Each year the Culpeper Chamber of Commerce hosts the Women’s LIFT event – a half day retreat to Promote, Build & Inspire Women in our Communities. This is my second time attending in representation of Girls on the Run Piedmont, and although quite a bit of my work is remote, it’s always so refreshing to be able to get out in the community and meet new people and rediscover ways to reach my “why” and better represent Girls on the Run! Sitting in a room full of strangers and weaving this spider web of connection throughout the day allows us to embrace our differences and find strength in our connectedness (if you’re a GOTR girl, I know that one sounds familiar).

One thing that really stuck with me was an opening remark during the Signature Sponsor Spotlight (Fauquier Health), by Dr. Olga Mazur. She stood before us as a surgeon, new mother, and immigrant and reminded us all that “women add value to the work force. Not in spite of being women, but because we are women.” After a little networking lunch and opening to the day, we got to our major theme, which was trajectories; we really honed in on this when we broke out into our focus groups – what are our trajectories for our professional lives? personal lives? finances? health and wellbeing? We took a look at these four different sectors of our lives and broke it down with a series of questions:

• (Vision) What do I want for myself?
• What DON’T you want for your life?
• (Current Opportunities) What is working?
• (Current Opportunities) What is not working or needs to improve? What need will this improvement/development meet or challenge will it overcome?

Additionally, if you are looking at this for your team, we add questions for Moving Forward:

• What are initial ideas you have for where you want to start – what needs to happen to reach the vision?
• What are potential barriers to keep in mind or overcome?

I noticed throughout the day that in answering these questions about various parts of my life it always seemed to come back to time management. But that’s just a band-aid, isn’t it? When I dug in a little deeper I realized that my time management isn’t an issue (for the most part I think I have great time management), but rather that I wasn’t being realistic with what I could accomplish in a given amount of time…Rather than “improving” my time management, what I was really saying is that I wanted to be able to do more, More, MORE in the same amount of time. I think this mindset serves me well in reaching for goals and stretching myself, but can also muddy the waters in my mind that feel like I may not be doing enough or cause burn out! Gwen Steele said it best when talking about our personal trajectories – NOT taking a step forward is NOT a loss, it’s okay to be still sometimes.

We ended the day by creating a vision board for 2024! I think initially many of us felt a little on the spot, but also that was a fun push to get us to relax and actually put something like this together. My vision board speaks primarily to wanting to marry the different aspects of my life and find that “perfect harmony” – the top half represents the largest portion and is a focus on my marriage and family. The bottom half is broken up and the left is a desire to get more involved in my local community (by attending events like this!) and to continue to pour into my work with Girls on the Run. The bottom right is just for me – that’s the fun and whimsy and cool. A desire to sit back and enjoy the moment and improve my personal strength again amidst the chaos of the million other things I want to do!