The Evolution of a Family A Love Story BY CAROL KAHN
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Scott, Kiersten, Natalie and Grace Hathcock look like the quintessential all-American family of four. However, after 25 years of marriage (they just celebrated their 25th anniversary) they can attest that their life journey has been filled with twists and turns that no one could have predicted nor expected. Kiersten Parsons Hathcock is the vice president of marketing for Moonshot. She is a self-taught carpenter and furniture designer who defied the odds and built an internationally known furniture company out of her garage, joking that she is a “Mom with a toolbelt.” She has appeared on the television show, “Shark Tank,” winning a deal with Robert Herjavec that never came to fruition.
At the age of 36, she suddenly started seeing and hearing spirits of dead children, some of whom were killed by predators. Her intuitive awakening led her to partner with detectives around the country and a publishing deal for her soon-to-be released memoir, “Little Voices: How Kids in Spirit Helped a Reluctant Medium Escape and Heal from Abuse,” which will be out on September 20. But what Kiersten didn’t know at the time is the kids weren't just coming to her for help — they were coming to save her life. Kiersten and Scott’s story began as a normal boy-meets-girl in Charlotte, NC, in December of 1995. Scott said the minute he met Kiersten, he knew that he wanted to marry her. Four months later, they were engaged. In 1997, they married. Scott was 23 and Kiersten was 21. Their life began as a whirlwind, immediately upon returning from their honeymoon. Scott was hired by HBO, and they moved to Birmingham, Alabama. In 1998, their son Noah was born and four years later in 2002, they welcomed their second child, Grace.
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Their careers in media took them all around the country, from Birmingham to Chicago and then to Los Angeles. As a young couple, they struggled with making ends meet, working in a volatile industry and raising a family. Kiersten was juggling the typical work-family-life balance. Scott was hired by E Television Networks. “I never had any aspirations to be an entrepreneur. I was literally trying to figure out how I can make money from home that was steady,” Kiersten said. “I nannied for a little while, I did contract marketing work, but it wasn't steady enough. It was about how to find work and pay the gas bill.” One day, Kiersten began searching for toy boxes, which was easier said than done. She wanted something that didn’t look like a toy box and that had a mid-century modern vibe. “We wanted something that looks like it could fit in any room. I thought, maybe I could design something. I just Googled everything — how do you construct wood? How do you measure it? How do you join half-inch plywood? Everything I did was research-based,” Kiersten said. “My dad used to build a lot of our furniture when I was a kid in Ohio because we didn't have a lot of money. They were both teachers and he was a football coach. Although we were building completely different types of furniture — he was building traditional furniture in oak, and I was building modern plywood furniture. It took me about a year to figure it out.”
