When Margo Dalinghaus of Liberty For Success invited Beauty Night Society Volunteers and participants to her Amazing Women’s Weekend, I was thrilled. I thought it would be a fantastic opportunity for our participants and for our volunteers to develop leadership skills and for personal growth. Margo had offered to teach her inner beauty boot camp workshop to our participants and I wanted to have a frame of reference for the workshop before offering it to our participants. After participating in the weekend intensive, I believe all women should take this workshop! It was one of the most exhilarating intensives I have ever participated in.
Although seven of us from Beauty Night Society had signed up – volunteers, participants & myself, only three of us showed up at 7:30am on Saturday, November 7th. Together we sat in a cluster in a circle of women that we did not know. Women sat quietly looking at each other. We would smile politely across the circle. Many of us too tired to be nervous and wonder what journey we were about to embark on.
Perhaps if we knew how intense the work would be, we may have run. Thankfully we did not. Margo is a fantastic facilitator who guided us through the work. Many of the exercises released laughter, pain, sadness and anger. Through structured research based workshops, she guided us through visioning our future self to where we came from, to forgiveness, to where we are right now, and offered us tools to create our future selves.
Many of the women made some startling realizations and were able to release a great deal of rocks that they have been carrying for a long time. When we did a circle where Margo would ask questions such as “Were you a child when your parents got divorced?”, the production team would set up and give us a bead to slide onto a ribbon. By the end of that section, many of us shed tears. I found strength in realizing that many women carry their own string of beads that represent events they have experienced in their lives. One of the key factors of that was realizing that we are not alone. Many of us have gone through traumatic experiences. Some of us are crippled by those experiences where sickness manifests in our bodies. Others turn to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain. Others bury our pain under a to do list that is so long it would take 10 lifetimes to achieve all that we drive ourselves to do.
Through my acting school experiences, I have done a great deal of work to release emotions attached to specific events in my life. One key thing about the Amazing Woman Weekend that made a profound difference to the emotional release work was that Margo is a trained therapist who was able to create a safe space. Instead of feeling like Humpty Dumpty at the end of the weekend, I was givwn the glue gun to put the pieces back together again. In the process of gluing, I felt stronger than I did before the weekend.
One of the women who attended the workshop was a former Beauty Night participant. Through the work she had done with Margo, she was able to forgive herself for some of the trauma she has experienced. Through healing, she was able to move away from the pattern of addiction and homelessness. For one of my Beauty Night participants, this was very healing to see how someone was able to heal and move forward with her life. For another woman in the circle, the weekend inspired her to leave an abusive partner. For a mother and daughter who attended, they were able to forgive themselves for a sibling’s death. The work was intense and deep. The relieve and joy experienced was profound.
For myself, it was an opportunity to see how this work can make a huge difference in the lives of all women. That statement includes myself. This weekend taught me that I need to open myself up to receive in my work with Beauty Night Society and my personal life. Although I love feeling like Santa Claus when I watch people’s eyes light up because of a direct impact of something that my contributors and I have created, it empowers other people when I receive what they want to give me. Perhaps this will open me up to believing that money can really help propel our mission forward.
For one of my Beauty Night participants, she was able to start to forgive herself for not being a good mother to her children. Through seeing that so many women have experienced addiction, abuse, childhood violence, sibling rivalry, poverty, eating disorders and much more helped her realize that she wasn’t alone. When she realized that many of us carry our own string of beads of trauma – including myself, she realized that there wasn’t such a divide between us. We are women and we do the best we can with what we are being given.
At the end of the workshop, we debriefed over dinner. One of the things we talked about was starting to save some money so we can do the Amazing Woman workshop in Mexico – together, as a team. Next on my to do list is to bring Dave Chen from DC Complete Financial in to talk to the women about how they can start dreaming bigger. After that adding Inner Beauty Boot Camp on our program schedule.
