This morning I got to be in a room full of women who are doing the work.
The Women & Girls Mentoring Breakfast, hosted by MassHire Cape & Islands Workforce Board, was one of those events that reminds you why you say yes to the early morning alarm.
I talk a lot about economic development. Workforce. Small business sustainability. Those things matter deeply to me and to the work we do at the Mashpee Chamber every single day. But here’s what I know to be true after a morning like this:
None of it happens without people first.
The keynote was Rebekah Gregory; a Boston Marathon bombing survivor
and I’m not exaggerating when I say it stopped me in my tracks. Her story is heartbreaking and beautiful and honest in a way that cuts right through you. The message I walked away with: our hardest moments don’t define us. But how we respond to them? That can change someone else’s entire trajectory.
That’s what mentorship is.
It’s not a program or a buzzword or a line item in a budget. It’s a conversation over eggs and coffee where someone looks at you and says I see something in you. It’s a door opened just a little wider for the person walking in behind you.
Cape Cod has so many people quietly doing this work. Showing up before the room fills. Staying after it empties. Mentoring someone who doesn’t even know yet how much they needed it
.
Today reminded me how lucky I am to be among them.
And it reminded me of the simplest truth I know about building strong communities:
Show up. Listen. Encourage. And hold the door open for whoever’s coming next.