The degree to which you see similarities between a spiritual journey workshop and leadership training tells me how familiar you are with the essence of personal and professional development. In other words, there should be a lot of overlap between the two if indeed some profound change is to take place.
Sunday March 28, 2010, between 9 am and 11am, I’ll have the privilege to work with some unusually gutsy women who inspire me every year. The retreat is entitled Women on a Spiritual Journey to Healing, where the theme this year is ’No One Can Judge You Unless You Allow Them.’ (For local, interested women, join us at Avila, located in Durham, NC.)
These are women from different walks of life – women recovering from medical challenges, substance abuse and other issues, women who have opened their own businesses in the past year and overcome all odds against them. If you want to experience human authenticity at its best, there is a certain raw appeal in these courageous women, and I am humbled every single time I am given the privilege to engage them. These are women who have been strengthed by their own acknowledged vulnerability, whose real strength of character has grown from “a scared place,” a place from where their courage mysteriously appeared only because there was no other way out of their darkness.
Dian Wilson, Housing for New Hope, is a graduate of our Self-Awareness Workshop, and is the brainchild behind this offering, and Terry Allebaugh, who is a graduate of our Personalized Leadership Development Program and the Executive Director of Housing for New Hope, has made it possible for hundreds of homeless people to find not just a home, but reason to hope and to live and to love again. That’s leadership at its best, and this blog is a tribute to their fine work and the joy I get to feel being a part of their enterprise.
