It’s September and while things look a bit different than they did last year at this time, we are still only inching back to the next normal. I have several in person conferences that are looming on the calendar. But when my husband asked me if I had flight times I admitted that I haven’t bought all the flights yet. Who knows what next week will bring, much less November.

In some ways we’ve gotten used to this state of suspended animation, free floating anxiety, perpetual uncertainty, “languishing” -whatever people are calling it these days. At the same time, people who have been holding it together pretty well are getting…tired.

When I start to feel this way, I turn to women business owners to the rescue.

  • For the launch of the Diversity Masterminds® video series, Business UNusual,  we tapped someone who could speak to our mental and emotional health. Our first guest, yogi Charmain Lewis talked to us not only about her yoga business but about the benefits of just taking a breath.
  • Earlier in the year, my friend Nikki Achartz from Snap Savvy Strategies talked the WPO  group that I facilitate about the collective and cumulative trauma we are experiencing. She illustrated how that changes not only what our customers need to hear but what they’re capable of listening to.
  • My friend and trans advocate and author Ashley Brundage launched her book tour for Empowering Differences and I caught up with her in person on the DC stop with her friend Cindi Grace Miller, a transition specialist.
  • The brilliant Ida Abdalkhani, Chief Catalyzer of Ability to Engage, scheduled us for a “Walk and Talk” to get our brains and bodies moving last Friday. It was a balm to simply walk and talk.
  • As part of the WBENC forum, a group of certified women’s business enterprise (WBE) leaders,  I signed up for a tutorial on how to talk about wine.  Keeli Jernigan sent me two bottles from Scout and Cellar that are organic and chemical free which I cannot wait to try.
  • Engaging in retail therapy always works wonders, too. I was introduced to Miranda Bennett, a maker and business owner who is pioneering a sustainable fashion line through the Call Your Girlfriend podcast. I got the Every Day dress she mentions in the episode and you can use the code they mention, CYG20, for 20% off on anything you buy through September. (I checked that it was OK to use the code but it’s a good episode so listen if you’re so inclined).

And while they aren’t all business owners, my cousins came to the rescue when I was blue from leaving our summer place. In sweats over champagne, we planned a February trip to Napa. I haven’t made my flights but I’m researching women owned wineries out there (I’m looking at you, Oceano Wines) and I’m preparing for the unpredictable.