empowered women
Dear Sigma Sisters, This is my love letter to YOU. Each and every one of you. Thank you. For what, you may ask? Thank you all for being my rock. Thank you for being my friends. Thank you for being my mentors, my sounding boards, my therapists, for making me laugh. For teaching me. For supporting me. But most importantly, thank you for being my sisters. You are all the reason I survived 2020. For those who may not know me, I currently manage the page on Facebook called “Tri Sigma Alumnae Engage.” Alumnae Engage started as a summer self-guided program for alumnae to learn about particular topics. In late 2017, I was brought on along with a few other rock star and legendary Sigmas (Chris McCroy Smithhisler, Iota Alpha; Michelle Tantillo, Epsilon Omicron Chapter at Illinois State University; and Elizabeth Hoffert, Beta Xi Chapter at Southeast Missouri State University) to develop that year’s program. Managing a Facebook page was also a part of that program, and I volunteered to manage it. Managing the Alumnae Engage page has become a passion project and a respite for me. Inspired by my adventures from the Labyrinth Leadership Experience (shout out to the class of 2015!) and, of course, fellow Iota Alpha, Chris Smithhisler, I found peace and wisdom reading in daily inspirations. So, I started sharing them on the Facebook page in hopes it would make just one sister smile or find peace. The overwhelmingly positive response to the daily inspirations was something I had not anticipated. Since 2018, we have grown to over 2,000 members and have sisters sharing daily wisdom and support with each other every single day. Sometimes we do random acts of kindness where we have giveaways, and members will post Starbucks Gift Cards for members to use. And while we promote positivity on the page, we also attempt to be realistic with sharing our positivity. We know we are not all in the same situations, and we all have different struggles. We share our wisdom with empathy, understanding that we may never truly understand what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes, but as sisters, we can do what we can do to support them. Little did we know what 2020 had in store for *all* of us. When the pandemic first hit in March, we were all thrown into a state of unknown. I leaned on our value of “Hope” to keep the page going. I tried to share the good but also acknowledged we were undoubtedly in the bad. But hope is an anchor, and we needed to anchor to something hopeful at that time.
8 the TRIANGLE | fall 2021
