Marianne Williamson

The Women on Fire (WOF) 2017 retreat just ended, and I am full.

I came to Miami Beach on October 5th, actually arriving at 2am on the 6th, to participate in the 7th annual iteration of this event. My participation was based on the recommendation of my good friend and client, Cathi Nelson. She made an email introduction for me to the founder of WOF, Debbie Phillips, which led to an engaging skype conversation a week later, which led to my commitment to attend.

Debbie Phillips – Founder

In addition to my immediate appreciation of Debbie’s magnetism and Cathi’s advocacy, I also learned that Marianne Willliamson would be the keynote and that the audience would be of an intimate size: 140 women. I would be able to get close to this mega-star speaker. (Please note what it takes to win a sale these days. I’m quite sure I’m not the only one that needed at least 3 good reasons to put my time, energy and resources into action.)

One of the best features of Debbie’s events are the Circles that occurred throughout the days we were together. Moving our chairs into roundish shapes of 6, we each shared for 4-5 minutes on a specific question posed by Debbie. This provided a safe–once the ground rules were set–container for meeting a handful of participants on an intimate level in a short amount of time. I met incredible women and heard new and different short stories of lives across America.

Debbie also paired each of us up with a buddy. We were well matched (how’d she do that?!) and knew we’d have at least one person to connect with walking into an auditorium of new faces.

Cathi Nelson

Cathi was featured on an afternoon panel that inspired everyone present with her visionary summation of the business she founded, APPO.org, and its 750+ members.

Another esteemed speaker was Maya Rossio, a graduate of Project GLOW which was led by two WOF members, Carrie Saba and Annie Prenoveau, to help high school girls with self esteem. Clearly, it worked.

Maya was an extraordinary speaker and human. She revealed that she was transgender and talked about

Maya Rossio

the make-up line she’s working on. She got a standing ovation after her talk, then won the ‘most inspiring’ recognition at the close of the event.

I’m walking away with a new membership in this very cool group, several contacts to follow up with, and lots of acknowledgment for what I shared during my circles and with the group at large. We formed a mega-circle at the end of the retreat with each of the 100+ stating one word that we’re leaving with. Mine was ‘witnessed.’