As a writer, I know that if you can follow a few good threads of a story, you’ve got all you need to weave a beautiful blanket.
Recently, 50 fearless women wove a truly Queen-size tale when we gathered to make a music video and “RE-Think” women’s values in the world.
We started with a few threads like “awesome women” and “facebook LIVE,” then tossed in the question “What does the world need next?”
And, like most good stories, at first it wasn’t exactly clear where we were going. The thread of trust was added without ever really saying so.
I began our time together sharing with the women the principles we started the “Awesome Women Hub” on facebook with. Generosity. Collaboration as more effective than competition.
The power of the positive. And then I wove in threads about how we’d created the tour on different ideals than we normally see in the world.
We didn’t “sell” the weekend gathering with a pitch that said, in one way or another, “You’re broken, but if you come we can fix you.”
Instead, we appealed to a woman’s desire to create, to be passionately positive, to GIVE something of herself that would make a difference. We asked women to come not only for their own benefit, but the benefit of the world.
I readily admitted from the “podium” (in reality it was a music stand, which was a perfect metaphor) that most of the women who had gathered could lead the group as well as I could.
I was only standing there at the front because I had heard a specific call and followed it. I also said that I knew and valued the calls they had been hearing and that I wanted to help them as much as I wanted to have them help me.
I spoke of the Hopi prophecy that said the time of the lone wolf is over.
Yet I was honest in saying that we don’t really know how to collaborate yet, and we are not sure if we can trust each other to show up. But I believed we could learn.
And so we re-thought and we broke bread and we toasted each other and our great messy world. And then we dreamed and we danced and we created and we collaborated on changing it.
In the end, we realized that we had inspired each other in ways that felt different than before. Amidst all of that, here is what I learned…
We women are not broken. We are imperfect, but that’s different. Imperfection is “normal,” at least once you step outside of the phantom problems created by mainstream advertising.
It stopped us short for a while, but we’re over it now, and more than ready to get on with more important challenges.
We women are nine and a half months pregnant with our ideas for change. The opening needed for our birthing these ideas was to gather and begin creating together. We don’t mind “pushing” for this change, so long as it is in harmony with our values.
In other words, we will gladly push the systems and the collective ideologies, but we will not push other women who might at first appear to be in our way. It’s a subtle yet powerful difference that really matters to women.
Every woman is both ordinary and extraordinary. We don’t have to be special to have something beautiful to say.
We don’t have to wait on Oprah to call (much as we love her) to have our ideas shared in the world. We can make that happen in our own, self-created collective.
The change starts within. These 50 women shared light bulb moment after light bulb moment, and it was clear that the change they wish to see in the world reflected changes they were still working on within themselves.
Freedom of expression for women’s values begins with one woman speaking her truth, “no matter what.” These women were not pontificating on what ought to happen, they were stepping up with courageous acts right then, right there.
One woman “came out” as bi-polar and a positive role model, which immediately create a powerful ripple of change within her family and others who suffer. Another claimed she would love her larger-than-fashionable and yet strong, healthy body.
It is one thing to say you will “Speak Truth To Power” and quite another to hold up the statement up on a sign for thousands of video viewers to see. Woman after women held up her own truth to share with the world.
We didn’t dictate what those signs needed to say. We simply asked what needed to be said and put enough women with enough signs together to make it feel safe to speak up.
Perhaps the most astonishing thing (and really, it ought not to have been), is that every single woman’s ideas for changing the world were found in a dozen other women.
We are part of a wave of change. Where one woman’s “crazy idea” is scoffed at, 50 women are harder to ignore.
What these 50 fearless women taught me is that there is a reason the time of the lone wolf is over. We need the power of the pack to create the world we women want to live in.
If it had not been clear before, it surely is now: Together, we are weaving a blanket that will warm the world.
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Robin Rice
