Saturday morning I woke up bright and early and went to hang pennants for The Stepping Stones Community Walk. It had been rescheduled from earlier in the summer and I had no idea what sort of turn out to expect.
In the end, we had about 80 people come to walk and that number felt really good. A great start, and a really wonderful group of people. One of the employees from the Women's Center spoke before we walked and did an awesome job of communicating the heart this center has for helping these mom's get back on their feet. And then we walked a quick mile to the picnic pavilion that then led to Celebrate Dundas.
There is a funny vulnerability in helping lead an event like this. The day before I started to worry that it might have been a silly idea. You wonder if anyone will show up. But when everyone started pulling up in their cars to register I knew we were onto something good. People were there because they wanted to be and wanted to support The Women's Center. And there was a collective energy and camaraderie that made me so grateful to get to be a part of such a morning.
I was trying to explain this feeling of gratitude to my mom and my sister-in-law Sara after the walk as we wandered through a community garage sale and Sara mentioned a line Gary Haugen had once said, "If you do nothing, nothing will happen. If you do something, something might happen."
I love those words. They sum up the humble hopefulness you hold onto when you're doing anything that feels like you're throwing yourself out there. Like the young mom who walked through the Stepping Stones program this year who is now registered to take night classes at a community college. She's doing something, and it's going to change the course of her life and the life of her baby.
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