Resiliency

she was a young woman new to california

living in a tiny apartment with her

three-month-old baby girl she was alone

afraid and poor

she used to have a luxurious lifestyle

as a fashion model but

those modeling years passed her by

and she had no higher education no

skills and no backup plan and prince

charming well

his violent streak is what caused her to

leave new york

she looked into her baby’s wide blue

eyes and she said i don’t know what i’m

going to do

i don’t know how i’m going to do it but

i’m going to create a great life for us

i promise you

today that woman is an entrepreneur a

philanthropist

and a business executive and i know a

little bit about her because i’m valerie

fitzgerald and this is my story

scholars can debate endlessly is

resiliency something you’re born with or

is it something you can learn

how do you find your resiliency

i suggest three ways respect your past

find your purpose

and know your value

i had a really brutal physical and

mental abusive marriage which shook me

to my core

and then a few years later i found love

again

i thought we had this really deep

commitment after all we were in love

but when i found out i was pregnant i

realized that what love was wasn’t

and when he told me

you’re on your own

well i walked away and never spoke to

him again to this day

at that moment of having that baby

inside me a fierce fire was in my soul

and i was going to be a warrior and

unstoppable

i would say to myself

don’t settle save yourself over and over

again

was i scared yeah i was really scared i

would take all those emotions and put

them in a little invisible box near my

heart

like i could go back to them another

time because i had no

no time to feed my fear

what i did learn was that kisses are not

contracts

i had a brutal few years and

they’ll stay with me the rest of my life

but i learned that i’m a better mother

friend business partner

as a result of them

and when my illusion of prince charming

came crashing down

my mom came to visit me and she brought

me a poem that forever changed my life

it’s called after a while it’s by

veronica schtoff stalin i don’t know if

you’ve had any of you’ve ever heard of

it but i thought i’d read it to you

today because it’s really meaningful

after a while you learn the subtle

difference between holding a hand and

chaining your soul

and you learn that love doesn’t mean

leaning and company doesn’t mean

security and you begin to learn that

kisses aren’t contracts and presence

aren’t promises

you begin to accept your defeats with

your head up high and your eyes open

with the grace of a woman not the grief

of a child

and you learn to build all of your roads

on today because tomorrow’s ground is

too uncertain for plants and futures do

have a way of falling down in mid-flight

and after a while you learn that even

sunshine burns if you get too much

so you plant your own garden and

decorate your own soul

instead of waiting for someone to bring

you flowers

and you learn that you really can endure

and that you really are strong and that

you really do have worth and you learn

and you learn

and with every goodbye you

learn you know

i realize that

there are circumstances that

come into

all of our lives and

they seem to kind of stack up like we’re

just gonna break

i call them stackers these are

unresolved issues and things that stack

up over time they get so tall they kind

of teeter you think they’re just going

to fall over

what do you do when

a stacker comes into your life do you

deal with it do you face it

or do you just let it fall over

you know you have to know your basic

primal priorities because you’ve got to

sleep at night

you’ve got to take care of yourself

physically emotionally mentally so that

you’re strong because if you’re strong

you can you can deal with anything else

find your purpose

you know

whether it’s a career a job a hobby

it’s

it’s your attachment it’s your purpose

find your purpose

i know that my daughter was my purpose

and my focus and i was so focused on her

sometimes i even forgot about my own

circumstances

but through it all

i held to my purpose

even though it’s making decisions

they’re flying through the fire every

day i just came right back to that

purpose

you know there were times when

we would go in my broken down little

volkswagen and we’d have to drive far

away to go get diapers and formula on

sale and

i would you know i was so determined and

so focused and broke

that

but truthfully we were so happy

but i had to figure out

how i was going to financially support

us

so a friend of mine said

why don’t you go into real estate and i

said okay so i was trading hours with my

next door neighbor and she’d watch my

baby so i could go to school at night

and when i got my license i would take

her with me and she slept under my desk

and then

later when i had some showings i would

take her with me and i would just oh my

babysitter was sick

but i didn’t really have a babysitter we

made it work there were tough times it

was really challenging and there was a

time i remember that was

so important that if this deal came

through for me it would have changed our

lives

so i took her with me and we went to

this meeting was in my client’s house

and i had some toys with her and she was

playing just a couple feet from me

and all of a sudden she fell in the pool

well i jumped up dove in that pool suit

and all picked her up and she’s looking

at me giggling and laughing she’s

laughing so then my client gave me his

son’s t-shirt and boxer shorts to change

into

i went back to the meeting with a smile

on my face and

went home when it was all over later and

got in the shower and

just cried

there was another time when i had a

meeting that um i took her with me and

as we’re walking in i had a diaper bag

on my shoulder this time and i had her

and my the heel of my shoe broke off so

i took the both shoes off and i put them

in my diaper bag

and i walk in with a smile on my face

and

looking like a mess with a diaper bag on

my shoulder a baby on my head and bare

feet

through it all i held to my purpose i

was so focused

so focused like that super mama because

i wanted to thrive not just survive

i realized that

there are difficult circumstances for a

lot of people

and

we all

we all try so hard there are so many

warriors in this room

we all have the heart and the soul to

carry on no matter what comes across our

path

you know it’s not a coincidence that

today is my daughter vanessa’s birthday

i feel like i’m here speaking to you

i’ve kind of come full circle

i’m sharing my story with you so that

maybe you’ll find a little hope in your

future

you’ve got to find your value though

value is really important because we’re

fundamentally all the same

we all have the heart and the soul we

instinctively know what to do

but remember that

even with all the mistakes we make that

they’re just part of our journey

because when we learn from them we

spring back stronger

and we find out

who we really are

so in summary respect your past

find your purpose

know your value

i suggest to you that resiliency isn’t

something you learn

it’s something you want

it’s something you want so deep in your

heart and soul that it pushes you to

follow through

there’s a great quote

a winner is just a loser who tried one

more time

think of that

a winner is just a loser who tried one

more time

so here’s to all of us

and when the going gets tough and rough

and we’re scared to death and we’re

fearful to remember

try one more time

thank you

[Applause]