A Real “Girl’s Sports” Weekend of Empowerment
Monday Motivation, Inspiration, Motivation for Women and Girls in Sports
Our core spirit is constant as we move through life, but our bodies and minds change as we age. I rarely remember my teenage years until I see adolescent girls and the emotions and memories creep back.
Raising sons, who all had friends with brothers, I didn’t interact with teenage girls except when my two nieces were that age. As the girls grew, I tried giving them as much female wisdom as I remembered. But so much has changed since I was their age with the addition of technology and social media leading to less confidence and higher suicide rates.
This weekend I was treated to a “girl’s weekend” because my best friend’s niece was in town playing hockey in the National Girls Hockey League, and a local teacher and girl’s travel lacrosse coach allowed me to volunteer during their Outlaw Girl’s Lacrosse practice. In both instances, I saw girls playing sports creating stronger self-images and more powerful bodies for today and their future.
What I loved about the two experiences was watching three females coach these teens. All of them were past players of the sports they were coaching and passionate about the game. A few of the coaches were also teachers. Like my parents who were both athletes and physical education teachers with an enthusiasm to inspire others, they easily became coaches of a myriad of sports – even my 5’1” mother coaching boys wrestling and football fresh out of college.
I’ve thought of becoming a coach after retiring from my 30-year business career, which involved inspiring and educating hundreds of women and trying lacrosse refereeing, but yesterday showed me a few things. One, I need more education to coach a sport especially a sport I did not play. Second, I need to take some teaching or coaching courses to ensure I know the basics of the career. Just because I participate in sports and love them, doesn’t mean I can coach them.
After watching my friends Erin and Angelina coach teen girls to play lacrosse in the cold pouring rain with a palpable zest, I am inspired to investigate coaching as an option but only with education first. I am confident my friends will continue to inspire, motivate, and propel the teen girls they are working with to higher levels of success – not just in sports, but in life.
Do you inspire girls in your own life? If so, how?
Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration, Motivation for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners
| One of the most fascinating seminars I hosted in Ithaca years ago was on investments. The presenter asked, “With proceeds from your business, do you reinvest the money into your business or your future with retirement planning?” Every woman in the room listened intently since the question was important. |
| As a relatively new company then, I invested any profits back into Women TIES to keep growing it regionally and increase membership, thus increasing the number of women doing business with each other across the state. I barely put any money into my SEP plan because keeping my business viable and successful was the priority. |
| One of my favorite women entrepreneurs in the Cortland/Ithaca area not only hires all females in every position at her company but also invests her income into the community—another type of investment. Because of her love for horses and horseback riding, she built a state-of-the-art new equestrian facility from the ground up in Preble, NY, to provide the best experience for horses and their owners. |
| Topline Farm is owned by my personal Ophthalmologist Jacqueline Fergerson, Owner of Cortland Eye Center. I started driving from Syracuse to Cortland to have Jackie as my eye care provider because of her feminist business model of hiring all female employees and because she is excellent at what she does. On top of that, she is the most professional and pleasurable woman I know in business today. I can easily say, “I love my eye appointments.” |
| At my last visit, we shared stories of Jackie’s recent trip to Alaska, my granddaughter’s birth, her manager Kim’s love to bring her granddaughters to see Taylor Swift and her new horse business. All of this is on top of a thorough exam and pleasant staff. I wasn’t surprised to discover Jackie opened Topline Farm to bring another excellent business to the Greater Cortland community. |
| Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is not meant to get you riding a horse (although you should try it), but rather to have you think about where you spend your company’s profits. Do you invest it back into growing your business? Maybe you are smart and invest it in your retirement. Or do you put money back into your community with sponsorship support or building a second business? |
| Whatever you decide to do with your company’s extra earnings ensure you have a goal, plan, and support to make it happen. And maybe, like Jackie, you’ll create something special that resonates with another one of your passions while bringing an additional bonus to your community. |
Monday Motivation: Women Unifying to Make Everything More Pink!
Monday Morning, Monday Motivation, Women, Feminism, Women Entrepreneurs
There is female energy and then there is pink female energy.
Pink has been my favorite color since starting my Women TIES business, which is focused on encouraging women to buy from women entrepreneurs first to help increase their earning potential. Without a pay equality law, women don’t get paid the same as men, and women entrepreneurs under charge leaving them behind the financial eightball.
To brand my company, I chose the color fuchsia, a darker pink, to show we were a company dedicated to women only – strong women – in fact all making their business dreams a reality. I never picked a theme song or artist to represent my company but I always had music played and sung at our annual retreat. After seeing P!NK and Sheryl Crow perform at the Syracuse JMA Dome last night, I’d choose one of their songs.
Woman Power was on full display last night watching the stage, listening to the tunes, and observing two powerhouse female singers of different genres tear up the stage. Unique in their own ways, they were similar in their stardom, lyrics, and images of female empowerment. The stage they performed on jutted out into an audience of mostly pink-clothed women celebrating life and womanhood with them. It was electric.
I’ve seen electricity before when gathering only women together at my events or when I’ve spoken as an event emcee at all-female business events, but the energy in Syracuse last night under the carnival-themed lights, white camera flashlights, and glow of pink energy from women singing alongside their besties to P!NK and Sheryl’s tunes rocked, not only the Dome but my pink soul. Women have power.
My wish is that every woman from that audience takes the unifying female energy and incorporates it into every situation they are in with women – in the workplace, playing field, dinner table, at political gatherings, and on organization committees. We have the power to do so much good together and to feel this good together. Unification only makes the world a brighter, better, pinker place.
Wednesday Wisdom: What’s that One Thing?
Wednesday Vibes, Wednesday Morning, Wednesday Wisdom for Women Entrepreneurs
| “Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them,” stated Sarah Breedlove aka Madam C.J. Walker. I agree with her today of all days because often in life we witness something that inspires us. We instantly feel a need to act, but we don’t. We wait. We remember. We yearn for it. What does it take to abandon the urge? Honestly, it is action. |
| Whether the “something” is starting a business, getting involved in an organization, writing a novel, switching careers, joining a group, moving, or anything else that motivates our spirit. The feeling to try or do will haunt us until we act. |
| Do you think if you were a bit braver, less timid, had enough resources, or could find the time, you would do more things that whisper to you to try? Do you think about what the cost of not doing something does to you? With many daily responsibilities, is it possible to abandon them and try that one thing you’ve wanted to do? |
| I surfed on Saturday after being moved 27 years ago to try it. In an average life span of 80 years, that is over a quarter of my life waiting to experience the thrill of riding a board on a wave. There were practical reasons I didn’t do it like running businesses, raising children, and serving my community. Still, today, I am so glad I did – ecstatic and ready to do it again. |
| Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is to motivate you to do what Breedlove stated, don’t sit down any longer waiting for the opportunity to come, get up, and make it happen. What will you plan or do today, this month, or the rest of the year to experience that one thing you’ve dreamed about for so long? Let me know and I’ll take it with me the next time I ride the waves because I want to surf forever. Shaka, baby! |
Thursday Thoughts: Somedays, I’m Glad to be Bald
Thursday Thoughts, Inspiration, Motivation, Alopecia Awareness
In the shroud of hot shower mist, I leaned against the cold tiles and let the water warm me. I stared out at the curtain allowing the silence to embrace me. Someone shared a new cancer diagnosis after seeing the “Ruck Cancer” t-shirt I was wearing. I took her hand and listened to her story. It’s what I do when someone approaches me thinking I have cancer.
The solitary bathroom moment was needed. I felt bad for this woman like I do with anyone facing a major health diagnosis. After losing one of my best friends to breast cancer at the same time I was going completely bald, seared compassion into my heart for anyone with a cancer diagnosis. No one asked my friend how she was feeling when we were together because, on the outside, she didn’t look like she had cancer. On the other hand, people approached me in front of her asking me about my cancer story. Assumptions can be painful.
Every time I step in the shower, I don’t have to use shampoo to wash my hair. I used to be annoyed my locks took so long to clean, dry, and style. Although I don’t miss the time it took to take care of it, I stop every once in a while, realizing a bald life, can be an acceptable life, once you surrender to the condition.
Alopecia is not a life-threatening condition. It is a life-altering one. Whether a person has patches of hair missing on their head, beard, or other body parts, or one or two eyebrows or eyelashes typically (not on the same eye), alopecia makes it difficult to look in the mirror and like what you see.
It has been nearly seven years since I became a totally bald woman. It took almost half that time to share my story and step out the door without a hat on. I feel naked baring a bald head and prefer the shelter of a hat. But today after hearing one more woman share her cancer story with me, I am simply glad to have alopecia.
Like my friend Teresa, I don’t have to worry about not being here for my children’s lives, their big and small moments, or watching my new granddaughter grow up. I am not in pain. I don’t suffer. Alopecia treatments are relatively mild. Never having hair again, means as long as I take care of myself, I can live a longer life than most people I know with a cancer diagnosis.
My wisdom for you today is to look in the mirror and accept who you are and the cards you’ve been dealt, and think of how much worse it could be if you weren’t given the hardships you deal with. Devastating news provides a lesson in looking at life differently, more positively I hope while being compassionate about other’s more difficult stories.
P.S. I was happy to donate to the Dana Farber Cancer Foundation today with my money earmarked for women’s cancers in light of my friend’s diagnosis. Give if you can to beat cancer.
Wednesday Wisdom: Hang Loose & Use Videos
Wednesday Morning, Wednesday Wisdom for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners
| We drove up next to the pounding ocean waves to glimpse something I’d never forget. It was a cold, misty, 40-degree November day and our first trip to Maine. We were visiting family who moved there. Before finding our way to their home, we stopped to see the salty ocean and smelled that unforgettable odor of seaweed and shells. |
| Dotted along the ridge of cresting waves and swooping seagulls were bodies perched on surfboards. “Wow, surfers in the frigid waters of Maine in November?” I said to my family. “Amazing!” they replied. Sometimes moments freeze in time, unsure when they’ll reemerge. |
| A few years later, my high school-aged brother took up the sport, donned a wetsuit, and joined the Maine surfing community. I was impressed and slightly jealous. When he headed off to California years later, in a small car with his surfboard on top of it, I took photos. Thirty years after that first Maine visit, I am joining him to try the sport. |
| Anytime I’ve attempted a new sport in my journey to try every sport once, I’ve needed visual aids. YouTube videos are the best place to find instructional videos. My husband uses YouTube to fix machines and learn new fishing or hunting skills, and I’ve used it for other tasks. If you are a visual learner, use this type of education. |
| I’ve also used YouTube on my living room television to perform surfing yoga to help with flexibility and stretching. When I was about to try WWE Wrestling, Roller Derby, and Rugby, I watched matches to see how the games were played and learned terminology. Showing up with information made it easier to perform the sport. |
| Today’s Wednesday Wisdom isn’t meant to have you jump in the car with me to try surfing (although you might want to), but rather a reminder to find anything you need on YouTube or other visual social media instructional sites. Also, use Google to search terminology, history, and information to be more educated. It’s a useful and free tool at our fingertips. |
| If you want to watch my surfing feat, check out my social media channels this weekend, don’t laugh, send me positive energy, and I’ll send you a “shaka” and a “hang loose” signal. While I’m gone this weekend, check out YouTube videos to learn something new and maybe one day, we’ll surf together. Hang ten, my friend. |
Thursday Thoughts: Self-Image Truths
Inspiration, Beauty, Self-Image, Alopecia Awareness Month
I was asked twice this week if I was a cancer survivor. It wasn’t based on any medical diagnosis I shared but rather on my appearance. Honestly, I don’t mind the question anymore because wrestling with a new self-image was essential for personal acceptance and recovery.
Explaining to others what it feels like to be bald, isn’t easy. I think one needs to experience it, to understand it. For people dealing with alopecia, baldness is an unpredictable occurrence that might not be reversed so accepting a new self-image is crucial to stepping out the door and facing the world again.
I’ve learned hoping for my hair to grow is an interesting concept.
I also think hope alone is interesting and so is hopelessness.
A person can feel hopeless but not have a negative or desperate outlook. Lacking hope for a change in my medical condition is honestly because I adapted and live contently with it. This mindset allows me to live in a state of “just being” not regretful, not only focused on the future, but just being here, now, and whole.
Acceptance of a situation doesn’t indicate the absence of wishful thoughts bubbling up periodically, because we are hopeful beings at heart. I’ve simply learned it is normal to wish upon a star for a change, but if the change we want doesn’t happen, we’ll live on.
The biggest takeaway for me being a bald woman for six years has been seeing my authentic self in the mirror – stripped of adornments, enhancements, adaptations, sparkles, and glitter. It has laid bare the core of who I am and what others still see in me more through my eyes, lips, and heart.
Experts say there are five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, disbelief, and acceptance. I believe those stages are true for someone facing alopecia, and even a person dealing with a loss of a limb, loss of youthful looks, and more. Even if the reflection changes, the core of who we are doesn’t change.
Change can affect our mood, outlook, and experiences, but the center of who we are remains. Our essence remains. Embrace it, and you see your truth – your one true self-image. It’s internal, not external. It always has been, and always will be.
For more information on alopecia, visit the National Alopecia Areata Foundation today.
Wednesday Wisdom: Keep Posting. Keep Sharing
Wednesday Morning, Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration for Women Entrepreneurs, Females
| Yesterday was the first time I reached into a refrigerator and pulled out a syringe to inject myself with a new alopecia drug or a placebo for a new 2-year medical trial. Although I have somewhat selfish intentions to grow my hair back after six years of total baldness, I also have another reason – to help others. |
| If you believe in serendipity, then you understand that at the same time, I was doing this procedure, a woman whom I hadn’t heard from in a long time reached out to me about her loss of hair and devastation coping with it asking for support and referrals. |
| Her request wasn’t different from the phone calls and emails of advice I’ve received from hundreds of women thinking of, starting, growing, or closing a business. By sharing my personal and company story, others know me and feel comfortable asking for aid. It is the main reason I share intently on social media, answer the media’s calls for interviews, and blog, write, and author on many subjects. |
| Sharing one’s story might appear narcissistic at times but I believe it allows others the opportunity for guidance. Whether it is a working mother sharing daily schedules, trainers showing ways to exercise, accountants giving money tips, or women sharing recipes, most do it to share their lives knowing they might get the call to help someone out or converse. |
| Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is meant to remind you what you share publicly is a “calling card” of sorts for others to contact you. If you feel you post too much about a particular subject, don’t worry about it because somewhere someone is interested. You don’t know who is looking at, learning from, or writing down your name as a source for something particular, so keep it up. |
| I hope this new medical alopecia trial doesn’t just work for me, but for others on the same journey or for another generation to follow. These weekly injections will be a show of love and alliance for someone else one day, and that’s not painful but encouraging to know. |
Teaching Our Sons to Advocate for Women
Thursday Thoughts, Inspiration, Motivation for Women
One night I was sitting on the couch watching the 2015 Oscars, with my husband and son, when Patricia Arquette won the Best Supporting Actress role in “Boyhood.” I remember the moment vividly because she ended her speech powerfully with these words, “To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States!” Immediately I jumped off the couch applauding and clapping in my living room just like Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez did at the same time in the audience saying, “That’s what I’m talking about!”
My 22-year-old son looked at me and said, “Mom, women are equal in the world.” I looked at my handsome, college-educated boy and said, “Thomas that is not true. She is talking about pay equality and women do not have it yet!” He started disagreeing with me more when I said, “Until you get married and your wife is earning less than you do for the same job you do, you won’t feel the impact of wage discrimination. Plus, you are cheap so you’ll really notice it then!” He didn’t reply. I stated my case too well and he isn’t living with a wife making less money than he is that overall decreases their family income. I know he will grasp it one day when he marries and the issue becomes “his issue!”
I have always supported women running for political office because I believe until more women are making and passing laws that affect females, we won’t have equality. After all, men don’t live a woman’s life. Even after being married for 34 years, my husband wonders why I’m so glued to the television and social media when there is a vote on something that affects women. He called me “too political” once to which I responded, “I’m an activist for women’s issues!” I love him. He’s smart, but he isn’t a woman and he hasn’t lived my life.
He couldn’t have felt what I did at my first job in Philadelphia when a creepy 60-year-old male client of my prestigious boss kept inviting me overseas with him, brought me gifts, put his hands around my shoulders, and called me “sweet hips.” He might have been mad the man was sexually harassing me but he never felt it the way I did. He wasn’t walking in my heels.
I have done some great things in my life supporting, fighting and advocating for women entrepreneurs but the best thing I did was to be honest and forthcoming sharing my life experiences with my sons so they could be different kinds of men entering the workplace. It worked because my son, who once questioned inequality facing women, works as an Orthopedic Surgical Physician’s Assistant under a female surgeon in a women’s sports medicine office with all women. I’m not sure he would have accepted this position if it wasn’t for his feminist upbringing.
Wednesday Wisdom: 101 Years Later
| Wednesday Wisdom, Wednesday Morning, Inspiration, Motivation for Women |
| 1923 was also 3 years after women won the right to vote and the ERA – Equal Rights Amendment – was introduced in Congress by two Republicans. It was authored by Alice Paul, head of the National Women’s Party, who led the suffrage campaign. It would take almost fifty years later on March 22, 1972, for ERA to be approved by the full Senate without changes and set with an arbitrary time limit of seven years for ratification. 101 years as of today, it has not been fully voted on or approved making women less than equal to men in our nation’s constitution. |
| I had the privilege of accompanying the organizers of the ERA Bus tour including Carolyn Maloney, a 23-year fighter for the ERA’s ratification and past Congresswoman, along with the immediate past president of NOW (National Organization of Women), local NOW members, and others, visiting Republican Representative Brandon Williams to ask him to be one of 4 signatures left to bring the ERA to the floor for a vote. We ended up meeting his Chief-of-Staff instead who couldn’t promise Rep. Williams would sign it. |
| Visiting local politicians, and meeting with media or national figures is not intimidating, but rather empowering, knowing you are trying to change the world by meeting with people with some power to help make things happen. I’ve sat in other places fighting for wigs to be covered by insurance for alopecia and cancer patients, championing pay equality in front of a panel of NYS representatives, and asking Governor Kathy Hochul to speak at my Women TIES Retreat. |
| Monday, a week from meeting the ERA Bus tour organizers, I found myself in Rochester for an appointment and the thought of visiting Susan B. Anthony’s grave popped into my head. The grave was located 5 minutes from where I was indicated a sign to visit it and be even more inspired to help with the ERA passage. There I met two women eager to find her grave too. We talked about the ERA issue, the upcoming election, women supporting women in politics, and democratic values, and we ended up hugging before we went our separate ways. I am sure Susan B. Anthony was looking down proud of this impromptu meeting and conversation. |
| Today’s Wednesday Wisdom has a specific request along with a general wisdom.First, remember when like-minded women meet and have an agenda, anything good can happen. Sometimes we find those women by happenstance and other times when we accept an invitation to support them. Don’t forget to look for other women on your journeys this week. |
| Second, I ask that you sign the ERA petition we are presenting to get the ERA on the floor for a vote and send it to friends. All you need to do is follow this link and sign your name. Nothing more, nothing less. It is much easier than what Susan B. Anthony and our foremothers have done to try to give women a chance for an equal world to live and prosper in. Thank you. |
Women TIES 
