While I’m sitting here on my delayed plane and have already missed my connecting flight, my mind is wandering and thinking deeply about recent trips and conversations.
This specific one takes me back to my evening flight home from Napa, CA a few weeks ago, when God purposefully placed me next to a woman and knew that we needed each other in that moment. I was heading home from a Women Warriors planning weekend and MPS Napa 5k, deep with emotion on Owen’s Story, my purpose, and his diagnosis. We made small talk and talked about how she was from around my hometown area but now lives states away. She was home because her mom just passed. We chit chatted, I told her about Owen’s Story and she told me beautiful memories of her mama and wishes for her dad for the future without her by his side. We related to each other in different ways and comforted each other in others.
I gave her Owen’s infamous traced print from our shop, “one day at a time,” and together our eyes teared up and there was a moment of silence. It wasn’t just a random flight back home, there was a reason I was supposed to be on that flight at that time, sitting in that seat next to her. We exchanged numbers and plan to keep in touch.
Within this time, a lady in front of us overheard us talking. But apparently only part of it. She saw the print and encouraged my new friend in a caring way. I smiled, it was sweet! But her last sentence before we walked off that plane that is now forever engraved in my mind was, “I’m so sorry about your loss. It was your mom, I apologize. But at least you didn’t lose your child, could you imagine? Now, that would be the absolute worst thing in the entire world.”
Pause.
She didn’t hear my story. She didn’t know my story. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The adrenaline in me from hearing that built into the Incredible Hulk of outrage inside my body as I stayed sitting staring out the window taking slow, peaceful breaths of healing until it was my rows turn to get up. I could have said something. I probably should have just said a little bit of something, but I didn’t.
This is what it’s all about, my friends, my WARRIORS. This story I wanted to share with you not just for one reason but two in one place. It’s the extra encouragement for you to find your tribe, connect with one another and find peace in your heart through all of the obstacles along the way. She has his writing as her screensaver and the print now hangs in her dads home for him to look at every day.
Just. Keep. Going.
Stay motivated by your purpose and don’t you ever give up. Use the obstacles that stand in your way and add it to your power to push forward. You’re not alone. You’re stronger now than you were before and you’re only continuing to grow... if you change your perspective to see it that way with me.
THIS is only one of the reasons why I’ve created... The Women Warriors Project.
