The power of allies

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First of all, thank you for the great response last week to our launching of The Hero’s Voice! We appreciate your feedback, and are excited about providing a forum for people to share their stories of heroic actions in the work place.

This week’s issue is about the power of allies, thanks to a story Kelly Sandstrom sent to us. Kelly is a print rep “by day”, but her true passion (dare we say alter ego?) is in helping women make positive changes in their lives. Her story highlights how all heroes need allies to help them along their journey – sometimes to even start the journey in the first place.

Enjoy this inspiring story, and thank you, Kelly!

Lisa and the Creative Abandon team

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Workshops for Women
Kelly Sandstrom

This is the story of not one, but of five heroes, (or heroines to be exact). Women who were willing to believe in a business that at the time was nothing more than an idea - and dedicate a year of their lives into making my business dream come true. All while empowering each other - and women in a community - to learn and grow.

For the past seven years I have been working with a program that trains parents of teens in crisis. It's been amazing and gratifying work, coupled with incredibly long hours and total lack of pay. But I was passionate about the changes that people were making in their lives - and I knew the life skills we were teaching were working in the most dire of circumstances. Inspired, I sent out an email to five women with the same training and invited them to play.

What if we created a new business to train women in the community in these skills? What if we trained women and their daughters specifically? We could make a difference in the world before the crisis - did they want to play? And every one of them said "YES".

So for a year we worked, we created manuals, we developed our website, we practiced, we took deep breaths, we enrolled and did our first training. We had 37 mothers and daughters in the room.

And during that training we watched them laugh, cry, be inspired, learn new ways to talking to each other -and new ways of listening to each other, ways of looking at results and what they wanted to create. They thanked us - over and over again for what we had begun.

Those five women had no idea what they were stepping into with me - but they believed. They believed enough to take action. And because of their hard work, integrity, and courage, there is a group of women out there whose lives will never be the same.

All of us can spend our working lives knowing that whatever we are doing we are making a difference - be it by creating jobs, financial success for ourselves and others, developing ways of creating peace in our homes or our world. And I believe that knowing we make a difference, brings meaning, joy and purpose to our lives. So thank you to Lynnette, Julie, Sue, Kelly and Leah for being heroes in my life and assisting me in the launch of my business.

Best,

Kelly Sandstrom CPC

Workshops for Women

www.workshopsforwomen.net

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OCT 6, 2006 | ISSUE NO. 002

The power of allies

Workshops for Women Kelly Sandstrom

Workshops for Women
Kelly Sandstrom