Inspiring words from Abby Wambach

[NF52]

As we move into Memorial Day weekend and the semi-official start of summer, I'd like to share some inspiring words from Abby Wambach, 2-time Olympic Gold medalist in soccer and captain of US Women's Soccer Team. She was the first soccer player EVER to be named Athlete of the Year in 2011 by the Associated Press. (And she grew up in my hometown of Rochester, NY.) She gave the commencement address to women at Barnard College. Here's the link, followed by a few excerpts about rebounding from failure, finding joy, and supporting each other in the quest. Words for those days when we all need to dig deep for grit and persistence. https://barnard.edu/commencement/archiv ... ch-remarks {Emphasis added by me.]

In 1995, around the year of your birth, wolves were re-introduced into Yellowstone National Park after being absent for seventy years. In those years, the number of deer had skyrocketed because they were unchallenged, alone at the top of the food chain. They grazed away and reduced the vegetation, so much that the river banks were eroding. Once the wolves arrived, they thinned out the deer through hunting. But more significantly, their presence changed the behavior of the deer. Wisely, the deer started avoiding the valleys, and the vegetation in those places regenerated. Trees quintupled in just six years. Birds and beavers started moving in. The river dams the beavers built provided habitats for otters and ducks and fish. The animal ecosystem regenerated. But that wasn’t all. The rivers actually changed as well. The plant regeneration stabilized the river banks so they stopped collapsing. The rivers steadied—all because of the wolves’ presence.
See what happened here?
The wolves, who were feared as a threat to the system, turned out to be its salvation.

Barnard women, are you picking up what I’m laying down here? Women are feared as a threat to our system—and we will also be our society’s salvation. Our landscape is overrun with archaic ways of thinking about women, about people of color, about the “other,” about the rich and the poor, about the the powerful and the powerless—and these ways of thinking are destroying us.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
Failure is not something to be ashamed of, it's something to be POWERED by. Failure is the highest octane fuel your life can run on....Women, listen to me. We must embrace failure as our fuel instead of accepting it as our destruction....
As you go out into the world: Amplify each others’ voices. Demand seats for women, people of color and all marginalized people at every table where decisions are made...

Joy. Success. Power. These are not pies where a bigger slice for her means a smaller slice for you. These are infinite. In any revolution, the way to make something true starts with believing it is. Let’s claim infinite joy, success, and power—together.

[goldenlvr]

I love this! Thank you for posting.

Jeanne

[Jillybeans]

That is a great post and a great message! As a nature lover, I have also seen a video talking about that process with wolf reintroduction and how it restored the ecosystem. Sadly, wolves are still threatened and being killed in several states despite that knowledge and understanding.
That message does carry over to so many situations.

[GemmaJ]

I think Abby's message is brilliant and true. collective strength, trying to make things better together and never ever being scared of failure...just keep going together.

Thank you for sharing this inspirational message NF52