I Thought of Giving Up Last Week

I'm usually a very positive person. I can push through hard things. But last week was rough:

• I missed an important event to hold our scheduled Elavare Community call and only three women showed up.
• I spent hours and hours building and tweaking the website only to learn that hardly anyone is visiting it.
• I learned a man I spoke with over a year ago (who then ghosted me) launched his own return-to-work site for women that's very similar to Elavare (and he has a team of people helping him).
• I learned several companies who I've been speaking with to launch returnships and workshops for women don't have the budget to hire me.

It was one of those weeks (and this didn't include any of the personal things in my life that went wrong).

What most people don't know is this: I've been working on Elavare for nearly a year without pay.  I saved my money. I left a stable job last March so I could give this my full attention. I believed women needed it.

So when things don't go as planned, it hurts.  I think it would be easier if I regularly got even small signs that it mattered. But...

• I rarely hear from the mother who gets hired from my efforts.
• I rarely hear from the woman who gained confidence from something I shared.

Most days, I have no idea if any of this is making a difference.

And that's hard.

Last week, I seriously wondered why I’m doing this.  Then I talked to my oldest son. And he reminded me that building Elavare is a lot like being a mom. 

You show up every day.
You give everything.
You don’t get proof it’s working.

You just keep going.  And trust that the seeds will grow.  Even when you can’t see them yet.

That helped me. Because building something that is going to make a difference in the world (big or small), is going to take time.

So I'm still here.

Still building.
Still believing.
Still showing up. 

Even when only three women join the call. 


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