April Scarlett

Photo by Ellora Gupta

April Scarlett’s passion was there for her, at a time when she needed it the most. She had left her job of 16 years at AT&T in order to open up a fairy tale-themed café in Saline called Beanstalks. However, within the year, she lost her new business to the recession.

“I did it with the support of my husband,” said Scarlett, who is a community contributor for AnnArbor.com. “We put everything into (Beanstalks) and it didn’t work. It was a great place but bad timing.”

Scarlett said that, although this was a huge setback for her and her family, she did not remain deterred for very long.

“There was no sense sitting here, wallowing,” she said. Almost immediately after Beanstalks closed, Scarlett began blogging, starting up her first one called April Scarlett Writes. She also did freelance work for news organizations in Ann Arbor and Saline. “I was bumming, pretty devastated. It was my outlet,” she explained.

Writing had always been one of Scarlett’s passions. Most of her college classes revolved around writing, literature and English, but she had never considered it as a career until after the loss of her business.

“I was always a writer but I never did it professionally,” she said. Since pursuing her passion for writing, she received certification in writing for children and teens as well as manuscript marketing. She is attending Washtenaw Community College for a degree in Professional Communications.

This desire to pursue writing as a profession gave way to another one of Scarlett’s passions: motivating and helping women to pursue their own dreams.

“I like to write about women organizations and people who are doing great things for women,” she explained. “I like being a resource for women who don’t know where to go and don’t know what to do.”

Scarlett cited her story as a reason for wanting to promote women and women’s welfare.

“Look at me, bankrupt, no job or business,” she said. “But here I am doing something I like and surviving. I want to put things into perspective for women to realize they can do whatever they want.”

Her family also played a huge role in her motivation and desire to pursue her passions.

“I want to be able to support my family in a way that my husband, Jim, can retire and my sons can have what they want,” she said.

Currently, Scarlett has five blogs that cover different topics, ranging from sports to successful women to politics to parenting. Each has a slightly different topic, but all are equally important to her.

"In Positively April Scarlett, I get to be really hokey and inspirational and be a motivator," she said. Whereas in Successful Women Weekly, she writes more news-based articles. "The star feature is the story of the one woman that I feature per month who will inspire others."

In the future, she hopes to continue keeping up with her blogs, and creating more awareness for them.

“I think I write about more important things, both in parenting and women’s rights,” she said. “But I want my blogs to become a well-known resource for women. When someone needs a resource, a writer or someone to speak about women and success, women's rights or how to motivate women, I want them to say, ‘we need to call April Scarlett.’”

Scarlett said that she knows she can do whatever she wants, for herself, her family, and women everywhere. Nothing frustrates her more than when a woman says, “I can’t.”

“Those two words don't exist for me, and they don't have to for anyone else either,” said Scarlett. “I’m not asking women to change their lives. There is a way to do what you want to do and there is no reason they can’t do it.”