Wednesday Wisdom: Woman in the Mirror

It was if Michael Jackson was singing in my ear when I received a special personal invitation this week to attend a private Suffrage Centennial event in New York City with Governor Andrew Cuomo and Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul on November 6th, the night before my birthday. As I looked in the mirror this morning remembering the excitement surrounding the invitation, I heard the words, “I’m starting with the man in the mirror. I’m asking him to change his ways. And no message could have been any clearer. If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself, and then make a change.” (Of course knowing me, I changed the word “man” to “woman.”)

As I look in the mirror I see the same Tracy, maybe with a little more age on her face, grey in her hair and wisdom in her eyes, but it’s the same spunky girl I’ve been all my life. I have always wanted to be a girl who would change the world in her own way and mostly for other girls/women. My eyes glanced back in time to when I was 15 and put together an all-girl slate to run for our 9th grade class officers. I never realized I had so much “girl power” in me until I look back on that time and discover it has been me all along.

As the “Me Too” hash tag was the main news story this week, I was proud of the women who came forward to acknowledge their experience. Maybe they looked in the mirror one morning and said, “Today is the day I will speak my truth since other women are sharing theirs.” We have all had “Me Too” moments – perhaps not with a sexual harassment experience – but believing it was time to speak our own truth.

After reading this post, I challenge you to get up and go to the closest mirror and spend 5 minutes looking in it. Look at yourself. Go back in time through your eyes to see what you have always been passionate about. You might discover it is what you are doing now or it could shed a light on a new area to concentrate on. Ask yourself, “Do I know what moves me every day, what gets me up each morning, what makes me active in the business or non-profit community?”