Reflecting on Circular Summit

Last week, I went to the Circular Summit conference in Washington, D.C.! Hello Alice did an incredible job bringing together a diverse crowd of women entrepreneurs, investors, experts and supporters. I met female scientists and activists and smiley college grads. I stood up and talked about a time I failed in front of everyone (which is how I won this glittery-unicorn-poop-emoji-keychain). 

When the conference came to a close, I grabbed a pencil and tried to make sense of it all. Here's everything I learned, wrapped up in a staircase. 

Reflecting  on Circular Summit when I saw these stairs. Yesterday, there were tons of women who saw something and did something. On stage they looked at us and story after story said—get out there. Find your purpose. Connect. Create. But take care - if a distraction clouds your purpose, move. If your purpose changes, move with it. It’s going to be a cycle, a naturally unbalanced rhythm of evolving, connecting, adapting, changing. Run with it. 

I think about my own path; there seems to be so many directions I could go. But really I think we have two choices, we either move forward or we move up. 

We stay on the level we’re on because we have more to learn right where we are. We’re not done exploring yet. Or we decide to take the stairs. To move up to a new challenge, a new opportunity, a new chapter. 

We don’t know what’s up there. But we see these women coming down to greet us, one by one. Each one gives us her own flower of wisdom. She doesn’t have all the answers for our lives, but she can give us hope. Tell us to keep going. Keep searching. Keep believing that it’s worth it. If and only if we start stepping. Not towards money. Never towards money alone. But towards our purpose, our Why, our reason for being. 

The key is to keep going. Keep listening. Connecting. Moving. 

For a moment in time on March 1st, a group of women came together and paused to ponder this. But now, the wind is at our backs. And boooy, is it strong. So strong it shut down all the government buildings in D.C. Now we have no choice but to jump back into our worlds and keep going. So...what are you waiting for? #Rungirlrun