To millions of Ballerina Farm fans, Hannah Neeleman is mom goals.
To add fuel to the fire is Neeleman’s husband, who some saw as controlling.
Present throughout most of the interview, he often interrupted his wife or answered for her.
Aspects of Hannah Neeleman’s life mimic her own Mormon upbringing.
Raising eight children may seem like a lot to some people, but to Hannah Neeleman it felt familiar.
Other similarities include education.
“Looking back now, I realize I was raised in a small business training incubator.
A front line view of how business works,” Needleman wrote on the Ballerina Farmwebsite.
“My Daddy made it to the pageant,” she wrote.
Dancing was life for Juilliard-trained Hannah Neeleman
Like many children, Neeleman dreamed of becoming a ballerina.
“Dance was my first love,” she wrote on theBallerina Farmwebsite.
“I wanted to be the best.”
It may have been her first love, but dance wasn’t to be her only love.
One week before her graduation, Neeleman gave birth to the couple’s first child, and everything changed.
“Back then I thought we should date for a year [before marriage],” she said.
“So I could finish school and whatever.
“I made a call,” he admitted in the interview.
Although Neeleman tried to keep up dancing professionally, she eventually had to stop in favor of motherhood.
In the interview, she spoke about the sacrifices she made in that first year.
“Well, I gave up dance, which was hard.
You give up a piece of yourself,” she said.
Daniel, especially, seemed drawn to the idea.
“This was a new side of him,” Neeleman toldUtah Farm Bureau.
Although she tried to appear excited, her face gave away her disappointment.
And that’s a dichotomy that detractors have a hard time swallowing.
“A pageant is not like I’m running a marathon,” Neeleman told The New York Times.
“I’m literally in a chair, getting pampered, mostly.”
Was the Ballerina Farm mom literally working herself to death?
“My goal was New York City.
I left home at 17 and I was so excited to get there, I just loved that energy.
And I was going to be a ballerina.
I was a good ballerina,” she said.
“But I knew that when I started to have kids my life would start to look different.”
That feels like the understatement of the year.
Neeleman’s eight children are ever present.
It falls largely to Neeleman to balance cooking, shopping, and Ballerina Farm with mom life.
Hannah Neeleman doesn’t define herself as a tradwife.
But are they, or is it all an act?
Depsite the labels and controversy, Neeleman insists that she is the real deal.
“This is just our normal life,” she said.
But upon closer inspection, some say there is something much darker going on at the homestead.
Coincidentally, that was also the only birth where her husband wasn’t present.
When Daniel is around, Neeleman often defers to him.
Many are still not convinced.
“This couldn’t be further from the truth.
“It’s the world we created and I couldn’t love it more,” she said.
