I had the pleasure of attending a charity luncheon benefiting Rainbow Days celebrating their 35th anniversary of helping homeless and at-risk children rise above by developing coping skills and resilience. What a tremendous organization! I encourage you to take a minute to learn more about how they make an impact on your community.
As if celebrating such an impressive organization was not enough of a treat, the guest speaker was none other than Momastery mom-blogger, activist, and NYT bestselling author Glennon Doyle Melton. Talk about having a rock star moment! Despite waking up sicker than she has ever been in her life, she powered through and candidly shared her experiences as a recovering-addict, mom, and love warrior. Seriously – she was so sick there was an IV waiting for her in her hotel room to be administered after she walked off stage. If that is not the “suck it up and power through” mentality that only moms can understand, I don’t know what is. There was so much about her stories of leaning into the painful times in life and becoming stronger because of it that resonated with everyone in the room – especially this mama.
Her talk ended with an important message for all of us who carry the pressures of our families on our shoulders. She told us that in carpentry, the joist bears the weight of the structure. All of it. And it inevitably weakens over time. What does the carpenter do to strengthen the joist? The carpenter adds a board to the left and a board to the right to give the joist the strength it needs to carry the weight. You will never believe what this is called… SISTERING!
This month, we celebrate moms (yes, I am advocating for Mother’s Month, not just Mother’s Day). We are all joists, bearing the weight of our own struggles, those of our children, those of our families, and even those of people who are strangers but it hurts our hearts to see them struggle. We are all joists that naturally weaken. We start out strong, but over time, there’s only so much weight we can bear. But what we all know is that we cannot let the weight break us, or the whole structure will fall. So we sister. With our sisters to our right and our left, we move forward stronger than ever.
