Category Archives: Personal Well Being

This past week at work has been exhausting, chaotic and honestly emotional.  It was a week filled with unknowns, changes, promotions and tough discussions.  Late on Friday afternoon, I received a text from a supportive colleague and friend that read as follows:

“Never fear or shy away from any challenge.  You have much more strength and skill than you may even know.  Experience comes only when you reach forward.”

There have been a few different posts on this site that have spoken to the fear of taking on an unknown challenge.  In the past, the changes that were made this past week would have likely led me to question if I would be capable in the new role I will be assuming.  But the past is not now, and any internal questioning of my own capabilities is no longer a conversation I need to have with myself.

Last week’s post was an introduction to the “herstory” of the first ever female Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Hershey Entertainment and Resort Company from 1997.  Her honest and vulnerable stories changed my life forever, many of them still all ring true to today.  I hope her experiences and expertise that I will share over the next few weeks will pull at your heart strings and inspire you as well. 

This week, she shares an incredibly vulnerable side.  As I was retyping her words from the only copy I have of the direct dictation, I became teary eyed as I typed.  When I was a Junior in college and interviewed this woman, I had such a different perspective than I do now.   I took her words for very matter of fact.  I now read these words 24 years later as a working mom of 2 boys and I am amazed by how incredibly vulnerable she was with me at the time.  I was not in a place in 1997 to appreciate or even receive that vulnerability, but now in 2022, I am emotionally enthralled.  I believe we will all find a part of ourselves in her words, you will feel her emotional struggle and will recognize that even today, the struggle continues.

“Sometimes it takes an overwhelming breakdown to have an undeniable breakthrough” Unknown I am spending this week vacationing at our family cabin in Northern Minnesota on the Canadian border.  It is a place that you cannot access without a boat and the loons sing me to sleep as the sun sets each evening.  My greatContinue reading “24 YEARS HAS COME AND GONE”

Brene Brown said “Sometimes the bravest and most important thing you can do is just show up.”  I understand where she was coming from with this quote, I can easily relate to it within my career and life.  There are many opportunities I would have never been able to take advantage of if I had not “shown up”.  That could be just showing up to a meeting where I met someone that taught me something, or signing up for a program that would allow me to find some of my greatest passions I never knew I had.

I am tired.  I have had three cups of coffee on this Saturday morning and I am still tired. The amazing team of sales managers and sales directors that I have the pleasure of working with are all tired too.  To be honest, I think the whole working world is exhausted.  After 2 years of living through a pandemic, fighting for our health and our emotional wellbeing.  We now find ourselves struggling to survive in a world of non-stop supply challenges, employee shortages, cost cutting and inflation pressures.  I have been on many emotional phone calls recently.  Colleagues and employees exhausted by their inability to control an outcome, frustrated by what they see as a lack of effort on others behalf to get things done.