Every year I spend a little time reflecting on year as a whole. As I began to look back on 2017, I instantly started to identify all the goals that weren’t accomplished. My mood began to shift and I started to feel heavy. ( I mean I was giving myself a mental royal beating.) Then I paused and said think of all the things that went right. Think about all of the successful events. Remind yourself of the countless emails and messages you have received about how Be Brave has touched a life. I paused again and smiled. In an instant without any outside help I found encouragement right there inside of myself.

You see perspective truly does determine reality. This year we started out with BIG goals, and I do mean big. The team and I endeavored to solve our communities issue with mental health funding. (Something the whole LA government hasn’t been able to do.) LOL, But we were determined. Needless to say we missed the mark on that one this one, BUT we did make some headway. We were able to serve over 10,000 women through our support groups, community partnerships and our online presence. (you can clap, I AM!) We have seen the conversation on mental health in our community shift to the forefront. We also sent a team to do disaster relief counseling and raised the funding to do so in one week. As a team and organization we have grown by leaps and bounds in the last three hundred and sixty-three days.

I began to focus on the data we have collected this year on the demographic of women we are reaching, and this will help us tremendously as we execute 2018. The partnerships and relationships we have made in the community this year have been countless and so beneficial to the women serve. It is so important that any advocacy group truly know and understand their demographic, and how to best meet the needs they have.

After just a few minutes I sat back and became overwhelmed. Something that started out as one woman’s message has now developed into a mission statement for thousands. How in the world could I feel sad about that.

In 2018 you will see Be Brave do more of the same BUT even bigger! We have secured our first physical office space. (I’m Screaming!) We have already planned out the events for the year and will continue our monthly Brave Chats. In addition, to the things we have done in the past we will be launching a Live chat experience yours truly to be held monthly. During the chat women will be able to share and ask questions about anxiety, depression, treatment, coping skills and more. My plan isn’t to ignore the things I didn’t get to do, but to use my energy to focus on accomplishing them in the future. We can spend our time and valuable energy beating ourselves up or we can choose to use that same energy to motivate ourselves to do better. I encourage you to choose the latter.