This past weekend, I was a speaker at an event in Somerton, Massachusetts, close to Boston,

and it was for domestic abuse. The month of October is Domestic Abuse Awareness Month.

And so that event for me was profound. was beautiful um it was light and heavy the

energy was definitely light and heavy light in the sorts of laughter and and talking communicating

and um just women getting together and just being in a space where they could share and be open.

But heavy that stories were told and things surfaced back and of course tears flowed.

And the emotions were felt recalling that moment for many women when they were in those domestic abuse situations.

What I took from that was that shift that women felt, that fear of moving outside of where they used to be stifled in a box

where they couldn't manage and move into the unknown of traveling and journeying where they didn't

know where their endpoint was going to be i always used analogy when I, when I think about journeying

and how we pack our bags, you know, to prepare for the end, wherever we settle at. And we're,

as women, we're always so overprepared, even when we go on trips. Like, we got to have five

outfits and we're going to be there two days. We got have options but as we're journeying along you know with these these bag full of things

we realize that the low gets heavy and so we began to unpack but what we do as women or just people in general is that we take a look at what we

have and we say okay that can go I'm gonna keep this this is sentimental or I need this

that can go and we rationalize why it is that we keep some things and we let go of

others. And so we travel along the way and we journey as well and we keep going and then the low

becomes heavy again. And so we look at the items in our bag and we do it again. We rationalize. We try to figure out what stays and what goes.

There's always this one thing that we keep close to us that should have been released in the

beginning when the load was heavy, but we keep keeping it. And as we journey we journey along again the low gets heavy and we

won't get rid of that big bulky thing that keeps us bound keeps us down we just feel that if we

get rid of everything else that that big bulky thing that's in the way it won't matter for a lot of people that big bulky thing

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