Elizabeth Waddill's dining room table usually is covered in shirts. On the menu are little snippets of affirmation.
"If I don't take care of me, I can't take care of you."
"I may not be much, but I'm all I think about."
"I refuse to spiral in shame."
"Sadly, we've started thinking in little one-liners," Waddill's business partner Heather Petkovsek said. "We've become a couple of sloganistas."
The two women recently founded Thera-Wear, a line of clothing imprinted with tone-on-tone "therapeutic" sayings.
Right now the entrepreneurs sell only the short-sleeve shirts, though they hope to soon expand into other items such as sweatpants and even cocktail napkins.
"The daily affirmation, they make fun of it sometimes like on 'Saturday Night Live' with the 'I'm good enough' thing,' " Petkovsek said. "But there is power in those affirmations. A lot of times a therapist will say put this up on a card in your bathroom mirror or in your car or on a Post-it note somewhere. This, you've got it on your shirt, you can wear it."
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Waddill, 38, and Petkovsek, 35, have been friends since they were in elementary school, and often finish each other's sentences.
Petkovsek, who graduated from Baylor University, is a chemical-dependency counselor by training and keeps up her license, even though she hasn't practiced since she got married. (Her husband is retired Texas Rangers pitcher Mark Petkovsek.)
Waddill has a marketing degree from Texas Christian University and used to work at an ad agency. Each woman has two-children, and prior to starting the business they were stay-at-home moms.
The two were taking a jazz dance class together last year when they decided to become entrepreneurs and hit on the idea of the shirts.
"Everybody needs a good T-shirt, and everybody needs a little encouragement," Petkovsek said. "It makes you think, and it's somewhat of a conversation piece," Waddill added.
The printing on the shirts is barely legible from a distance of more than a few feet. Waddill says that's the point. They're not meant to attract too much attention.
"It's a whisper," she said. "We thought, wouldn't it be neat to do something very minimalistic and not just shout at you. You're having a conversation with somebody and they say, 'Oh, what's that on your shirt?' "
"The whole thing is that this is just as much for you as it is for anybody," Petkovsek said. "We have some attorney friends who could wear it under their black suit in a trial, if they wanted to. Or you could wear it to aerobics class."
The shirts are 94 percent cotton, 6 percent spandex and are made in Los Angeles. A Beaumont-area company, Cotton Cargo, does the silk screening.
So far, the two owners are Thera-Wear's only staff. They work out of Waddill's home, folding the shirts, putting them in little cellophane bags and tying them off with a ribbon and a "prescription" (actually a card with a paragraph or two describing the significance of the statement on the shirt).
The women say they have about 40 sayings on file, the most popular being: "Be good to Mama."
● For more info: Contact www.thera-wear.com, or 1-409-893-1732. Most shirts sell for between $38 and $42.
