Wednesday Wisdom: Start to Give Again

A premature baby weighing 1.5 pounds wrapped in beautiful colored beads called “Beads of Courage” show how many treatments he received, shares his earliest story of struggle and stamina battling cancer. The beads represent not only procedures, surgeries, and blood transfusions, but strength he has fighting an unfair illness at an early age. Flash forward to a year later when a white cake adorned with multi-color M&Ms saying “No More Chemo” celebrate his extraordinary story.

As I listened to my favorite band perform a song with moving lyrics that include:

“To change the world,
Start with one step.
However small,
The first step is hardest of all.
If you give, you begin to live.
You begin, you get the world.
If you give, you begin to give
You get the world, you get the world.
If you give, you begin to live.”

I think of how many non-profit agencies supported this little baby born into illness from the start of his life, and for his anguished family. Contributions to any organization, whether small or large, make big impacts, in small ways over time, even for the smallest of us.

As woman entrepreneurs, with generous hearts and pocketbooks, we must contemplate where we want to make a small or big impact with our corporate dollars the rest of 2021. Do we have a cause near and dear to our hearts based on experience or familial situations? Do we have customers who need our support with their 503C organizations in terms of dollars or volunteers? The Covid-19 pandemic didn’t just effect businesses, but agencies that need annual financial support to survive and provide life-altering support and services.

On this humid summer Wednesday Wisdom morning, when your body is comforted by warm breezes, be moved to make a commitment to financially support an old or new non-profit organization that speaks to your heart. Yes, our financial reserves might be lower than they were last year, but our heart is full enough to recognize, as the Dave Matthews Band says in their song, when we give, we begin to live. And isn’t that kind of living that makes us happiest?