My Vision: A Community of Self-Loving Women Compassionately Changing the Entire World

I lost my corporate job in May due to discrimination of my sexual orientation. I embraced the blessing even though I did not know how I would support myself at first. I decided to spend the following months finding a way to merge all of my previous volunteer experiences and strengths into a vision for my future. I decided I never wanted to work a job again that did not make me feel alive every day. I wanted a job that would let me live slowly and combine my strengths: teaching yoga, organic gardening, teaching writing and meditation workshops, focusing on developing body-positive curriculum, figuring out what is most needed in the queer community to create accessible resources that would save the lives of teenagers rejected from their families, fund-raising, writing, and speaking to people about issues that should concern us all. I knew I networked well and could engage local businesses to support community causes – but what did all of those skills mean, and how could I mingle them into one vision?

I want to create an organization that fosters creativity, empowerment, organic growing, and education. The women who will help run it will be passionate about their work: I will need choreographers to teach women the importance of being fluid in their own skin; writers to teach self-expression and self-value through the written word; artists to offer workshops on creative medians from canvas painting to sculpting. I will need women who love the earth and are content spending their days in the garden that will sustain the staff who will live on site as well. I want to build a community of women and a place that will teach both men and women to embrace the feminine, and offer children positive creative outlets and understandings of our world.

How can this affect all women though? My experience as a yoga teacher has been one of the most fulfilling so far in my life. I have been responsible for guiding women back into themselves. The sedated smiles that followed each session, the stories they told me about what they began to observe in themselves when they slowed down – this all strengthened me. The studio I practice at feels so much like home to me and I feel so safe there that I have literally broken down and cried throughout entire yoga sessions, unabashedly and unashamed - recognizing and releasing my pain. I want to create that sense of peace, nurturing, and safety for people as well.

I have no end result in mind. Yoga has taught me that this moment is the most vital, the process needs the most tender care, and results come from a collective group of people understanding themselves; by learning to release their hurried lives and embrace the peace of being aware of the world around them, accepting it for what it is, and transforming it through compassionate action. I know my life will be spent helping women re-connect with themselves, remember how blissful it is to live slowly, and to create an environment where this is a possibility. I truly believe that building a community such as this will foster a larger movement of more women wanting to encourage each other to know themselves as well – not by definition of the roles they embody as mothers, wives, daughters, professionals – but simply as women, cultivating once more the innate power within them. Men and children are undoubtedly influenced because centered women will always understand their self-value is critical for healthy relationships with partners and their own children.

I want to be a VOF correspondent because I need support in making this vision a reality. It will not only enable my community to flourish, but I believe a group of conscious people will impact communities abroad as well. Being a correspondent will offer me the mentorship and empowerment that will enable this vision to manifest. It will connect me to a realm of possibilities by working with people who understand how to make positive changes on a large scale beginning with one person – how to transform a single person into a conduit for change for an entire community, the entire world.