Listen to the interview here!
Rebecca Doubek
Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece. Welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I am with Rebecca Doubek. Hi, Rebecca.
Rebecca Doubek: Hi, Toni.
Toni: How are you doing?
Rebecca: I’m doing well, thank you.
Toni: Great. So, Rebecca, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Rebecca: Oh, gosh. What to say, where to start? Well, I’m a mommy, a wife, a shop owner in West Reading. I have a store called Firefly on Penn in West Reading. I’m very proud of my shop and being part of my community. Busy with lots of kids running around and a busy life, and generally just really happy to be here, so thank you for having me.
Toni: Absolutely – and unsolicited, your store is beautiful.
Rebecca: Thank you. It’s fun. It’s like my brain and all the little things that have been bouncing around in my head creatively for many years just kind of got thrown into a room. It’s a nice little mish-mash of stuff that I’m inspired by, so thank you.
Toni: Let’s go into the first question. What does inspiration mean to you?
Rebecca: This is such a wonderful, beautifully generic question, because what inspiration means to me in so many different ways in my life and how I’m inspired and what really gets me to get up and grab a pen and write something down or what gets me to come to tears or gives me little goose bumps … I think first and foremost it’s love. As cliché as that sounds, it’s the heart. It’s love. For me, that can be community, that can be my family, that can be a great piece of art. Strangely, I can find it in Goodwill. I enjoy vintage and thrifting and sometimes just old things speak to me.
I find it everywhere, and I think what inspiration means to me is what motivates me to action, what calls me to action. If that’s something that makes me get up out of my chair or kiss my daughter or feel a little something in my warm fuzzies of my heart, then that’s inspirational.
Toni: So how do you take all of that – that movement, that feeling, that heartbeat, and put that into practice here in Berks County?
Rebecca: You know it’s funny. I feel like, Toni, I probably fall short of this a lot; whether it’s the lack of time or whether it’s just something that I write down and never follow through on. I work towards being better at that every day.
I think I’ve started with the shop. The shop for me was the starting off point. I was chatting with someone about this the other day, about how it’s a retail store, but really for me, it’s become so much more. It’s a platform to be part of my community. That’s where I feel like I’ve taken action. I’ve allowed this little retail boutique that sells some cute earrings and some nice little baby gifts to be a way to really understand how I want to define the community I live and work in.
Being part of the Main Street and now what’s called the West Reading Community Revitalization Foundation, and working with that organization, the events and the different things we do, I want the place that I work and live in to be a place that other people want to be a part of, too, and I want to provide people the things that I want to have. Family events where you can stroll with your kids down the sidewalk and grab a hot dog or go color a pumpkin, or listen to great music, grab a craft beer – the things that I think people enjoy. For me, those are the things that I feel like I strive to create just through some of the small things I do and community work I do in West Reading.
Toni: When you started your shop, did you have it in your mind that you were opening this business to be part of the community?
Rebecca: No.
Toni: I think that is so critical that that is understood. You were inspired to do something. You did it, which took a lot of courage anyway – to start your own business takes a lot of courage.
Rebecca: It was frightening, yes.
Toni: So you did it, but the ripple effect of that – that inspiration took on a life of its own and now is carried forth in so many different ways into the community that you live in – that’s huge.
Rebecca: Thank you, that’s really nice of you to say. I feel like some of the small things we’ve done have made the biggest difference and had the largest impact and effect. It’s cultivated the soil, if you will, for other things to come forward. I’m particularly proud when I see organizations like the Greater Reading Young Professionals group come in and say, “Can we do Costumes on the Corridor and have kids come in and do trick or treat?” I feel like they can do that now because we’ve created a platform and an area where they do want to come. I feel like I’m a small part of that, but I think it’s this collective community effort, with particularly some of the individual shop owners who really do have a vision for what we want West Reading to be.
I think when I started and I opened my shop it was, “I’d like to have a nice little business. I’d like to have the autonomy of opening my own shop and picking and choosing the things I want to sell, and at the end of the day, closing it up and going home.” When it all was said and done, it was like, “We should have a Fall Festival. We don’t have one, so let’s do that. We should have an event where we focus on supporting others in our community. Let’s do that.” All of those things that came from just ideas or little brainstorms and things that if we didn’t have it, we wanted to see it there. That was the cool part about it. No, I did not open it thinking that I would be eventually a member of the Foundation or that I would do any of these events. That was not my intention.
Toni: But the ripple effect and the impact is what is so very important about one single spark of inspiration and what it can do.
Rebecca: Yes. As you said, that’s the power point; that’s the impact. I think we always talk about this a lot, as you say that. It’s like at the end of an event, “How much money did we make?” That’s the bottom line. That’s the black and white stuff. “Well, we did this, this cost us this much, the insurance and this and that …” so at the end of it, maybe we made X dollars, and it wasn’t that much money – a little maybe to do the next event. But what we think is immeasurable are the amount of people that come to those events and walk around and enjoy the music or the sites, or discover West Reading for the first time, or feel a sense of community in their backyard that they didn’t know that was there, or feel proud all of a sudden to be in their little enclave and say to a friend who lives in Philly, “Come to this Festival we’re having. Check out this area.”
When you realize that you’ve created something that allows people to share that experience and that sense of community and they’re proud to be there, it’s immeasurable what you make at the end of the day.
Toni: It’s creating something and keeping in mind what is so very important is that it’s bigger than you.
Rebecca: Yes.
Toni: That is so important. Who in Berks County inspires you?
Rebecca: That’s a really good question. I feel like it probably starts with amazing people like Mr. Boscov who I just feel as though defines what community and giving back is, and what he feels is a vision for a place that he dearly loves and tirelessly just continues to give and to work, because that’s what he feels is for him is just right. That’s a standard, I think.
I honestly believe that some of my inspiration these days, and it probably has to do with where I’m at in my life, they’re just everyday people. They’re friends that are moms, they’re people that are running families and “doing it all” because some days I say, “How do you do it?” For me, it’s like, “How do you get the dinner on the table and do the bills and get the laundry done?” Then I go to the shop and it’s like, “How do I get all that?” When I see someone doing it gracefully or seemingly effortlessly, which is probably not true, I just think, “Wow!” I’m inspired by people who at the end of the day still have a smile on their face.
Toni: Yes.
Rebecca: I’m inspired by people like you, Toni, who want to be able to share, who want to be able to give, who want to just tell a story. I don’t know – I thought about that question, and it was a hard question for me, simply because it isn’t maybe someone that you would know by name. It’s just the kind of people around me in little ways that I think, “That’s really cool.”
Toni: Thank you for that. What would you like your legacy to be?
Rebecca: I’m a writer. That’s what I do. Strangely, it’s not a retail store. I think my legacy for me would be something in the written word, and something that maybe whether it was for my family so that they would know how much I love them and how much I was proud to be a part of them, whether that was from my community. I’d like to feel like what I leave behind is something that will inspire someone else. However many years down the road if somebody picked it up and read it, that it would give them that tingly little feeling or that it would inspire them, whether it brought a tear to their eye or just made them think twice about something. I’d like to be able to leave that. In my mind, that’s my artwork. That’s my canvas. For me, it would be something written that would have that impact on someone.
Toni: I hope you’re journaling the journey that you’re on right now with your shop and the difference that you’re making in your community and why, because that is something that is a living legacy right now that people can be very proud of and yourself, first and foremost. Thank you for doing what you’re doing, and thank you for being part of the Get Inspired! Project.
Rebecca: Thank you, Toni.
Toni: Take care.
