This week on the How To Not Lose Your Sh!t podcast, we talked to a local group leader in Pennsylvania named Karen. She recently held a talent show and raised $2000 for a local charity that helps immigrants and refugees — which, for an organization of their size, is more than their year’s operating budget.
The idea started when Karen heard another Red Wine & Blue group member talk about a poetry reading event she’d recently held. Karen thought, “Hey, I know a friend who writes poetry, I could do that!”
But then, another one of her friends volunteered his band to play. Another neighbor offered to do stand-up comedy, and another contributed her traditional Indian dance skills. Soon, Karen’s fundraiser was set to highlight 15 community members’ talents. She was a little nervous, saying “it was a risk, because I’d never done anything like this before.” But of course the show was a rousing success — not just a fun opportunity for neighbors to bond with one another, but to support immigrants and refugees in their community.
It would be inspiring enough to see Karen organize a creative event to benefit immigrants, but there’s another layer: she was going through a really difficult time in her personal life as her husband was in hospice for cancer.
Karen cared so much about this fundraiser, it took both her sister and an RWB organizer to convince her to postpone it from the spring to this summer. She told Katie and LaFonda on the podcast that she was just so upset about what had been happening with ICE in Minneapolis, she was determined to do something… no matter what was happening in her own life. Luckily, she listened to her loved ones and pushed the event to July.
So often, women focus so much on taking care of everyone else that we forget to take care of ourselves. As we get closer to the midterms and the stakes get even higher, make sure to check in with yourself and the other “givers” in your life. We CAN do this work without burning out.
Karen’s story is the perfect example of one woman’s desire to help paired with her community’s talents and the support of her loved ones. Let’s keep this going through November!