Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast

I just want to send a special thank you to everyone who came out to support me at the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast on Saturday April 25th here in Saskatoon. 19 local women were honoured for their achievements in making our city a better place. The theme for the event was “Going for Gold: Women of Excellence” and featured Catriona Le May Doan as the keynote speaker. I’d never heard Catriona speak before and I was impressed. I had a chance to meet her the night before at a special reception for those of us who were being honoured. She’s so outgoing and full of personality. What you see in the photos is what you get! That gorgeous Catriona smile, and a genuine down to earth young woman who, upon arriving at the airport went straight to the Lion’s Speedskating Club awards banquet to see the kids and hand out some awards…including the award named after her. She had many things on her plate this weekend and she could have easily decided not to go to the banquet, but that’s not the kind of woman Catriona is. She genuinely cares about the children in the Speedskating Club and she knows that it “makes their day” when she shows up in person, so she makes the effort to be there for them. I had a chance to have a short chat with her again on Saturday at the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast. She’s an excellent public speaker. I’m still amazed at how she didn’t use any notes! Even though my career was talking for a living, I have to have notes in front of me when I do speaking engagements. If you’ve gone through menopause you’ll know why I NEED my notes. You don’t realize how much your brain relies on estrogen to function until you are thrown into menopause. My memory function is not good, and if I’m telling a story and get interrupted or lose my train of thought it’s all gone. Zap! Just like that. I can’t remember what I was talking about. This is not a good thing when you are speaking in front of a crowd, telling your cancer story and all of a sudden you can’t remember what you were talking about! I have extensive notes with me all the time now, and I follow along fairly closely because I know that if I get off track the entire presentation will be derailed. To see Catriona up there giving an inspiring speech to over 1250 people was a real treat. She tells it like it is, and talks about how she changed her attitude after falling during an Olympic race and placing last. That fall and some subsequent events made her change her focus, and eventually she took home the gold.

When we stumble and fall we may not be able to deal with it at the time. It’s just too embarrassing, painful, or traumatic. But, when we look back we realize that we learned something from our fall. We picked ourselves back up and kept on going. Life goes on. Sure you made a mistake/got cancer/fell down, but you can still have a great life. It reminds me of the quote “A calm sea does not make a skilled sailor”. If we never had any bumps in the road of life, we wouldn’t be any good at navigating our way through it. It’s the challenges, diseases, losses, and struggles that make us better at living a good life and learning how to be happy. We learn how to deal with the unexpected things in life. They always seem to come at the worst time too! If you’re going through a rough time just think about that quote and pretend you’re learning the ropes of sailing through life and how to get past the storms and swells that you will inevitably encounter. You will be a stronger and better person because of the challenges that come your way. It’s hard to see it now, but just hang in there!

Since Saturday I’ve heard from numerous people who were at the breakfast to support me as I was being honoured and I just want to say THANK YOU! Thanks for coming out to spend your Saturday morning and valuable weekend time at this event. I wish I’d seen you there to thank you in person for coming, but with a crowd of over 1200 I didn’t see many people I knew! Sandra, Kathy, Wendy, Maureen, Brian, Joyce and Al: I know you were there! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming to the breakfast. I know there are others I haven’t even heard from yet, but I wanted to say “thanks”. It means a lot to me that you were there. Check back in the next day or so for a couple of photos from the event. As I write this, I can’t get the pictures to download! So, I’ll put this one in for now….a Saskatchewanian out kiteboarding through the fields of snow on Boxing Day 2008. He’s learning to navigate well!