We all have to "Jump!" sometimes!

Hi Everyone! My name is Lauren, and I am the new intern for CA Women Lead. I feel absolutely honored by the chance to work for such an inspiring organization, comprised of such amazing women leaders throughout the state! I am so excited to share my very first blog post with everyone!

After reading Rachel’s blog post “JUMP!” I was reminded of a conversation I had with my mom the other day. I had just been visited by and spoken with some of my close friends who were in Berkeley for the summer. Needless to say I felt a bit homesick (or university-sick) after those conversations. Don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely enjoying all the new and eye-opening experiences Sacramento and my internship at CA Women Lead are providing for me, but for a brief moment I did miss Berkeley.

Like many women do when they are feeling down, I called my loving mother to make me feel better. However, she had very little sympathy for my desire to return home to my university. Stung by her lack of sympathy, I asked her why she felt this way. Her reply surprised me. “Lauren, at some point you have to choose between two paths: the safe path, or the scary path that may lead to change in the community, state, or even world. This summer, your internship, this is where you have started, and being homesick is a small price to pay for that.” These words stuck with me for the rest of the day, as I realized that I, too, had taken a “jump” from the safety of my university and into the new and scary world of Sacramento.

At some point, all women leaders must choose between two paths: the one of many who miss their opportunity to run for office or to be appointed to a position; and the one in which you take that jump to run for office or apply for an appointment, and hope for the best. I am proud to be working for an organizations that supports so many women who have taken “the road less traveled by,” because that is truly what “makes all the difference” in our state.

I have attached a related, inspirational, and personal-favorite poem that I hope inspires all, or at the very least, makes you think:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
--“The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost (1916)