Entrepreneurship is no joke. It's HARD work. Long hours, endless networking, small business admin, the list goes on and on. And, sometimes, being a woman in entrepreneurship is that much harder. But what nourishes and sustains me is the community I've built through it. I love that I can collaborate with other women entrepreneurs, supporting each other's dreams and work in community with each other rather than in competition with each other.

When in April of 2011 I lost my mother to breast cancer, I also lost my way. Perseverance and a never give up attitude is certainly something I learned from my Italian American upbringing as well as a love of writing, reading books and the arts. Navigating the grieving process, I turned to writing as a healing tool. I started simply. I would wake in the morning and read from a book that resonated with me.

I write to understand my world. This poem is about my mother who died in April of 2019. There is so much I wish I would have asked her. She would be thrilled about my debut novel, "The Lockhart Women", which will be published in June of 2021 by She Writes Press. The novel is dedicated to my mother but is not about her at all.