She's Got Moxie

When our daughter was a freshman in high school, we encouraged her to audition for a role in her high school play. She had always expressed—since she was a toddler—interest in drama, be it in commercials, TV…or on our kitchen floor with some antics she had invented on her own.


So her lack of interest in auditioning for her school play, based on the fact that “only seniors” are allowed to be the lead, and “if I can’t be the lead, I don’t want to be in it” was met with a gentle rebuke on my part of just how presumptuous (arrogant?) that attitude was.


“You need to work yourself up to the lead, hon.You can’t just expect to be given the lead role until you’ve paid your dues for the three years leading up to senior year” was my motherly advice.


Undaunted, she stood her ground and, to my amazement, would truly have rather sat in the audience and watched the play than been in it with a minor role.


Our only daughter has always had a singular focus on what she wants. Like a bull in a china closet, she sets her eye on a goal and then just busts through until she gets it.


A couple of years ago, she set her sights on the Jonas Brothers. Literally and without reservation. They became a young teen girl’s obsession, one which we thought would quickly pass. But oh no. Every song was memorized. Every performance recorded. Every tune downloaded, poster hung, t-shirt bought.


Her dream had been, from the moment she laid eyes on them, to one day meet them. Either shake their hands or get their autographs or sit close enough at a concert to get within eye range.


So when she found out last month that MTV was putting on a contest for the Jonas Brother’s #1 fans in the Tri-State area, she knew she had to enter. She insisted that she was, indeed, their #1 fan. And this might be, after all, her best shot of achieving her life dream.


The contest called for her to gather her BFF’s and shoot a short video that captured how they were their #1 fans and why they should win the contest. A whirlwind of activities—amidst finals, travel volleyball, babysitting and violin lessons (homework?)—resulted in them submitting their video on time and earning a place in the MTV studios last weekend. She and her two also-Jonas-Brothers-#1-fans-best friends threw themselves into the project with abandon. Knocked themselves out. Bought adorable outfits accented with hot pink tights and lime green Converse hightops for the big day when they would hang out at the studios hoping to enter the finals.


Contest rules prevent me from going any further. But if you’d like to see how the story ends, please look for details at the end of this newsletter.


Bottom line: a singular focus requires vision unlike anything anyone else will hold for you. It requires gritting your teeth when the going gets tough, and dusting the dirt off your jeans when you fall on your butt. It requires holding your head high when everyone else tells you you’re nuts. And just sticking through it when the odds are stacked completely against you.


It usually results in several detours, U-turns and yield curves along the way, throwing you off path when you least expect it. It also typically comes with a “death of vision” before the story is fully told. Just when you think you are close to finishing the deal, a major door gets slammed in your face.


Our daughter’s case involved all of this. But it’s also a story of not quitting before the miracle.


Perhaps you’re there right now. Working at something that looks hopeless. That’s against all odds. You’re down and out. Broke and broken. Ready to throw in the towel.


I’d invite you to give it just a little bit more time. Get through this week. Rent Bottle Shock on cable; it’s a story of grit and grind and falling off the horse and persevering when the odds are completely stacked against you.


Or tune in to MTV on Monday night, February 23 at 6:00 PM to see how my daughter’s dream played out.


Until next week, sending all my very best,


Carolina

What Women Really Want: Beyond Budgets and Botox

Several months ago, one of the members of my PWAC group (Professional Women’s Advisory Council)—which will be celebrating its one-year anniversary this month!—told me that she’d been giving a lot of thought to the comments of her female patients. A plastic surgeon, she was more intimately involved with them than most docs. And she found herself talking with them a lot, as one might expect a female doc to do, and hearing five resounding themes:

• women want to be beautiful and really like their faces, skin and bodies
• women want to become financially independent
• women want a female legal advocate
• women want to be deemed physically sensuous and enjoy beauty in their personal spaces
• women want to strive towards spiritual maturity and find meaning and purpose in life


She noodled on these conversations for months, trying to figure out how she might help her patients move more effectively towards these five goals while at the same time, meet the challenges of her own practice and its inherent limitations, as she believed herself to be professionally qualified in just one of these areas.


We met for coffee and she shared with me her concerns as well as a vision of how fellow women professionals might help women find what they really wanted. And would I have an interest in playing a role.


My immediate “of course!” has taken us, along with three others, to organize an event this week for women throughout Fairfield County who are seeking answers to some—if not all—of these issues. From consults with my plastic surgeon doctor friend to free facials to learning more about budgets and Botox: we will, together, aim to move more women forward.


Even as one of the five chosen to be part of this exciting evening, I find myself searching for answers as well. For trying to make more sense out of the nonsense going on all around us. Of reaching for books off my library shelf for a second read. Keeping the nightlight on past bedtime to read just one more chapter of a novella on spirituality. Trying to regain a calming, affirming sense of peace in this otherwise turbulent time. Confirming purpose. For faith is the one constant in life. Let’s face it: our bodies will age and our eyelids will droop; our finances will flux; we probably won’t confront legal issues on most days; and we will feel more sensuous some days and much less on others. But faith endures. Seeking spiritual maturity, walking further down the journey is something which, when strived for, only grows deeper with the passing years.


These other issues are important. Vitally so. And I am a firm believer that, as women, we need to get a grip in each one of these other areas. From my perch, too, I hear these same themes day in and day out. And I think that especially now, we yearn for extra compasses to mark our paths. For more clearly defined data points from which to draw conclusions and chart new paths.


We’re expecting almost two hundred women at our event. If you are just now reading this for the first time and would like to come, please, just shoot me an email. We’d love to fix you a wholesome goddess potion and introduce you to some women who may change your life! Information empowers people. And we want to be there as a way to give back to the community that information which has been hard-earned by each one of us over the course of our professional careers.


What women really want is information to make empowered decisions. To lead well-intentioned lives. To create lives worth living.


I hope you’ll join me!


All my best,


Carolina