72 Hours Of Insane Abundance
I am back from Mom 2.0 Summit, where I found myself saying or typing OMG WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING?! with unbelievable frequency. So many crazy things happened while I was there so I wanted to share everything while I have two hands and a full-sized keyboard. Related, I am now convinced that all the crazy, abundant things happen to me whenever I attend something Laura Mayes organizes so thanks for that bizarre cosmic juju, Laura!
1. Wearing all the hats at Mom 2.0 Summit
As someone who spends A LOT of time working alone in my cave, obviously one of the giant gifts of going to something like Mom 2.0 Summit is seeing friends and colleagues. That, of course, was insane but I also was wearing several hats during the conference:
- My fantastic, smart friends at Responsibility.org invited me to shoot video at the conference and it was totally reminiscent of my high school newspaper days when I wrote the column Roving Reporter and would walk around asking people random questions. Except this time I had a video camera and was laser focused on asking people about how they manage stress as adults and how they help their kids manage stress. I learned so much from my interviewees and will be editing these videos together and hope to share them in the next month or two!
- Through my work at Women Online I was also there on behalf of our clients GSK and the CDC Injury Center. The GSK session on meningococcal meningitis totally blew my mind and I will be sharing more on that soon. And the folks from CDC Injury Center are AMAZING (and their site is loaded with resources you should for sure check out).
- Finally, I was thrilled to partner with the lovely folks at Lord & Taylor at the Burlington Mall. After modeling for their Dress Address event last month (see incredible looks #1 and #2) I thought it would be fun to create another challenge around styling an entire conference based on dresses and am so grateful that Rose Meade at Lord & Taylor Burlington was so excited about the idea! I really wanted to push myself to pick different silhouettes and colors (read: not all black outfits) and the range of options at the store offered tons of fodder for experimentation. See (and read descriptions for) looks #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, and #6! The below look was the most popular on Instagram. I should totally start wearing column gowns every day.
2. InStyle featured our Brave New World Designs Maxine Waters shirt
A few weeks ago I almost fell over when I received an Etsy message from an executive editor at InStyle, saying that she bought and loved Jon and my Maxine Waters tee shirt and that she wanted to talk to her team about including it in a feature on things editors bought and loved. This meant the world to me not just because it was InStyle (of which I’ve been a longtime subscriber) but it was just so organic and wonderful. So I sent along some high res images as requested then actually sort of forgot about the query because I wanted to have zero expectations that anything would come to fruition. And then I found out while I was at Mom 2.0 that the tee was featured in the InStyle Here’s What Editors Bought This April feature. OMG WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING?
3. Whoopi Goldberg wears our Brave New World Designs Maxine Waters shirt on The View
As if the above wasn’t enough, a couple of hours after finding out about InStyle, my phone started blowing up because Whoopi Goldberg wore Jon and my Maxine Waters tee shirt on The View. You may be wondering, wow, Christine must have the best public relations team in the world but the answer is no, all of this is happening organically which is INSANE because back when I had my design firm Posh Peacock I did hire a freelance PR person for a short stint the results were dismal (not totally her fault, by the way). In this case, here is the back story: My childhood friend Rasmia Kirmani is a total bad ass -- personally, yes, but also in her role as the president of New York City’s Fund For Public Housing. Ras has been a huge supporter of Brave New World Designs from the start and gifted the Maxine tee to colleagues not long after we launched the tee. And then a few days ago, after she interviewed Whoopi Goldberg (a NYCHA alum) about her experience growing up in public housing (and why we need to value and invest in public housing), Ras gifted Whoopi with the Maxine tee. And then LATER THAT DAY Whoopi changed into it for her appearance on The View. And then another friend of mine shared the below photo on Facebook asking OMG ISN’T THIS YOUR DESIGN? PLEASE CONFIRM! and then my phone blew up and I needed to lie down and die from disbelief (but I didn't have time because of all the things I laid out in #1 above). So it was amazing that this happened (thank you, Whoopi, I have loved you forever, and my mom also loves you because she is convinced you helped more people love Jesus because of Sister Act) but the real heart of the story here is that friendships are amazing and the generosity of people just overwhelms me sometimes. I am going to be making a donation to the Fund For Public Housing this week in honor of Rasmia and Whoopi and I hope you will consider making a donation!
4. Edit Your Life Wins Podcast Of The Year
A few years back, Mom 2.0 Summit started The Iris Awards, which are sort of like the Oscars for digital content creators. I have been truly honored and humbled to have various work nominated repeatedly (for Minimalist Parenting in the categories of Game Changer and Philanthropic Work, and for podcasting and vlogging) and this year was very humbling because Edit Your Life was nominated again and -- a first for me -- two projects that I conceived of and executed (as creative director at Women Online) for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and Heifer International were nominated in various categories. I poured my heart and soul into those projects and was so moved that so many people nominated them.
But I will make a confession here. The first year of the Iris Awards I just went in in a total haze of disbelief but last year I will admit that I went in wanting to win an award. What can I say, I am an Asian who was raised to chase carrots (or rice, or whatever). But I will say that last year I realized that it didn’t really feel good to want something in that way so when these nominations came out this year, I just embraced the gratitude around them. I mean, of course, winning would be lovely, but I walked in with zero expectations and just wanted to celebrate my peers across the board. So when Edit Your Life won Podcast Of The Year it was truly a shock and it’s a small miracle that I had the presence of mind to say anything coherent. At least I hope I did. You can decide for yourself (the podcast category starts around 5:50). And man oh man, was it hard to not have Asha Dornfest there for that moment.
So that was the craziest 72 hours and it was followed by waking up at 3:30am to grab the first flight back to Boston so I could come home and snuggle my babies and dive into mom life and the massive flood of Etsy orders but man am I grateful for all of the gifts this life has brought. Thank you all for your love and support -- in the abundant times, yes, but especially in the spare times when it's so hard to keep moving forward.