the most powerful moment...

For the past two days I have been sitting in an auditorium with 4000 women. RISE, a Rachel Hollis event, a personal development conference for women. I’ve been deeply moved, inspired to step up and into my dreams and just keep moving forward. “Let’s goooooo!” said Dave Hollis.

In one particular moment yesterday, each person removed a sheet of paper from their workbook. It contained a list of 20+ life experiences….I have been depressed. I have had anxiety. I have been abused…contemplated suicide, hurt myself, abused food, abused drugs, been cheated on and the list goes on. At the top of the sheet it said “Stand up for your sister.”

We were then prompted to put a check-mark against every situation we’d experienced in our life. We were nervous. Do we have to share this? Say it out loud? We were faced with a moment of pure vulnerability and honesty. After we filled out the sheets, we folded them over a few times and we started passing them around the auditorium. In that moment our hardest most painful life moments left our hands and were suddenly “out there” in someone else’s.

The papers moved until everyone had the paper of another. We opened them. Read them. I was immediately shocked to see how many check-marks my paper had. I was holding onto the deepest darkest places another woman had been in her life. 

Then, Rachel started reading each experience one by one….and each time our paper had a check-mark, we stood up for our sister. It was shocking and disturbing to look across 4000 people and watch them stand up and sit down…line by line. The sound of our stadium seats thumping when we stood up was numbing. Not a dry eye.

As we got through the list of over 20 experiences and the majority of people standing most of the time, we passed all the sheets to the front of the room and into the garbage...letting go, moving forward, moving on. We are not defined by the past. 

During this experience I had this overwhelming feeling…I have the ability to help these women. And so I will. 

I have been working vigorously on my own life journey; mining the hard parts for gold. I have an entirely new appreciation for where I have been and how I arrived here today. 

I want to personally say ‘thank you’ for supporting me on this journey, for standing behind me and saying “yes you CAN and yes you WILL!” I am so grateful.

My website BLOG is officially open, my goal is to write every week. I will share stories and my favorite content to help us all learn and grow together.  Let’s goooooo. There she grows!!