The Grundy Woman’s Club celebrated Federation Day by supporting the Women in Entrepreneurship Conference last month.
Held at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center in Abingdon, VA, on April 24, the “Empowering Women” conference was hosted by the Virginia Tech Southwest Center and featured a dozen female entrepreneurs, who spoke on success in business, as well as in life.
Federation Day is annually revered on April 24 by members of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs as the day in which 63 clubs came together in New York City to form the international volunteer organization in 1890.
Thousands of GFWC clubs and tens of thousands of clubwomen throughout the world commemorate Federation Day through volunteer service or programs geared specifically toward women. As an affiliated member of GFWC, the Grundy club decided to honor the spirit of the organization’s founder, Jane Cunningham Croly, who was a pioneering female journalist working under the pen name Jennie June at the time of the club’s inception.
Joining 13 other local businesses and entities, the Grundy Woman’s Club elected to sponsor the Women in Entrepreneurship Conference last month and sent five of its members to take in workshops and bring back the insight learned over the course of the one-day event. Those five clubwomen included: JoBeth Wampler, Sandy Stiltner, Betty Shields, Ginger Robertson, and Diane Lynch.
Castlewood native and Australian singer/songwriter, Wynonah Dove Bush kicked off the event with a morning keynote address, which featured singalong tunes and a powerful autobiographical account of overcoming life’s obstacles.
Write your own affirmation. Put your own ‘I am’ in front of what you want your life to be. You can make it happen.
Wynonah Dove Bush
She spoke of her early life in the foster care system, being emotionally, verbally, physically and sexually abused until finding her forever home. Her new mom enveloped her in love and Bush said she began to thrive.
However, after graduating from high school and heading to college, she said she soon returned home without a degree, pregnant and married to the wrong man.
It would take time before Bush said she could find her feet again, but she did so with the help of affirmations that she repeated to herself until she knew them by heart. And they began with the words, “I am.”
“The affirmations turned my life around,” she said. “Whether you believe it or you don’t believe it, go try it. Write your own affirmation. Put your own ‘I am’ in front of what you want your life to be. You can make it happen.”
In addition to her career in entertainment, Bush is a Reiki Master Teacher and LEVI Intuitive Spiritual Mentor.
“Words. Emotions. Thoughts. People are talking about this stuff all the time. They call it manifesting. Remember: God helps those who help themselves. He gave you a brain. He gave you thoughts, freewill, and emotion. What you decide to do with it is up to you. What kind of fantastic life do you want to create?”
Entertainment for the event featured Beth Nielsen Chapman, a Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter who weaved her personal story between soulful and energetic songs of love and life.
Even in childhood, she said, songwriting had always been a form of healing for her. Jotting down song lyrics in her journal, she remembered how therapeutic it had been and still is to this day.
So when her husband Ernest died of cancer in 1994 just 18 months after his initial diagnosis, she turned to songwriting and penned the song ‘Sand & Water.’ Years later, in 1997, Elton John would sing that song in memory of Princess Diana.
And long before she was ready to find love again, she wrote ‘This Kiss,’ while daydreaming about the beauty and feeling of the perfect kiss.
Sung by Faith Hill in 1999, the song known to both country and pop music lovers, alike, earned Song of the Year.
Around 2000, Chapman herself was diagnosed with cancer, and while her prognosis was much better than her late husband’s, she said she wasn’t so sure everything was going to be okay.
Watching the leaves falling from the trees that fall, she remembered watching her own hair falling, too. During this time, she’d found comfort in a song she’d written two years earlier. And that’s when a realization hit her.
“When I was writing, I wasn’t sure what I was writing it about or who I was talking to. I thought maybe I was speaking to my late husband. I just followed the song to what it wanted to be and two years later, I was sitting on the couch and I realized I wrote it for me to sing to myself. Sometimes, I think I must be a tough customer for believing because I had my own proof – I wrote a song for myself to sing later. And I thought, okay, I got it.”
The song, ‘Deeper Still,’ followed a theme that was common in her album at that time – resilience.
“I’ve had people say, ‘Wow! You’ve had all that stuff happen to you. How are you so happy?’ And I’m like, ‘Because I got through it and to the other side!’ There’s nothing that can make you in a better mood than overcoming something.”
The conference’s afternoon keynote speaker, Martha Ann McGlothlin Bowman, followed up that message with her own of finding confidence and staying true to one’s self.
Talking of her life in entrepreneurship, Bowman said it began at a very early age with the support and encouragement of her family.
“My first business, when I was in fourth grade, was called the Pinecone Shop,” she said. “I had it at my grandmother’s house in Bristol and my dad made up these little cards for me, business cards. And I was painting pinecones and trying to sell them to the neighbors […] and any family, I guess. I made a little catalogue that I drew by hand. So I had a checking account and it was all very exciting. I just always wanted to sell stuff after that.”
She went on to speak of the many avenues she used, from yard sales to eBay and Poshmark. No matter which she tried, she says one key element was consistent.
“If there was somewhere to sell something, I tried to do it. And this is another thing that I grew up knowing – just to be confident. I think that’s important. Even just think it if you can,” she said. “It’s important to just think you can do something and then, it’ll probably happen.”
And despite how polished and clean television kitchens and homes look, Bowman reminded the women in attendance to create homes and businesses that reflect life – never turning away guests until things are clean and not sweating the small stuff.
Today, she is the owner of House Dressing, a home furnishings boutique located in Bristol, and editor of The Olde Farm Magazine.
The conference also featured breakout sessions with nine other speakers – all women who have succeeded in business, including: Jonya Kennedy, Sandy Ratliff, Julie Walters Steele, Cathy Hess, Tracy Fletcher McGlothlin, Tina Wilson, Janie C. Jessee, Rebecca Pepin, and Lora Mahaffey.
