When Monique King-Viehland came to Campowerment for the first time in November of 2019, she was pulled in by the community; the sisterhood. She wanted to work on purpose.
Monique showed up “excited; I knew a pivot was on the horizon but anxious because I didn’t know how to move forward.” Four days later, she walked out, “Ready, clear and empowered.”
Monique says, of the two months since her first camp…
“Three days after leaving camp, my mother died. It was soul crushing. My mother was my North Star and I felt lost. November also brought the realization that it was time to leave my job, the reason that brought me to California four years ago and perhaps leave public service all together. The grief and uncertainty felt overwhelming.
But I found comfort in the realizations I had about my relationship with my mother during circle at camp. Those realizations brought forgiveness – forgiveness of my mother’s mistakes and my own – and I didn’t realize how important that forgiveness would be given that she’d be gone a few days later.
And comfort in staying focused on the goals I set for myself to pivot away from public service and use my voice to seed the next generation of black women and women of color leaders. I threw myself into the creation of my YouTube Channel, MoBetterLife and my website, MoBetter.Life.
MoBetterLife is about creating a space and a community for WOMEN where we can leverage SELF love, SELF care, SELF awareness and SELF empowerment to find, create and/or build the best versions of ourselves. I launched it at the end of November and I have released a prelude episode and two theme focused episodes. It’s given me the opportunity to focus on my own personal growth while sharing what I’m learning in hopes that it will touch and inspire other women.
The receptivity to the channel and my journey has been amazing and more importantly it gave me a sense of peace during a time of profound grief.
Campowerment gave me clarity and strength to see clearly that I wanted to make fundamental changes in my life, both personally and professionally, and the strength to push past the fear and uncertainty and even grief to reach for the new me.
And the workshops at camp gave me real insights on how to move forward to begin to shape my path. For example, Tammi [Leader Fuller]’s workshop on marketing was incredible and helped me launch MoBetterLife! And Wendy [Ellin]’s workshop on selling from the stage are helping me think through how to transition into motivational speaking. Oh, and Dr. Ramani’s workshop on expectations helped me find common ground with my mom before she died and I had no idea how important that would be at the time.”
Sometimes, it takes major shift in order to get us back on *our* path. Start yours here!
