On Thursday we held our lunch in honour of International Womens Day. The main goal was to celebrate who we are as women, with the duality of how far we have come and how far we have still yet to go pushed to thebackof our minds, we just had a fun and friendly afternoon, themes close to my heart.  We were helped along by the generosity of our two guest speakers, Carole Maher and Kerry Chikarovski. Both of them gave their time and I really am honoured by their generosity. Carole began and shared some stories of her journey from advertising to a lavender farm to becoming a milliner. We love  that her hats are being worn on fashions on the field and the spring racing carnival, and we laughed with her in wonderment as Carole’s hats were featured in the Australian ‘ Aussie Lamb Advertisements’  Not to mention over lunch when asked about the royal wedding, Carole casually replied that she had 5 hats on heads amongst the invited guests. Thank you Carole.
Kerry ‘Chika’ was next and what a joy to hear her story and where she had come from. Wonderfully down to earth Kerry shared her story of how she became a member of parliament and how she won the preselection and eventually a ministry portfolio. There were two points from her story that we took with us. Kerry said that if we are ever offered an opportunity that feels like it might be too big or over our head, we should grab it with both hands…. Its scary but with self belief and hard work we can achieve anything. Th flip side of this message was that your career wont hold your hand when your sick, or share a red wine and a laugh with you, or give you a hug when you need a cry or a shoulder. Practising a good work life balance and nurturing our relationships are so important.

The main highlight of the day was all of the lovely, gracious, chatty and giving women that attended. I was so impressed with the energy in the room and I hope that everyone had a wonderful day. Here is the link of the little video that Liz from Reel to Reel made for us.:

http://youtu.be/AaeNkw650f4

I spoke about some links, which I will put up soon to some interesting topics and pieces that I discovered in my recent research.