Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: life after Covid and what happens next.
It’s pretty safe to admit that things are going to be different from here on out. So much has changed since last year, with the biggest change being how we conduct business.
But it also means having the courage to look at the ways we have personally changed. It involves embracing what happened over the last year due to the pandemic and honoring the pain of what we have lost.
Last year, so many of us lost ourselves and our ability to connect and do what we love. That’s a profound pain and doesn’t go away easily. And yet, we didn’t talk about the emotions we felt and that silence only made the heartache greater.
Personally, this past year challenged me on a level I could never have expected. I mourned my losses in love, business, finances, health, and only after having temporarily left New York, did I really feel the isolation and reality of change set in.
And even though the shifts in my life, both personal and professional, left permanent scars on my heart, I made a choice:
I made the deliberate choice to never give up.
And when I made that choice, things started to change. Almost instantaneously, I felt myself getting stronger.
I believe the event industry revolves around emotions and heart. And there is nothing more powerful than human connection. Everything meaningful I’ve ever created or found in my life has been led by my heart; I hold nothing back and I follow my intuition. So I’m here with my truth and I hope it inspires you to do the same.
On the surface, my story might sound like a “woe is me” fable about how COVID took everything I loved, but this is also a story of resiliency and strength, and that is what I want to bring to the industry in the coming years.
By working through my own pain I have discovered that our greatest strengths are born through loss. By celebrating our humanity and sharing our pain, we can and will come back bigger than ever.
And this presents us with a huge opportunity to see who we really are and what our industry can do. Before it was about creating joy and making people’s dreams come true, but now, it’s about that and so much more.
There is power in using pain to fuel our purpose. And there is potential for growth like never before.
So this is my invitation to you: join me.
Let’s move beyond fear and into the possibility that something better is on the horizon. Even if that comes with a few tears or grief, it’s okay, because the payoff is going to be worth it.
This feels scary, but keep in mind, “Fear loses its power when you remember you have a track record of surviving.”
And that’s what I plan to do.
So let’s survive and thrive together and make this the greatest step towards growth we could ever imagine.