
