ThisAliCat.com

Chairperson, Fellow Toastmasters, and Honoured Guests.

I am excited to share significant changes that I have undergone in these last few years and joining Toastmasters is also another step in that process.

I know all of you have at one time or another had a WOW moment, a life altering experience, maybe an epiphany…

Well, I had one of those WOW moments during what I call a “small world” scenario. What I mean by this is…

Have you ever met someone with no connection to you that you can think of but you find out they have a strong connection to someone you DO know?

Recently I had gone to my girlfriend’s house for a birthday party she was holding for one of her kids. This is a girlfriend who I see for at least a few hours at a time about 3-4 times a week.

During the party, I was helping her clean her kitchen…there were a few of us parents who stayed around, we didn’t know each other …we were from different areas of her life.

In any case, I was washing dishes and clearing her table, and her pastor, who over the last few years, she had mentioned his family to me several times, as having spent a lot of time with her family outside of their church.

So we were often passing each other in her house and he kept looking at me…with a puzzled look and like he wanted to say something.

At one point he even asked me, “What did you say your name was?” I said, “Alisande.”

After 3 hours of being at this party and us having this strange eye contact, we were all about to leave. Then he faced me full on and with certainty and not a question in his voice, he said, “Michelle.”

All of a sudden, my life rewound back to high school and I was a teenager again. No longer did I see his current short crew cut hair which was slightly receding, but I saw the longer hair and at the time the not religious jokester in the class, and I said “Vince.”

Let me tell you why this was unusual. When he knew me 19 years ago, I went by my first name Michelle, I didn’t have streaks of colour in my hair. It was actually quite long, past my shoulders.

I was quiet, unconfident, self doubting, and insecure. I had a conservative dress and behaviour and I wasn’t one to speak up. I pretty much blended into the background.

And as you can see, it’s kind of hard to blend in the background now with pink hair.

But his recognition of me was affirming.

Have any of you gone through times where you were afraid to make changes or you weren’t afraid, you just didn’t, and stayed in your comfort zone?

I had done that for a long time and then I decided to pushed past the boundaries I had set for myself…and because I spent these last few years focusing on parts of myself that I didn’t like, I was grateful that the parts of me that I always did like were still there and recognizable by someone from the past.

Part of my motivation to change myself was because, having children myself, I wanted to model confidence and self worth.

So I was really happy the other day when my 9 year old Lynnéa’s school had a parent’s open house.

She led me through the hall and showed me one of the projects they had done. Each kid had a picture of themselves and a written paragraph about something about themselves.

I saw a picture of a boy who looked like something was coming out of his mouth and it said, “My name is Mark and I’m good at throwing spitballs.”

I saw another picture of a girl with a book and it said, “My name is Julie and I like reading.”

I saw another one that said, I play video games.

So when I say Lynnéa’s name on a picture, and it was a picture of just a little girl with nothing else in the picture, I was about to read the sentence and my daughter pipes up beside me with a big grin on her face, she says:

“I wrote, My name is Lynnéa and I am Special and Unique.”

About 3 years ago, she may have felt his way but I didn’t get that sense at the time that that was how she felt about herself. There wasn’t that obvious sense of that. And at the time, she seemed a little more on the concerned serious side…

It really struck me then that changes in my life which pushed me out of my comfort zone to achieve something positive may have long reaching good effects on those around me as well.
And so I thank all of you for being here today in this, the next step of my journey.