Do you believe in fate? I have to admit that I have wanted to, but my life hasn’t really rolled along like that. However, I do believe in gut instinct. Although, truth be told I believe it to be a muscle that you have to learn to exercise properly. I have always had “feelings,” but I haven’t always known how to listen to them, or to act upon them. This year I have had a recurring notion happening in my life. (Well, I have had a lot of them, but only one appears to be particularly positive.) Wait, I should back up to the beginning…last year.

My daughter has been struggling with an illness for a while now, but she has yet to be diagnosed. She has an enlarged pancreas but no one can seem to figure out why. It’s been excruciating emotionally, watching her struggle so. Particularly during the holidays last year. What made it worse was that with the piling up of medical bills money was really tight. For my beautiful daughter the one wish I had for her, beyond having her get better, was to be able to take her to Disney World. I wished it deep in my bones. I spoke it every night. I told the World. I put it out there, even though I had no possible way of fulfilling such a dream. Well, that is until I got a fateful email from Disney inviting me to be a part of the first Disney Social Media Moms Conference. And just like that a dream was fulfilled. Okay, but this is where the fate thing starts actually. (And you thought this was just going to be about my daughter? Who by the way is doing, better but still hasn’t been diagnosed and still suffers daily.) While attending the #Disneysmmoms conference I had the unique opportunity to not only meet, but hear an absolutely phenomenal woman speak. Maxine Clark, CEO of Build a Bear Workshop. Listening to her story, to her ideas about children, and community, and responsibility, and friendship… well I fell in love right then and there. No, I’m serious I started drawing her name in my notebook with little hearts around it. (Wait, strike that. I don’t want to get arrested for stalking). Okay, but it’s true that I was absolutely enamored. The little voice inside of me said, You are going to work with this woman!” Well, actually it wasn’t just the little voice inside of me, it was the big voice outside of me too. Because I told Maxine plainly that I absolutely wanted to work with her somehow, someway. I wrote about it, I tweeted it, I updated my facebook status about it. Well heck, I had such great success giving my dream up to the universe before, why stop now. [Read more...]