Personal Reflections and Acknowlegment for “Misbehaving”

On March 8th, we celebrated International Women’s Day with the “Misbehaving Woman of the Year” Awards Event, Fundraiser and Clothing Swap in Vancouver.

I was the organizer of the event and even the organizing was fun thanks to the awesome help from Nicki Harris and Candace Waugh of Nicki Harris Productions and Heather, Susan and Teresa from Good Riddance Professional Organizing Solutions.  We were additionally supported by amazing sponsors and donors.

The best part of the evening for me was listening to the women (and man) talk about their friends, colleagues, wives etc (Brock Tully nominated his wife, Wilma) who they had nominated for this award.  The positive regard, the respect and the heart felt love and appreciation for the nominees was palpable in the room!  What was so clear was the daily committment each of the nominees make to “doing good in the world”.

There was great personal learning for me in the “judging” process.  Myself and Victoria Pawlowski, regional nutritionst with Capers Markets served as the “judges”.  There were five nominees and what became massively evident is that they were all winners in different categories: the planet (Betty Krawczyk), people (Christine Awram), profit/women in business (Pamela Chatry), pleasure (Linda Baker) and heart (Wilma Fuchs).  While everyone was a winner, we felt that all of this “misbehaving” revolves around a big, warm, melted heart and gave a little special acknowledgment to Wilma for this.  It was extremely fitting that Betty (a 78 year old grandma) couldn’t attend because she was recently sentenced to 10 months in jail for her peaceful protest of logging. Now, that’s misbehaving!

Each woman nominated displays passion and purpose “in spades”. 

So, and I can see this as an evolution of the event, we gave out five awards with bouquets of beautiful tropical flowers.  The event was incredibly inspiring and the women in attendance seemed to love the whole “everyone is a winner” result. 

 

I “outed myself” as an alcoholic, spoke abit about women and addictions in Canada and my personal 13 year journey of recovery. Michelle from Avalon Women’s Centres (supporting women in recovery from addictions) said a very moving few words about addiction as a physiologic, psychologic, emotional and spiritual disease.

There were tears, laughs, hugs, great food and the evening wrapped up with a fun, high energy clothing swap. All clothes not swapped go to the Avalon “closet”.

 
What this years event has done for me is strengthen my commitment to do it again next year, have categories for the awards and through working with Victoria, we have become even clearer on the essence of this award.  I also learned that I come from a strong value of inclusion, that I am unable to create “winners and losers”.  I have no idea what next year will bring if there are more than 5  nominees!

I sit here today, Saturday morning, in my dressing gown, happy, sipping on hot free trade organic coffee, relaxed, feeling incredibly grateful to have the acquaintence and friendship of many, many amazing women.  I honour all of you who go about doing the “silent work of ordinary women”, choose daily to engage in “acts of resistance” and “say no to the cultural drift” which tries to tell us as women, how to be “good girls” in our culture.

So, step up and step out and keep “misbehaving”!  Who knows what we can “unleash”.

namaste,

Zoey

coach . catalyst . shakti sage

life & business coach for women

Come and play the “pow game” for culturally creative women!  Check out my website for more info:

www.positivelyoutrageouswomen.com

“Freedom is actually a bigger game than power.  Power is about what you can control.  Freedom is about what you can unleash”  -  Harriet Rubin