If You Build It She Will Come

It’s Christmas Eve, and I am the last to post about this week’s discussion topic. What has been said this week already in our conversation resonates with me deeply, and I feel like I am on a super wave of pride and love for the women in this community. That feeling itself is the reward. The cheekiest thing about this project is that, sure, I founded it, but I did it so that I could have my cake and eat it to. I wanted to be a part of this community myself; I wanted to share, learn, and be met whole-heartedly by women who are just like me.

When I started Consciously Woman, people said to me, who is your target market? I said: “all women.” The most interesting thing about women, I have learned, is that we have the ability to connect to each other with our hearts. When the space is made available, we can come together on any topic to share and collaborate. And in these conversations we give care. We give care to each other, our projects, and our families. In our shared reflections, we give care to ourselves. I believe in this community, and that the connection we have cultivated between us is re-defining what it means to support each other.

In my personal and individual journey to create this community, these women have stood beside me – surrounding me with so much love, encouraging me, and bearing witness to the unfolding of my brilliance as a leader. The reward of my hard work has been the acceptance of myself in this role – because of their loving acceptance of my learning process, and their commitment to holding me accountable. I am always expected and encouraged to bring my best self to the table. This is what we do here for each other. This is the exchange. They have given so much of themselves to me and this project, that I have in their reflection, come to see my own self. I see my power and my value so clearly, because because I see it in them. They have provided the mirror. My personal reward is seeing myself clearly.

In my professional journey as a mentor and a teacher, this community is the result of almost fifteen years of study, experience, and innovation in my career as a Homeopath. Consciously Woman is the result of wanting to bring health and happiness to my patients and clients. Mostly women, so many of them were suffering from the frustration of “work”, and specifically the drive to be not just accomplished, but happy. They wanted to experience the independence of occupation, the connection of family, and the satisfaction of ambition. They wanted to give all of themselves to the things they love in life, and they wanted to do it in balance.

Pause there for a moment: balance. This is not achieved. This is something we allow. We do not have to search outside of ourselves to create it. It is not missing; it is already present. But we must allow it. Balance.

Flashback now to 2013. My mother and I went to New York for a mother-daughter weekend. I was at the height of frustration in my own practice, and I was seeing similar frustration in my patients and colleagues. So many of my peers were also entrepreneurs or small business women who were not able to do it all. And worse, they were starting to become insulated, as was I. So there I was trundling along behind my mother in New York city, my favourite city in the world, exhausted and hiding a panic attack. We were in Queens and we were on an adventure to view a very public and collaborative graffiti exhibit, where local and non-local artists were trying to save a group of historical buildings from being leveled into condos. It was like nothing I had ever seen before.

I was in absolute free-spirit heaven, but I couldn’t enjoy it. I was hovering on that strange line between giving up and giving in for so long that day, they became the same feeling, which I think is raw consciousness. I was aware of everything in my life that I was trying to achieve. I was aware of the vacation-reward that I could not enjoy. I was aware of every bone in my body. Fortunately, my free-spirit auto-pilot kicked in, and I acknowledged the complete and utter “now what?” My heart spoke immediately: you have choices to make; this is not the life you dreamed about. This is not success.

Then, almost as a reply to that declaration of “now what?”, she appeared. We came around the corner of a building, and there she was – The Graffiti Queen of Queens. She arrived at the intersection of my heart and my mind, and landing in that space, I heard her say: “If you build it, she will come.” I knew exactly in that moment what I needed to do. I needed to build a community for women so that we could create together that elusive energy we are desperate for: balance. We would do that by coming together and sharing our experiences – our personal and professional intel. We would share ourselves.

If you build it she will come.

Well, she has. She’s you, and she’s me. My professional reward for founding this community is not only feeling and experiencing my own success, but to feel and experience the success of the other women in this community. It is positive collaboration and exchange. It is an ever-present conversation, always encouraging my next steps, and yours.

Thank you, Ladies. Thank you for giving all of yourselves to this amazing project. The collective reward is co-empowerment. I could not experience this reward without you.

Written by: Adrienne Yeardye