We have a winner to announce! As many of you know, we ask a handful of women to be the judges for our Running on Empty contest. A number of these women are also former winners. We enlist their help because there is no way Brian and I could ever choose. And even with this contest, every woman emailed a message of struggle on picking one winner. Every story was amazing. Every woman nominated deserves to be recognized and we can only choose one. So again, I want to thank all the beautiful women who were entered or entered themselves. I am amazed at your strength and love. Thank you for sharing your life with us here. Thank you for being so strong and not giving up. You continue to inspire me more than words can say.

The votes were collected, and we have a single winner. The winner for the April Orange County (CA) CONFIDENCE Workshop is Paige S.! Paige, Brian and I want to welcome you this weekend to the Orange County CONFIDENCE workshop. Your brave and positive heart is uplifting and inspiring, and I would love the honor of lifting your creative spirit even higher this weekend. We hope all the logistics can work for you. Can you email Genie (genie@fioria.us) by Thursday at 12 noon to confirm your coming? (I know you sent your address to her, but email her first) If it doesn’t work for you, we have beautiful Runner Ups. Thanks Paige, and I hope we get to meet in person in April!

For those of you who missed Paige’s story, here it is from her own words;

Honestly, I can’t think of a mother who DOESN’T deserve something like this! I also can’t think of a person who doesn’t have hardship in their life to further merit this gift. For that reason, I don’t think I stand out in the crowd when nominating myself. But I will say this, hardship begets growth. And thank goodness for that!

My husband is deploying to Afghanistan next week for 6-12 months (gotta love the ambiguity of the Marine Corps!) for his first combat tour. We have a 2 and 1/2 year old and a 6 month old at home. My family and my home town is across the country, and we just moved here. Like my garage is still full of boxes. And we bought a fixer-upper of sorts. But I don’t want sympathy. I’ve gotten enough of that. What I want is to do something! I want to really make something of myself while he is gone! I absolutely LOVE photography, and that fact excites me because I’ve seen a loss of passion in my life since becoming a mother. But I want to LIVE again! I want my children to have a full-time mom who loves herself. I want my husband to see me self-sufficent with that fire back in my eyes. He certainly deserves it. Thank you, Me Ra, for creating this safe haven for women like me to feel empowered!

Really, we can’t think of moms who don’t deserve or need this either. If you didn’t win, your welcome to nominate yourself again. Congratulations Paige!

xoxo,

Me Ra

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EARLY BIRD REGISTRATION has started for the next Seattle CONFIDENCE! Workshop. Yep, you got it right – it’s May 15-16 at the beautiful Hotel Murano in Tacoma!

If you register between today and April 1st, you get to pay the Early Bird fee of $799 instead of $999! Pretty great savings for all of you who jump on board fast! After April 1st, the registration goes back up to the normal price of $999. But we must warn you to not wait until then. One CONFIDENCE Workshop was sold out by the end of the first day for Early Bird! To take advantage of the Early Bird Registration, REGISTER HERE!!!

If any of you missed The Wisdom Connection call on “What to do when Procrastination Wins?” last week, email Genie (genie@fioria.us)  and she’ll happily send a link for the audio recording of the call. The post was late that day so I want to make up for it! 🙂