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]