They say the third time's the charm.

This is not the first time that I've tried to build a woman centric community. It's been something I've tried to do a couple of times before. The first time was about ten of fifteeen years ago. I wanted it to be focused on professional women who were tired of dealing with "the boys club". I thought, "well, if they can have a club, we can too!". I think the best part about that was the tree house logo I designed. I believe I had about 7-8 women join, and then it fell flat. Then a few years ago, I tried again from an different perspective. If I could create courses for women that would draw them to the site, and since they had the course content in common there could be support around those topics. For that attempt, 12 women. I sold one course and then I didn't know where to take it from there, and the conversation was sparse. That fell flat too.

But I refuse to give up. I strongly believe that women need a safe place to work together without performative comments that focus on how they look, what they're wearing or how they 'should' think about the topic. I believe that this world is out of balance and that we need more feminine energy. We need diversity, leadership, empathy and that with all of that we can make a difference in this world.

So I'm trying again, and I feel in my bones that this time it's going to work. I've been reading the book Impact Networks by David Ehrlichman and the premise behind it is that when small networks join with other small networks with common goals then the impact is exponentially larger.

Each of the women here will have a network of folks they're working with to create change. Quietly or loudly. Small groups and large. We need to work together and pool our resources, find common ground and increase our impact. This is the space we can do that in. One of my dearest friends asked me, when I posed the thought of this collective group to her, "What is the life-giving breath of it? Is it just a collective of women sharing time and talent? Or is there something more to it?"

There is something more to it. My vision is that we use this space to share what we've learned and resources that can benefit the efforts of another group. To find common ground, inspire each other and to combine our resources and talents so that each of our individual efforts and communities can be expanded and made stronger by our collective knowledge and resources. So that we learn again to trust each other and form bonds across dividing lines that may be separating us. And ultimately, that we're able to find hope in a community of like-minded women who are change makers, leaders and rebels so that we can be stronger together.